Short Introduction

Hi everyone! For those of you who don't know me yet, I'm Vlad Balanescu, EU student at the University of Sheffield, UK. Originating from Constanta, Romania, a very peaceful city situated just on the western coast of the Black Sea, I am currently studying for a Master in Computing degree in two subjects - Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science. After finishing formal education I've decided to chase my dream, so I chose to study in a complete foreign environment. If you want to find out more about the place I'm coming from I strongly encourage you to click here.

Why this Choice?

Well, I felt a certain attraction to computers during high school years and my Informatics teacher was the one who helped me understand these machines and how they interact with the outer world. That was the moment which first sparked my interest in this field. Always being attracted to programming and translating natural behaviour into binary language, I found out about this huge opportunity University of Sheffield offered, thus I have decided that this is the place which will help me further develop both myself and my skills. The reasons I've chosen to study in a completely unknown country are, first of all, the challenge of meeting new people and attitudes, with different backgrounds and cultures, the experience of something new and, nonetheless, the curiosity of exploring a completely new environment.

My Internship

During my 3^rd university year I received the great opportunity of working for a massive IT company, International Business Machines (IBM). After plenty of challenges and pre-eliminatory tests I finally succeeded to secure an internship position in the giant IT company. This was the most amazing year from my short technical career so far, as I managed to work for a real product, managed my own development team for a small giveback project and I even had multiple DevOps shifts within the integration department, where I worked for the entire year. For more info click here.

What's Coming Next?

After finishing the last 2 university years, I am looking forward to start my professional career as a Full Stack Developer at IBM Hursley Labs, United Kingdom. I will definitely have the chance to put all my skills and abilities into practice. I would really welcome the chance to either give a hand in coding for a big software project or pursuing and developing even further the world of Artificial Intelligence, discovering maybe some brand new concepts relevant to this domain. I am very passionate about human language processing, hence I think this is the most suitable way to set up a mutual communication bridge between humans and machines. Nowadays, this ability is seen as the best way of proving a machine made up of different mechanical components tightened together by wires can demonstrate intelligence.