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Vít Růžička, CTU Prague,

ročník 4

Faculty

Faculty of Electrical Engineering

Field of study

Computer Sciences, Machine Learning

Field of internship

Computer and Information Sciences

Specialization of Internship

Artificial Intelligence

Internship period (from - to)

15.9.2017 - 1.5.2018

Internship duration (weeks)

Transport (means, price)

Flight, approx 17000 czk

Insurance/Insurance company

ISIC insurance + CulturalVistas insurance

Visa/Work permit (yes/no)

yes

Price of Visa

390 usd

City of Internship

United States, Pittsburgh

Internship reference number

US-2017-89040

About the country

Location of the place

USA

City

Pittsburgh

Surroundings (possible trips, ...)

Chicago - 10 hours by bus (Greyhound) or train (Amtrak) or possibly flight. One of the attached photos is from a rainy visit to Chicago.
New York - 9 hours by bus
+ by flight - all other bigger cities of USA, for example I found some cheap tickets between Pittsburgh Miami in the winter of 2017.

(Look up your current prices at amtrak, greyhound, plus airbnb for accommodation...)

Employer

Project Spiral (Spiral: spiral.ece.cmu.edu) working under Carnegie Mellon University (CMU: www.cmu.edu). More exactly then my supervisor professor Franz Franchetti.

Work description

Research of problems related to the focus on the Spiral team and my supervisor Franz Franchetti. I was given relatively free hand at choosing the specific subfield and ended up working on Machine Learning project.
This kind of internship is good to get an idea how to do research in academic environment of high quality university such as CMU.

Salary (sufficient for local conditions?)

Sufficient for accommodation, food and few trips around during weekends.

Language requirements

I believe that decent English skills are needed. Possibly more focused on the jargon of scientific papers.

Accommodation (price, who provided it)

Living with host family through homestay program at https://www.globalpittsburgh.org/homestay-program
I ended up living in East Liberty area, connected reasonably well to CMU campus by couple of bus lines.

Social life

Meeting IAESTE members (pick-up at the airport, organized events...)

Didn't happen, but there was enough support, care and eventually also help through mail with Cultural Vistas (which is how IAESTE works in USA).

Meeting other foreign students

I was able to meet up with foreign students arriving through different programs to the campus of CMU.

Sport and culture

CMU campus has plenty of events organized throughout its semester, both scientific lectures and talks about arts, history, politics etc. It is also equipped with a gym.
CMU also has many student lead clubs - as one example I have included a photo from local Board game club, which meets up and plays games on the weekends. I have also heard about Outdoors club and Ball room dancing clubs.

Food, local specialties

Plenty of restaurants in the nearby student area, which is shared by students of CMU, and Pittsburgh University. For example surprisingly good Japanese style ramen noodle place (named "Love Ramen"). And of course lots of burger places.

Other information

Possibilites to communicate with the Czech Republic

Via internet - mails, calls (Skype or Viber). The whole school campus was covered by reliable wifi.

Recommendations for students who will go to the same place

Search around various departments of CMU and look up their events - for example besides really good CS and ML departments, they have a good Drama department and catching one of the plays here might be of interest.

What not to forget with you

For winter season some decent warm clothes + shoes.

Benefits of the internship

Look into the inner workings of research team - you will get an idea if something like PhD research would be up to your liking just by speaking with other people in the lab.