“Win­ter activ­i­ties in Oulu make it an even more spe­cial city”

Moustafa Khairi is work­ing as a machine learn­ing oper­a­tions engi­neer in Oulu. He is 25 years old, and his home city is Alexan­dria, Egypt.

What

I came to Fin­land in Jan­u­ary 2021 to pur­sue a master’s degree in com­put­er sci­ence, major­ing in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI). I took up com­mu­ni­ca­tions and elec­tron­ics engi­neer­ing for my bachelor’s degree but did not find what I was search­ing for.

Dur­ing my bachelor’s stud­ies, I start­ed shift­ing my focus to oth­er tech­ni­cal and non-tech­ni­cal fields. I start­ed learn­ing about AI and data sci­ence in 2019. I call this my “when the mag­ic hap­pened” moment. My whole expe­ri­ence in the field was based on self-learn­ing through online cours­es and tech­ni­cal com­pe­ti­tions and by attend­ing ses­sions, work­shops, sem­i­nars and sim­i­lar events. How­ev­er, as I did not have any aca­d­e­m­ic back­ground in com­put­er sci­ence or AI, I searched for master’s pro­grammes I could enrol in.

Why

The biggest rea­son that I chose the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu Com­put­er Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing pro­gramme was that I knew I could spe­cial­ize in AI there with­out hav­ing to take oth­er irrel­e­vant com­put­er sci­ence tracks. In addi­tion, I would be able to tai­lor the cours­es I would take based on my inter­ests, giv­en the university’s wide vari­ety of elec­tive cours­es.

As I men­tioned ear­li­er, I came to Fin­land in Jan­u­ary 2021, in the mid­dle of the pan­dem­ic; this affect­ed my whole expe­ri­ence both pos­i­tive­ly and neg­a­tive­ly, but for­tu­nate­ly, the pos­i­tive aspect of my expe­ri­ence out­weighed the neg­a­tive aspect.

How

Despite the pan­dem­ic, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu facil­i­tat­ed learn­ing for its stu­dents. Thus, we had the same high-qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion as before the pan­dem­ic in the remote set­up. Many stu­dent asso­ci­a­tions and enti­ties con­tin­ued their mis­sion remote­ly, which helped build healthy and fruit­ful stu­dent com­mu­ni­ties despite the odds.

I am cur­rent­ly a mem­ber of many stu­dent asso­ci­a­tions and enti­ties, such as Slush, AIESEC in Oulu and Oulu Entre­pre­neur­ship Soci­ety. More­over, I man­aged to found my own stu­dent asso­ci­a­tion under the umbrel­la of Google: the Oulu Google Devel­op­er Stu­dent Club.

Dur­ing my aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies, I obtained a cou­ple of intern­ships in indus­try and at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu and com­plet­ed my the­sis for Nokia. I am cur­rent­ly work­ing as a machine learn­ing oper­a­tions (MLOps) engi­neer at Nord­cloud, uti­liz­ing cloud ser­vices for the devel­op­ment and deploy­ment of machine learn­ing mod­els (sounds com­plex, I know).

Where

In the begin­ning, I was not sure if I would be able to adapt to a city total­ly dif­fer­ent from my home city, Alexan­dria. Now, more than a year and a half lat­er, I find Oulu a qui­et, beau­ti­ful and inter­est­ing city with an arc­tic atmos­phere and a breath­tak­ing nat­ur­al land­scape.

In my free time, I like exer­cis­ing, play­ing the piano, watch­ing movies and bik­ing. I actu­al­ly learned bik­ing here in Oulu. I can still remem­ber the first time I man­aged to bike for 10 metres with­out falling off my bike! There are spe­cial lanes for bikes almost every­where, and many places are reach­able by bik­ing.

Win­ter activ­i­ties in Oulu make it an even more spe­cial city. Last win­ter, I chal­lenged myself and went ice swim­ming at a tem­per­a­ture of ‑22°C! This was quite an expe­ri­ence for some­one who hails from a coun­try whose low­est tem­per­a­ture in win­ter is around +10°C.

Mov­ing to a new coun­try is not an easy deci­sion and entails sac­ri­fices. It is a chal­leng­ing yet reward­ing expe­ri­ence in many respects.

This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished at oulutalenthub.fi

Oulu Tal­ent Hub

• Oulu Tal­ent Hub brings togeth­er and devel­ops region­al oppor­tu­ni­ties and ser­vices for inter­na­tion­al recruit­ment.
• Oulu Tal­ent Hub offers tal­ents, for exam­ple, con­tacts with local com­pa­nies, match­mak­ing events and info ses­sions, com­pa­ny vis­its, a tan­dem mod­el for intern­ship pro­grammes and career coun­selling. For Oulu Tal­ent Hub, inter­na­tion­al tal­ent is defined as inter­na­tion­al spe­cial­ists, employ­ees, researchers and stu­dents.
• Oulu Tal­ent Hub aims to pro­mote inter­na­tion­al tal­ent employ­ment to com­pa­nies in the Oulu region and open up employ­ment paths for inter­na­tion­al tal­ent.
• Project part­ners are Business­Oulu, Oulu Cham­ber of Com­merce, Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu, Oulu Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences and Oulu Voca­tion­al Col­lege.
• The project is fund­ed by The Euro­pean Social Fund, ESF.
• Learn more about Oulu Tal­ent Hub at oulutalenthub.fi.

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