Welcome family, friends, and friendly strangers to my summer blog where I'll be documenting my experiences as I venture through Europe and Israel for the next eleven weeks!
I'm not a great writer nor an avid blogger, but I do love writing about my travels, my thoughts, and the people I meet along the way, primarly to remember what I do and to update my pals. There's no set schedule for when I will post, but I hope to write at least 2 to 3 posts per week.
I have travelled a decent amount with family and more recently with friends, but this trip will have the most amount of solo-traveling I will have ever encountered. There's a lot lined up for me this summer: places to visit, people to meet (over fifty MIT students will be in Israel!), and lots of foods to eat.
The Itinerary
If everything goes according to plan (I write this like there is a plan), my itinerary for the summer looks as follows:
DALLAS...................................................................5/28
PARIS...........................................................5/29 to 6/1
TEL-AVIV..........................................................6/1 to 8/9
JERUSALEM.................................................................tbd
HAIFA........................................................................tbd
NAZARETH.................................................................tbd
ATHENS.....................................................6/27 to 6/30
VIENNA.......................................................8/9 to 8/11
BUDAPEST..................................................8/11 to 8/13
PRAGUE.....................................................8/13 to 8/15
BOSTON................................................................8/15
Some exact dates and locations are subject to change, but man, looking at this schedule makes me so excited and so nervous. This next chapter of my life is unwritten, but not for long!
The Work: Neural Networks and Self-Driving Cars
I have been granted the incredible opportunity to work at a tech startup in the heart of Tel-Aviv that specializes in image recognition for self-driving cars at a fraction of the compute power. It's cool stuff. My project, as far as I know, involves training convolutional neural networks and performing error analysis. I can't really tell you what that entails or what my day-to-day schedule will look like and this project is certainly outside of my intellectual comfort zone. Regardless, it will be a fantastic learning experience - both to familiarize myself with the world of machine learning and to experience the startup atmosphere firsthand. My brain is ready.
Some of you may be wondering: "Did you get this gig on your own?" While I maybe could have found an opportunity like this, it would have been a) very difficult to get in contact with the right people, b) probably not funded, c) not well-structured.
MIT has a program called MISTI - the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (www.misti.mit.edu) - where I acquired this opportunity. MISTI sends hundreds of students to international countries every summer and January to perform research, work at companies, teach at local schools, and more. The experiences are more-or-less cost-neutral, and MIT establishes connections with local companies, universities, and schools to send students back every year. In short, it's great, and it's allowed me to teach discrete math in Amman, Jordan for a month, teach an intro to programming course in Santiago, Chile, and now to intern in Tel-Aviv, Israel.
Final Thoughts
Thankfully, I had enough time to visit home before departing, and so the last five days were spent baking brownies, making the biannual pilgrimage to Costco, visiting old friends, and spending time with my parents, sister, and dog. I am going to miss home, but new experiences are always net positive, and such is life. Sending you all a big hug.
Peace and blessings,
An
Side note: JetBlue is great because they have free WiFi in the airplanes, and so I am currently typing this post at 36,800 feet above ground.