Moa­men Ibrahim: “Know­ing peo­ple here is what makes things eas­i­er”

Moa­men Ibrahim, 28, is orig­i­nal­ly from Egypt. He works now as a Machine Learn­ing Engi­neer at Soli­ta. He has been here in Oulu for five years.

Who

I’m Moa­men Ibrahim, from Egypt. I’m 28 years old, and I work as a Machine Learn­ing Engi­neer. I’ve been here in Oulu for five years.

I fin­ished my bachelor’s degree in com­mu­ni­ca­tions and elec­tron­ics, and while study­ing for my degree, I became inter­est­ed in com­put­er sci­ence. I was already doing some com­put­er sci­ence projects on the site and was inter­est­ed in soft­ware, so I start­ed research­ing master’s degrees abroad.

Why

I did a master’s in com­put­er sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu, Fin­land. One of the rea­sons I chose the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu was because I knew that there would be a chance to work as a research assis­tant, in my pro­gramme and my depart­ment, while study­ing; being able to work and study in the same field was an ide­al com­bi­na­tion. I also had friends from Egypt in Oulu, and I’d heard that it was a nice place for stu­dents to come.

What

I worked as a research assis­tant at the uni­ver­si­ty for two years, so I wasn’t only study­ing but also work­ing and learn­ing new things at the same time. In gen­er­al, work­ing in research is very reward­ing and helps you learn more, espe­cial­ly in the com­put­er sci­ence field. I had a chance to teach one course as well. It was about the same top­ic I was work­ing on: nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing.

Where

Before Soli­ta I worked for Nokia for three years. I grad­u­at­ed around July 2019, and then the fol­low­ing Octo­ber I start­ed work­ing with Nokia.

Some­thing fun­ny hap­pened one year before I start­ed apply­ing for jobs. I found an open­ing with Nokia, and I did the inter­views. The com­pa­ny want­ed me as a the­sis work­er. How­ev­er, I chose to con­tin­ue my research work; it was the best sit­u­a­tion for me at that time, and I was very invest­ed in the project I was work­ing on as a research assis­tant. So I said no to Nokia. Then, after I grad­u­at­ed, I got a job from Nokia through my job at the uni­ver­si­ty. I’d worked with a lot of peo­ple on nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing as a research assis­tant. One per­son who was a cofounder of anoth­er com­pa­ny was doing a con­sul­tan­cy, and he put me up with Nokia. The team that inter­viewed me the first time was the same team I joined one year lat­er.

How

When I moved to Oulu, a kum­mi, a stu­dent tutor at the uni­ver­si­ty, helped me in the begin­ning and made set­tling into a new coun­try so easy. I reg­is­tered at the immi­gra­tion office, bought fur­ni­ture, pur­chased a bus card, and applied for a bank account, all in just one day. It was great; he helped with every­thing. I was sur­prised how fast we did every­thing. It was impor­tant to have some­one here to help me set­tle in dur­ing the first days.

I already had some friends from Egypt in Oulu. On my sec­ond day, an Egypt­ian cel­e­bra­tion took place, so I met more Egyp­tians there and they helped me in the begin­ning. After that, I start­ed mak­ing friends at the uni­ver­si­ty. I joined a lot of activ­i­ties, such as AIESEC. I was real­ly active as a stu­dent and also attend­ed activ­i­ties organ­ised by oth­er organ­i­sa­tions.

Know­ing peo­ple here is what makes my per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life eas­i­er. It enables me to know what oth­er peo­ple are doing, to fig­ure out how things work in gen­er­al, and to expand my net­work.

Swim­ming is my favourite part of sum­mer in Oulu. In all, I think I pre­fer sum­mer here over sum­mer in many oth­er places because the weath­er is good, not hot either inside or out­side.

The water is cold, but I think I kind of like it. It’s the per­fect tem­per­a­ture for both swim­ming and vis­it­ing the sauna. The float­ing sauna in Tuira is where I go most of the time. Every day or every sum­mer. Brace your­self for the cold weath­er, how­ev­er!

This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished at oulutalenthub.fi
Text: Déb­o­ra Oliveira

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