On Thursday, February 10th we had an incredibly interesting Research & Industry Spotlight Series session with Petar Veličković. He is a staff research scientist at Google DeepMind. Petar is first author of the highly popular “Graph Attention Networks” paper. Furthermore, he is an affiliated lecturer at the University of Cambridge.
Thanks for everyone that decided to attend the event physically, here is the recording of the talk:
Last Wednesday we had our first session of the year, hosted by Marc Romeyn and Jan van de Kerkhof! Marc and Jan are both DKE alumni who are currently working for NVIDIA and Google respectively. Together, they talked about their interesting career paths that ultimately lead them to where they are now. After their nice presentation (which also included examples of their work), a Q&A session with a variety of questions followed.
Thank everyone for attending the event, we are happy that so many of you decided to join in! The recording of the session can be found here:
Rough timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
02:00 Presentation
40:40 Q&A Session
“Don’t limit yourself to rigid constructions.”
Last Wednesday we had a presentation by Iulia Feroli. She talked about her path to her current position and how that path was unconventional, gave some tips about living in Amsterdam, working in smaller and bigger companies, gave reasons why DKE is a rewarding programme. Then a lively Q&A followed which was inspiring and reassuring.Thanks so much to everyone who attended! The recording of the first part (presentation) can be found here:
Rough timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
02:30 Iulia’s introduction of the talk
04:20 Education at DKE, KE@Work
07:51 Finished DKE – What next?
12:10 LinkedIn happened, interesting new possibilities
15:00 Career at Microsoft
On Wednesday Research+Industry Spotlight featured Cameron Browne, principal investigator of Digital Ludeme Project (http://ludeme.eu/), Associate Professor at DKE.
Cameron reflected on his past positions both in industry and academia, how he worked on his interests as side projects that later became his job. He mentioned how he developed his research proposal for the next generation General Game Playing platform Ludii (https://ludii.games/). Cameron commented on the varying software practices across positions, and gave a plethora of tips! It was a greatly interesting and inspiring talk both for future software developers and researchers alike. It was also a lovely opportunity to get to know some of our professors and understand how they ended up at Maastricht!
This Research+Industry Spotlight installment has 4 guests! They are all DKE alumni and PhD candidates in various universities. If you were ever thinking about doing a PhD, this is a perfect chance to ask questions about this decision! Join to discuss Master programmes, doing a PhD, PhD applications, various fields of research, companies, studying in Stockholm.
Both Kamil and Philippe have completed a bachelor’s and a master’s here in DKE. Kamil studied Artificial Intelligence and Philippe opted for Data Science for Decision Making. Kamil has advanced to pursue a PhD here in Maastricht University at the Swarmlab, he’s working on control and machine learning for cognitive robotics on insect farms. Philippe went on to do a PhD is at Wageningen University, and he’s working on fraud detection in financial markets.
Nik Vaessen and Jade Cock finished their bachelor degrees at DKE and then went on to do their Master’s in KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. Nik did his master’s in Computer Science and proceeded to do a PhD in Data Science at Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. His PhD topic is “multi-task learning in diverse speech tasks” and it involves researching deep neural architectures which can be used for more than one speech task. Jade did her master’s in Machine Learning and is currently a Computer Science PhD candidate at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Audio recording of the meeting:
Rough timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
14:55 Q&A
Lucas graduated from DKE bachelor last year. Under supervision of Prof. Rachel Cavill he wrote his thesis titled “Learning to learn: a drug resistance learning pipeline”. As you might have seen on the social media, Lucas for his thesis was awarded the Bachelor Student prize which is essentially the best thesis award of the last academic year.
I had a meeting with Lucas in the summer when their board transferred the ownership of some Incognito relics, keys and such to our board. At that time he said he was planning to study his Master’s in Data Science in Aachen. Not long after I discovered that he postponed his studies and got not one but two jobs: a Data Scientist position at a Medical Appointment Software company and a Scientific Programmer position at Maastricht University at the Department of Bioinformatics.
Today Lucas is going to talk about storytelling, an important skill to convey your ideas to stakeholders. Then we will go into a Q&A session as per usual and we can drill into his life a bit more, talk about his thesis, bioinformatics, the prospects of a DKE graduate in a pandemic-worn job market.
Here is Lucas’s script.
