So for the past 10 weeks I have been in Paris working on artificial intelligence research at Universitie Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC). As I wrap up my work for the trip and prepare to come back to the States, I wanted to write about the research part of the trip as opposed to the previous posts I have done that have focused on spending time in the city.

I have worked for the past year with Dr. Judy Goldsmith in UK's computer science department. When I expressed interest in going abroad this summer, she arranged for me to come to Paris and work with one of her friends on research that was very similar to the on going project I had. Her friend, Dr. Patrice Perny, was also very helpful in finding out what kind of visa I would need and arranging some funding. Dr. Jinze Liu in the CS department was also very helpful with getting financial support. So with the exception of almost falling into a housing scam, getting to and settling in Paris went very smoothly.

For a brief overview of the project: At UK I have been working on planning problems involving uncertainty. An example of a planning problem is a GPS car navigation system. The computer must plan a route from one destination to another while trying to minimize the travel time. Now if when a car reached an intersection you could count on it taking the planned direction 90 % of the time and 10 % of the time it takes another direction (possibly there is a wreck or bad traffic in the planned direction), you now have a planning problem with uncertainty. The solution to such a problem must plan for ending up in a situation that is not part of the best plan. The research in France has focused on these problems but with the twist of trying to find a plan that optimizes multiple criteria. For example, planning for retirement involves trying to maximize how much you will have when you retire but at the same time you would want to maximize how well you can live before then.

The approach to research in my field is very similar in Paris to how it is done at UK. It involves math and programming and drawing problems out so as to think of them visually. The biggest difference I noticed was in the details of the research. The professors I was working with were very good at going through the details of how things were working. When there was a new approach to try I could get it ready to test very quickly. This would often result in errors that would cause delays later. On the other hand, the French professors would often know if something was correct before testing. As the summer went on I begin to learn to think through my work more which would end up saving time in the future.

This will have been my second summer primarily working on research and I can't say enough about how much you can learn when you have an open problem and two months to try to figure it out. To any UK undergraduates involved in research I strongly recommend spending a summer on a project. Without the worry of classes, you can really focus and learn so much.

And finally I would have to say that not only should all students study abroad but that all students should have the opportunity to immerse themselves in another culture. I learned so much from the research this summer but I've learned even more from just getting out and trying to blend in. I have met few people here who don't speak English but it's a lot more fun to try to speak French and deal with the little mistakes that you will inevitably make. Being outside of my comfort zone for the summer as resulted in as much learning as my research did.