Free Nonsense
An unforgettable experience in my life
By Chen Wang*
I started working at INESC TEC in 2010 as a Ph.D. student in the dual degree offered by the CMU Portugal program. I have stayed here for around three years intermittently, and travelled between the US and Portugal due to the requirements of the program. These three years marked an unforgettable experience in my life.
During my time here, I enjoy the strong industry-oriented research atmosphere. I had many opportunities to interact with representatives from industry and to present my work to them via regular events, such as weekly workshops, seminars and the CTM one minute madness, etc. I even got a chance to work on real world dataset provided by our industrial partner. I highly appreciate these opportunities facilitated by INESC TEC. In particular, the philosophy of collaborating with industry to foster the quick transformation of research output matches my initial motives to work on realistic issues.
As a foreigner, I have been very fortunate to work at INESC TEC as it provides a friendly environment to international researchers. My colleagues come from different countries with various cultural backgrounds, so I do not really feel isolated. Every year I am invited to multicultural parties organised by INESC TEC. In one of these events, I tasted food from Egypt, India, Pakistan, Iran, and many other countries I have never been to. Thanks to these events, I have made quite some friends here. We learned a lot from each other, exchanging ideas from cultural to academic matters. They became the best company throughout my Ph.D. life. All of things have made me very happy and comfortable to work and live here.
As I said, I am a strong advocate of the idea of bridging academia and industry because I believe this is necessary for counties with limited financial budget for research. Industry-oriented R&D is important in promoting and incubating business initiatives, which will in return flourish future research opportunities to maintain a sustainable development. Meanwhile, international collaborations would also be beneficial to the entire process. As a researcher, having worked in China, Portugal and the United States for over 8 years, I realised the differences in the research objectives between these three countries. In China, I mostly work on collaborative projects with companies that provide funding and expect to obtain applicable turnouts. In Portugal, most of the research funding is granted by FCT and researchers focus on generalising methodology, where the critical theory framework is usually well developed. In the Unites States, research support comes from diverse sources, and researchers are eager to explore interesting, novel and significant research questions. In my opinion, I think sustainability, criticalness and innovation are all important for good researches. From what I experienced at INESC TEC, I see a research institute combining well these three characteristics and I truly hope the Institute will persist and thrive in the future.
*Collaborator at the Centre for Telecommunications and Multimedia (CTM)
