#Best Universities for PhD in Computer Science | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fligniuz · 1 month ago

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hot for teacher - boy meets girl

luigi mangione x reader

｡𖦹°‧ dr. mangione’s job at UH Mānoa doesn’t get interesting until he meets the cute german romanticism professor in the lunch line one chance afternoon. here’s how two awkward, clueless nerds get around a workplace romance.

word count: 5.1k • ch. 1 of hot for teacher (read here!) • sfw • read on ao3

tag list : @mangionebabymama , @mangobabygirl , @jenisaswift13 , @mangionesdaisy , @iinfinitelimits , @daydreamingwithluigi , @mrs-cactus69 , @mashkatzi , @straw8berry , @bean-is-reading , @theloverfiles , @luigis-wetdream , @difensore-del-popolo , @contrarianshitstan-blog , @lunacelia (comment to be added)

warnings : f! reader; some language; luigi being geeky

notes : prepare to get schooled

Dr. Mangione does not often find himself at the campus food court.

It’s not UH Mānoa’s fault. Really, he’s found it quite a charming place to be, and he’s thoroughly enjoyed the two years he’s spent teaching Computer Science at the IT Center—he’s made other professor friends, gets along nicely with his students (even if he’s still having trouble remembering their names), and overall has found an environment that both welcomes and challenges him at once. Returning to UPenn to secure this position for himself was by far one of the best choices he’s ever made. Even though the PhD in Computer and Information Science wasn’t the most necessary thing, it was the right thing, and he’s more than happy to have earned it.

It’s just that on-campus food isn’t the most appetizing, 99% of the time.

He lives in Hawaiʻi. There’s so many different things to eat in Hawaiʻi—so many cultures and traditions from all around the world to find on this island, and yet he can hardly get some good fucking food anywhere in this university (which is quite big, mind you). Best he’s had is a chicken sandwich, and even that couldn’t compare to the one place he tried in Wahiawā a few years back. Maui Mike’s? Whatever. He wishes Maui Mike was in charge of the chicken sandwiches here.

Someone joins him in line for bento. He notices the green badge hanging from their neck, first. A fellow educator.

Admittedly, he notices the pretty face next.

“I truly hope you’re not here for the bento,” Luigi greets.

“Why?” You turn to him, eyes curious. “I’m always here for the bento.”

Oh, he feels sorry for you! Your poor soul has probably never experienced all the bento Hawaiʻi has to offer.

He shakes his head, smiling. “I love this school, but, man, the food…”

You seem to notice his own badge, then, tucked underneath the loose button of his linen shirt.

“Ah, don’t be ungrateful!” you joke. “The cooks work so hard. Have you met Koa? He’s the sweetest.”

Luigi has met Koa, about once or twice. Koa is the one who always shorts him on fries, he thinks. A sweet cook would never short faculty on fries—but maybe Koa was just having a bad day. He’ll take your word for it.

“At this point I should pack my own lunch,” Luigi says, “but I never have time for it in the mornings.”

“You like sleeping in?” you ask.

“Nah.” He shakes his head, then tilts it quizzically. “Well, maybe. I probably turn in for bed too late.”

“Let me guess: Biographical Research?”

He smiles. “Computer Science.”

“Wow!” you exclaim, moving forward in line with him. “See, I guessed bio because nobody in that department sleeps. I think they all live off of coffee and 5-Hour Energy shots.”

“I’m not huge on coffee,” Luigi reveals.

You make a quizzical face. Cute. “How can you be a professor and not love coffee?”

“I like tea better. Doesn’t mess with my stomach.”

“Now that I agree with,” you say pointedly. “Have you tried the teahouse on campus?”

He’s really gonna have to show you some better options sometime.

“I’ve never seen you around before,” Luigi says suddenly. He’s not sure why. He should’ve just stuck to the teahouse conversation.

You smile warmly at him. “We aren’t in the same department.”

“Well, what do you teach?”

“Languages and Literatures of Europe and the Americas,” you reply proudly. “Well, that’s my department. I teach German Romanticism and general Studies in Culture.”

That’s a mouthful. A very intriguing one, at that.

“Ah,” he nods. “So you’re in Humanities, then.”

“That’s right. Hawaiʻi Hall.”

He’s stopped by a few times before—mainly to catch up with Mrs. Ito, his Philosophy pal. It’s a nice place. Friendly people. He thinks you might be his favorite so far.

“You could pop in one Tuesday,” you suggest. “See me in action. 2:30 to 3:30. We’re translating some Eichendorff right now.”

He thinks he will, if it’s not too weird. A teacher among the students could be distracting. Maybe he’ll lose his badge for the day.

Luigi offers you a hand, which you shake firmly.

“I’d like that,” he says. “It was very nice to meet you.”

Dr. Mangione has got the hots for a Humanities professor.

