Business Trips: 2010-2013

Nothing special in these years, Working hard on my Doctoral research, but also having few nice trips around of the globe.

Since my doctoral degree was funded by Rolls-Royce plc, my research was strongly related to their research projects (aero-engine health monitoring). I and my research team used to travel frequently to Rolls-Royce's headquarters in Derby, UK.

The first conference where I presented my research work was at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, UK (24-26 Mar 2010) and a year after that (20-22 June 2011), I had participated another conference in Cardiff, Wales. On October 2012, there was a short workshop in IIT Kanpur, India, funded by UK India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) and then participating IEEE Aerospace Conference on 2-9 March 2013, Big Sky, Montana, USA.

UKSim conference at Cambridge University, 2010 (left) and a boat trip after the BINDT conference in Wales, 2011 (right).

In India, after the workshop in IIT Kanpur, on Friday we went to Agra (still in Uttar Pradesh state) to view Tajmahal, called "the jewel of Muslim art in India". which is also designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983. Unfortunately, it is closed every Friday and no way really to convince the management to enter the site. However, we manage to take some pics from outside of the complex, still nice. :-)

Tajmahal, Agra (left) and India Gate, New Delhi (right).

On March 2013, I spent about ten days for participating in IEEE Aerospace Conference, where many scientists from top research institutions, NASA and many other well-known aerospace companies presented. The conference organiser also managed skiing activities and a beautiful trip for participants to the Yellow Stone National Parks.

Old Faithful geyser is is one of the most predictable geographical features on Earth, erupting every 35 to 120 minutes. Machine learning scientists have used the eruption of this geyser data set to test several machine learning approaches. First time I saw this data set was in one of my favourite books, Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning (by Prof. Christopher M. Bishop), where he illustrated nicely the implementation of Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) on that data set. I never imagined that I can be on that geyser one day. Amazing!

I am not a professional skier, it was the first time ever I tried skying and luckily it was in the largest ski resort in USA, Big Sky . The pic was in a real skying mode (not just for showing off).

Yellow Stone National Park, Wyoming (left) and skying in Big Sky, Montana, USA (right).