I know I have been a little late in my blog posts but well, it's better late than never! I promise to be more frequent in my updates.
A couple of months ago during my summer vacation I had a very mouth-watering opportunity to make an interview at Microsoft's Innovation center in Cairo, Egypt. So I said why not?!...it would be an interesting experience and an opportunity to go beyond the academia and see how the research in the industry works, this might be worth it...and it was. Two days later I started an internship at Microsoft as a research intern in September and I finished in December when I rushed back to ODU so I'd be able to start my semester.
I was working with Prof. Nayer Wanas in Recommendation systems based on Social Networks. I don't think my Non-Disclosure Agreement will allow me to go into detail but what I can say is that it was fantastic! One of the funniest things that happened is that according to the Egyptian law individuals who are not undergraduates are not allowed to work as "Interns" so the center had to reformulate my contract, I even still have the contract I signed with Microsoft stating that they are utilizing my experience as a "Consultant" for Microsoft...so imagine, me Consultant!
I have been working in a software company for two years during my undergraduate school
so I was a little acquainted with the software development process, milestones ...etc. But for the first time in my life I was introduced to the whole Corporate concept and this huge framework of Engineers, researchers, architects, analysts, developers...etc and man I was amazed! I was also introduced to a new culture (which I will be calling spoiling the employee!). I have a big kid inside of me, so free food, free candy, free drinks, Xbox with a huge Screen, ping pong ...etc are just like heaven to me!Within this period I participated in co-authoring a workshop paper presenting a new technique we were working on, it is currently under reviewing. So wish me luck!
--Hany
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