Here is the audio recording:
Rough timestamps:
00:00 Intro
03:40 Importance of communication
27:20 Things he wish he knew before starting his job
48:00 Things about Lucas
1:06:00 Q&A
Join this session and have a discussion with Jonas Kubilius, who is a Co-founder and Senior AI Researcher at AI Research and Consultancy firm ThreeThirds (https://www.threethirds.ai/). His research focuses on marriage between neuroscience and artificial intelligence, computer vision, analysis of human visual cortex using psychophysical, fMRI, and machine learning approaches. He contributed to the development of http://www.brain-score.org/#about, a tool to quantify how similar some artificial neural network is to the human brain (https://www.cell.com/neuron/pdf/S0896-6273(20)30605-X.pdf).
Jonas is a graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), B.S. in mathematics and physics with minor in theater arts. In 2009-2010 he completed a Master in Artificial Intelligence at KU Leuven and advanced to pursue a PhD in Psychology after receiving an FWO fellowship. He was a postdoctoral researcher at both KU Leuven and MIT.
Here is the audio recording:
Rough timestamps:
00:00 Intro
02:24 Sharing life and career advice
35:10 Questions & Answers
Date and time: Wednesday 13th Jan 19:00
Incognito is starting off a new series of events called Research+Industry Spotlight! In the following weeks we will invite many speakers from research, industry, or both! Both young and experienced speakers will talk about their path in Data Science: their inspiration, decisions, struggles, achievements.
In order peak everyone’s interest right from the start, we invited a very special guest.
Laurens van der Maaten is a Research Director at Facebook AI Research (FAIR). He graduated with a MSc from DKE in 2005. Laurens has done research in computer vision, dimensionality reduction (including work with recent Turing Award recipient Geoffrey Hinton) and other Machine Learning fields. He will talk about his experience in academia both as a student and professor, what is the difference in conducting research in academia and in industry, his own research. A Q&A will then follow where you can ask him in-depth questions. If you can’t attend, drop us an email with your questions!
Attendees were eager to ask great questions about topics ranging from careers in Artificial Intelligence to ecological impact of AI Research.
The transcript of the talk has been provided to members of Incognito and people who have signed up for the event. It is also hosted here.
In a field that evolves and grows at a frightening pace, it is natural to wonder: “How does a soon-to-be data science graduate find the right job?”.
Come Wednesday 2nd December 19:00 and listen to Valentin Calomme, a DKE alumnus who is now working as an AI Engineer for Mediaan, as he describes the current job market, the sought-after technologies, and how you can effectively market yourself in an increasingly competitive field.
This event is especially relevant for 3rd Year BSc students and 2nd Year MSc students but obviously everyone is welcome!
The transcript of the event has been provided to members of Incognito and is hosted here.
If you’re wondering about what to do after your bachelor or considering another masters, we’re happy to announce a Q&A with Lars Mennen, a DKE alumnus who went to study a MSc in pure mathematics at Cambridge. The event will take place on Sunday 22nd at 13.00.
Lars will briefly talk about why he chose to pursue further study in pure math and his experience in studying at Cambridge. We will then open up discussion to any questions you may have – whether it’s about his time at DKE or math studies in general, feel free to ask anything that’s on your mind.
The transcript of the meeting has been provided to members of Incognito and resides here.
“We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
Sign ups: http://mysterylan.nl/join-the-fun/
It’s time for the MysteryLAN again, and this time it’s gonna be the biggest MysteryLAN yet!
On Friday May 3rd, from 18:00 onwards, you are welcome to take part in the MysteryLAN for 3 days of GAMING! The event will last until Sunday afternoon, May 5th.
During the event we will have several competitions, which will be revealed at a later date (keep your eyes peeled!).
Of course participation in these competitions is not compulsory and you are free to play any game that you like at any time of the day! The goal of the weekend is to have fun with each other!
We have been working hard behind the scenes to make this LAN the best one yet! You don’t need to bring your own internet cables. Please note you cannot reserve a monitor this time.
A massive thank you to our sponsors, Code043 and Activitree! Without these guys we would not be able to put on the biggest MysteryLAN ever, so thank you very much!
The entrance fee for MysteryLAN is:
€15 for students.
€20 for non-students
Please read all rules and conditions for participation at https://www.mysterylan.nl/rules/ before signing up!
You can sign up at http://mysterylan.nl/join-the-fun/
If you want more information, feel free to contact us at mysterylan@msvincognito.nl
Code043: https://www.code043.nl/en/
Activitree: https://www.activitree.io/
So what are you waiting for!? Go sign up before it is too late!
Dear members,
As you might already know, DKE is (despite it’s small size) one of the most international studies at UM. Therefore we have a fun little tradition called international food night which is similar to a potluck. The idea is that you bring a self-made dish either from your country of birth, country where you have lived or maybe a family recipe! This is a very fun (and tasty!) way of sharing our culture with each other. The food night will be held on the 22th of November at Tapijnkazerne Building Z at 6.30pm!
