Intelligenzia's Group Mentoring Registration Starts Now!

Hey cognitive science student! What do you want to be when you grow up?

Almost all of us have interests and dreams in the work life arena, but no knowledge of how to turn goals into action. Where can you end up with your education? How do you showcase your skills? How much do the choices made in studies affect employment?

Why is Intelligenzia organizing group mentoring?

Group mentoring gives a lot to students considering their future working life. In all their interdisciplinarity, cognitive science students would need more career guidance and links to working life.

The University of Helsinki's Career Services organizes group mentoring (more about it at http://blogs.helsinki.fi/mentorointi/), and the tradition has received much positive feedback. However, group mentors are rarely suitable for cognitive science students.

What does the student benefit from mentoring?

The student gains more information about the field, workplace, position, and role of interest. The mentor helps the student break down goals into smaller steps. At its best, mentoring helps the student decide, for example, what to write their thesis on, or how to utilize the practical internship included in the degree.

In group mentoring, you can address work-life fears and identify your own strengths and development areas. You'll also meet those cognitive scientists who share similar goals and interests with you!

How does mentoring work in practice?

Each mentor gets a group of 2-5 people to coach. Mentoring begins with a joint meeting on Thursday, January 19, at Gustavus Rex at 6 PM. All mentors and students gather at this meeting. At the first meeting, the goals of mentoring are reviewed and participants get to know the other participants and mentors.

After the first meeting, the mentor and group members meet together 3-5 times as they see fit. The content of the meetings can be freely chosen according to the group's wishes. Themes might include:

• What do I want from my career? What steps lead in the right direction? Where should I look for jobs with my degree?

• Recognizing your own competence and its value. What skills are needed in working life?

• Job search skills & CV clinic

• Others: time management, study planning, postgraduate studies, coping at work…

Additionally, together with the mentors, we aim to organize excursions for all group mentoring participants.

Finally, we all meet again and discuss over evening gatherings what we learned!

Who are the mentors?

There are four mentors participating in spring 2017. See their descriptions below!

How do I register?

Registration begins on December 12 at 12 PM at https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/75909/lomake.html. The form closes on Sunday, December 18 at 11:59 PM. Be quick, as only a limited number of students fit in the groups!

You can register for two groups if you wish. If a group fills up, those students who chose the group as their primary interest will get in.

Questions?

Contact: iina.ala-kurikka@helsinki.fi or 040-569 8400.

Spring 2017 Mentors:

Vik Kamath

Junior Researcher, The Curious AI Company, https://thecuriousaicompany.com/

My current responsibilities: To work, along with the company, towards truly intelligent machines. My responsibilities are predominantly research focused. I, along with the rest of the company, work in an area of AI called 'Deep Learning' and we're working towards building systems that like us, humans, understand the world that we live in with as little data as possible (often called semi-supervised/unsupervised learning).

What have I done before: I will be awarded a Masters in Machine Learning and Data Mining from Aalto in December. For the past three years, I was a research assistant at Aalto University working on Deep Learning for image understanding.

How I ended up here: Ever since I studied about the human eye in biology in high school, I've been fascinated with the problem of vision — It's perplexing to me how such a complex task is so easy for us humans but so hard for machines. That led to me doing an internship (during the summer and weekends) for a year and a half at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) where I worked on the stereo vision problem (depth understanding from two 2D images). I had a blast doing that, so I decided that I wanted to study more about the field via a Masters. Aalto University has one of the strongest histories of artificial intelligence research (in fact, a lot of the algorithms and research that have led to breakthroughs today have their foundations on work discovered/invented at Aalto/TKK).

What I offer as a mentor: Honestly, an open mind. I don't claim to be an expert at anything. Moreover, I've merely dabbled in Neuroscience to quench my curiosity. My predominant motivation is to learn as much as I can and hopefully in the process teach as much as I can of what I know to people. Additionally, I've made several mistakes on my journey and I think that it's often quite useful to know 'what not to do' rather than just hearing about 'what to do' and that's something I hope I can offer your students.

Mari Mattsson

Executive Coach, BCC Business Coaching Center Oy, www.businesscoaching.fi

Mari works as an executive and leadership coach as well as a workplace trainer. She is an entrepreneur who has over 30 years of work experience, starting in sales and marketing positions. She began cognitive science studies at UH in 2001 and specialized in organizational cognition. She has worked in the training industry since 2003 and has been an entrepreneur since 2010.

Simo Sorsakivi

CEO, Founder, and Board Chair, Inscripta Oy, http://www.inscripta.fi/

Simo started cognitive science studies at UH but left after two years when his employer offered an opportunity to establish a subsidiary abroad. He has since founded his own company in the medical transcription field and offers mentoring on entrepreneurship, startups, and business development.

Jukka Toivanen

Data Scientist, PhD, Qvantel, https://www.qvantel.com/

My current responsibilities: Developing analytics and business intelligence solutions, emphasis on data science and machine learning, time series analysis, predictive analytics etc.

What have I done before? I have a Master's in Cognitive Science and a PhD in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence, Computational Creativity).

I have experience both in academic research and in corporate world applying data science and machine learning to real business problems.

How I ended up here: I did my undergrad and Master's in Cognitive Science at the Univ. Helsinki. In my studies I concentrated on AI and Cognitive Neuroscience, and studied Mathematics and Computer Science extensively as minors. After completing my Master's, I continued as a PhD student working at the Dept. of Computer Science. I finished my PhD recently and started working as a Data Scientist a bit before that.