Dia duit, my name is Raphael. I spent Summer 2024 in Dublin, Ireland, where I did my Erasmus+, and I would like to share my experience with you. I had the opportunity to do an internship in IBM Research Ireland for nine weeks.
I was quite nervous on my first day at work, but was warmly welcomed by my colleagues, who showed me around the gigantic IBM campus on my first day. After the tour, I was introduced to other colleagues from different departments and we talked about interesting topics such as quantum computing and artificial intelligence. After getting to know everyone, I felt very comfortable. I was treated as a permanent member of the team from day one, which meant I got to see and learn a lot. My team members helped me and answered my questions about the project. I learnt a lot from my two mentors.
My internship project was part of Otter Knowledge, an ongoing AI research project where several members of my team are involved (here are more information). Otter Knowledge uses Graph Neural Networks to learn rich representations of entities; entities are nodes linked by edges, which represent relations among them; such nodes and edges form a knowledge graph. The entities may have multiple modalities, which are properties of different types. Otter Knowledge uses knowledge graphs describing properties and relations of Proteins, Molecules, and Diseases, and during training it learns representations of these entities; such representations are called embeddings (which are vectors with many dimensions). The ultimate goal is to help scientist who study Proteins and Molecules in advancing their research faster, for example by using the learned embeddings to predict relations (such as binding affinity) among Proteins and Molecules. More specifically, my internship project consisted in developing various visualizations of the knowledge graphs used by Otter Knowledge, and of the learned embeddings. These visualization are useful for my team to investigate how Otter Knowledge learns relations among Proteins and Molecules, and if there is any correspondence between the similarity among the learned embeddings, and the structure of the graph used to train Otter Knowledge. The images show some of the outcome of the project. The different colors are associated with the entities. Purple are Drugs, light green are Diseases and orange are Proteins. The conclusion of the internship was a seminar, where I presented my work and the results, which stimulated a lot of discussions among researchers about future work.
The working days at the office were very varied. Some days the office is less crowded than others, as staff members may occasionally work from home; Tuesdays and Thursdays are typically the days when most staff members are in the office. In general, my daily routine was very relaxed: it started with getting an overview of the todos I had to complete, then I usually spend the mornings learning and familiarising myself with topics and technologies that would help me with the project. I spent most of the time working on my 1 internship project. At lunchtime, we all went to the canteen and had the choice of a balanced buffet. After the lunch break, I usually continued working on the project and had meetings with my mentors about my progress. I was able to learn a lot during this time, both from my mentors and by studying specific topics/technologies such as graph algorithms or Large Language Models.
In addition to work, I had the opportunity to explore Ireland’s enchanting nature. In addition to scenic landscapes such as the Giant’s Causeway and the Cliffs of Moher, I also had the opportunity to explore the island over the weekend and visit cities such as Galway and Belfast. Also, Ireland has many castles you may visit such as Blarney Castle. I also enjoyed spending an evening or two in an Irish pub, enjoying the live music and then strolling through the illuminated streets of Dublin at night. But as varied and beautiful as the nature was, the weather was just as changeable: Irish people say that you may have the four seasons alternating several times in one day 🙂
Three major takeaways:
- Familiarized myself with Python
- Connected myself with incredible people
- Experienced the workflow of research
Overall, my experience in Ireland was incredibly valuable. I learned a lot both practically, and personally. I had the opportunity to meet many incredible people from whom I learnt a lot. I learned how to find my way in a foreign country, improve my language skills and grew personally. Because of Erasmus+, I had the possibility to enjoy the internship and Ireland. It wasn’t just an internship. It was an opportunity to broaden my horizons and expand my professional knowledge as well as my personal skills in various areas. It was a great experience. Thank you very much for this opportunity and the support I received.