Aziz Aksozlu is a current student on City’s MSc Artificial Intelligence programme.
What is your name and what course do you study, what year are you in, what scholarship did you receive?
Hello, my name is Aziz Aksozlu and I am studying MSc Artificial Intelligence at City. It is a one-year taught masters course and I received a 75% fee discount with the award of the Global STEM Leadership Masters Scholarship.
What were you doing before you came to study at City?
Prior to starting my course at City, I was a Physics and ICT teacher and I had been teaching in secondary schools & colleges both in the UK and abroad.
What has been your favourite module on the course, and what have you enjoyed most about your time at City?
My favorite module has been Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. It is an area that I did not know existed before starting my course and I have loved learning various theorems as part of the module.
My favourite thing to do in my spare time on campus is to chat about our field with my colleagues. Having likeminded people to discuss your ideas and goals is a great benefit.
What kind of things are you involved in outside of your course?
Outside of computers I am interested in mechanical machines, mostly motorbikes.
When I want a break from reading and writing/coding, I usually work on my motorbike and recently I have spent many days opening up my engine both to learn how it works in more detail and to service several parts inside the engine.
When I don’t want to work with tools and clear my head, I love going on long walks, preferably in nature along rivers.
What do you plan to do after you graduate?
Ideally, I want to work as a Machine Learning Engineer. Currently my two favourite areas are Computer Vision and Fraud Detection.
What would be your top tip for our applicants?
Invest in yourself. Short and simple, yet powerful.
What is your proudest academic achievement?
During High School in Cyprus, I did four A-Levels on top of also doing the 13 compulsory national curriculum subjects and managed to get into King’s College London to study Physics.
How do you see your subject of study changing in the future?
Online courses are growing in popularity, and I think in the next few years there will be more flexible online courses which are accredited.
Freecodecamp.org is working on starting its first accredited bachelor's degree program for free which will be in Computer Science.
I think this will be an amazing resource for many people who do not enjoy the privilege of being able to afford attending a higher education institution. It takes both money and time.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Especially for Computer Science and related courses, start your own portfolio of projects. Start with projects that you are personally most interested in; it is the best and easiest way to learn.