We can’t wait to see what you all manage to create!
Registration is required to know what you plan to prepare:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1I-hRfBLQGKgOdDfToiurBRyRqF7h8CW2s3aXZqT2-Gk/edit
Due to the nature of the event we ask everybody to keep their allergies in mind and ask the creator of the dish about it’s ingredients.
The cantus is a very old tradition in the Netherlands. A night of drinking and singing that brings friends together. It will be held on the 7th of December at the dn’ Hiemel. The event starts at 9pm, be there on time! The price is 15€ per person and sign up is required:
https://goo.gl/forms/VEnCx7JjLtiBls5J2
The deadline for payment is DECEMBER 3RD (Extra information will be included in the form).
During the Cantus there will be rules which will be strictly enforced. Drinks are free for the entire night (if the entrance fee is paid). Since this means you can drink as much as we can we will have some sober sisters. These people will keep an eye on the participants and make sure nobody is drinking too much. They at all times have the right to tell somebody to stop drinking.
Since the cantus has some rules that involve drinking, we want to note that we will never actually force somebody to drink. In case you do not want to drink anymore that is completely fine, you can choose to get water instead, or not drink at all. To prevent misuse of this we do enforce a simple rule: once you refuse to drink, you are not allowed to drink for the rest of the night anymore.
The other rules that are native to the Cantus will be explained during the event and included in a booklet that will be given to you!
Keep in mind there are only 40 spots available per association!
Do you want to show off your secret strategies, mad skills or enormous luck? Then this is your chance! Come join us on 7th of November at Kaleido at 6pm for an amazing Board Game Night!
You are encouraged to bring your own board games that you want to play! In case you will bring something (or want to request a board game from other people) feel free to post in this event.
There will be a Pub-quiz at 6.30pm, so be sure to be there on time!
Since the event is at Kaleido you can purchase drinks from them.
The event ends at 8.30 but at 9, Kaleido is hosting their own board game night. https://www.facebook.com/events/2137454449855102/
!!The Kaleido event has an entry fee, ours is free!!
You can sign up to have a saved spot at their event with the following form:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1GsXq05EqhUgjUdjzezDkKC8-ASqvftmbTn2QHu0aY2c/edit
The first general assembly of 2018-2019 is upon us!
On the 6th of November, we will be discussing the changing of locations of the Block Opening Borrel drinks (BOBs) to Jack White’s Fish and Chips, which must be voted upon by the members.
However, the main attraction of the evening is the election of the new board of directors! Those interested in applying for a position must send their CV and a short letter of motivation to incognito@maastrichtuniversity.nl by 23:59 on 31 October.
Celebratory drinks will be had in town after the election. Make sure you’re present to have your voice heard!
If you thought your exams were scary, wait until you see our next event! Grab your pumpkins and your broomsticks and your witches brew, because our next BOB is a Halloween costume party!
We will be serving Halloween-themed beverages in our haunted house, and will be hosting a costume contest as well, so come dressed for a night of mayhem and debauchery!
We will have a Costume contest at 10pm so be sure to be there on time!! The top costumes will be rewarded by beer!
MysteryLAN at ROOOMS 2; Electric Boogaloo
Sign ups: http://mysterylan.nl/join-the-fun/
It’s time for the MysteryLAN again!
On Friday November 9th, from 18:00 onwards, you are welcome to take part in the MysteryLAN for 3 days of GAMING! The event will last until Sunday afternoon, November 11th.
During the event we will have several competitions, which will be revealed at a later date (keep your eyes peeled!).
Of course participation in these competitions is not compulsory and you are free to play any game that you like at any time of the day! The goal of the weekend is to have fun with each other!
We have been working hard behind the scenes to make this LAN the best one yet! You don’t need to bring your own internet cables. Please note you cannot reserve a monitor this time.
This time, MysteryLAN will be held at our sponsor, ROOOMS Maastricht, located at Boschstraat 21. ROOOMS is a community for entrepreneurs. Everybody can join, but most ROOOMS members are part of a dynamic mix of innovative start-ups and hardworking companies. There are enough possibilities to get in touch: network events, interesting lectures and spontaneous meetings in their lounges. Or near the coffee machine!
The entrance fee for MysteryLAN is:
€15 for members or ROOOMS tenants.
€20 for non-members.
Please read all rules and conditions for participation at https://www.mysterylan.nl/rules/ before signing up!
You can sign up at http://mysterylan.nl/join-the-fun/
If you want more information, feel free to contact us at mysterylan@msvincognito.nl
ROOOMS Maastricht: http://roooms.nl/en/locaties/maastricht/
So what are you waiting for!? Go sign up before it is too late!