It starts that next Tuesday, when he walks into your lecture—sans his badge—to sit and listen to you educate your students about Das Marmorbild, apparently one of Joseph von Eichendorff’s greatest works. It seems to be one of your favorites, anyway.

“Alright, kids. What does this statue of Venus mean to Florio?”

A brunette among the rows of seats raises her hand.

“It’s an idealization of feminine beauty,” she says, “and he feels drawn to her seductive nature, as opposed to that of Bianca the maiden.”

You nod. “We could get more specific.”

Another hand rises.

“Venus is a critique of Romanticism,” the student answers. “Florio is more attracted to art than to human connection, and it nearly destroys him in the end.”

“Good,” you praise. “Eichendorff is commenting on a familiar tale in the culture of Romanticism. Florio finds himself so attracted to this statue of Venus that it disrupts his relationships with other humans in his life, like Bianca and Donati.”

Halfway through, Luigi starts taking notes. An old habit, one he only uses nowadays when he’s reading materials for his own lectures—but he finds himself so entranced with the way you discuss Florio and his affections towards this living statue of Venus, the way you recall a story he’s never read before. He thinks then that he’d like to introduce you to some of his favorite books, just to listen to you recount your thoughts in your gentle, guiding voice.

“We see this clearly in the scene at the lady’s palace,” you continue. “Later on, when Florio leaves Lucca with his friends, the palace is nothing but ruins, and Donati seems to be a figment of his wild imagination. Eichendorff is showing us that Florio neglected the company of his friends for the mystical Venus, who may or may not exist. Pietro and Fortunato make this clear when they tell Florio of the legends surrounding the temple of Venus.”

Das Marmorbild appears to be a story of yearning and, mainly for Luigi, regret. He underlines the word for emphasis.

3:30 comes faster than he expected. By the time the rest of your students are filing out of the lecture hall, Luigi is fumbling with the zipper of his backpack. Hoping you’ll notice him.

“You showed up,” you greet once the room is empty, smiling shyly. “Did I see you taking notes?”

“Oh, yeah!” he nods. You’re making your way up to the back row of seats, where he’s stationed, playing with the spiral binding of his journal. “Um, I’ve never read any Eichendorff, so it’s a bit jumbled.”

“Could I look at them?”

He slides you his notebook, the page filled with chicken scratch of impressively well-synthesized ideas and takeaways from your lesson. It takes a few moments of silence for you to read through it all, and your eyes dance happily over the word regret underlined at the bottom.

“These are wonderful,” you compliment. “You have a good grasp of Eichendorff’s style, even if you’ve never studied him. You’d do well on my quizzes.”

Luigi smiles. “You’re an incredible teacher. I learned from the best, clearly.”

Are you…blushing?

No. Surely not. He doesn’t get the chance to see before you ruffle your hair and smile back, quick and dirty. “Well, I’m flattered.”

Mental note: Luigi has got to read more Eichendorff.

He shows up to Hawaiʻi Hall once more that evening—this time with a question of his own.

“Miss,” Luigi starts. “I hope I’m not too blunt, but I wanted to pick your brain about something.”

You’re packing up your things, stuffing your bag messily. Classic professor shit.

“Oh, sure,” you reply. “I like having my brain picked.”

“You teach Studies in Culture as well, right?”

You nod. “That's right. Latin America, specifically.”

“The cultures that you’ve researched—they used computers, correct?”

A blink from you. A lilt of the head.

“I mean, not computer computers,” he elaborates, “but systems of computing. Like…an abacus, or some kind of counting device?”

“Oh!” Now you’re nodding. “Yes, of course. Most cultures did.”

“Yeah,” he nods along. “So, I wanted to ask you: would you like to join one of my lectures sometime? You could discuss early computing in Latin America, or Germany, or whatever society you’d like.”

And…Now you’re silent. Fuck. He shouldn’t have bothered. He just met you!

“You want me…to join one of your classes?”

“Only if you’d like,” Luigi assures you. “It’s just that my students are having some trouble applying their knowledge outside of the classroom. I think they’d have a better understanding of what they’re learning if someone like you came in, explained how these civilizations created their own systems to adapt to their world. It would show them that computers aren’t a new thing, and that we’ve always needed them. You get what I’m saying?”

Man, he’s blabbing. Typical Dr. Mangione.

“And…you want me to do it?”

It’s not like he knows anyone better for the job.

“I know this sounds silly,” he starts, “but I was really impressed by your class today. Really. The way you articulate your perspective, your attitude towards your students, how you engage with them…”

It’s sexy, he wants to say. Better to leave that on the table.

“I just think you’re one of the most talented professors I’ve met in this school,” he reveals, sincerely. “Do you know the last time I took notes for a class I’m not even in? Never! I’ve never done that! And yet, I was so intrigued by you that I couldn’t stop myself from writing down everything you conveyed.”

You look down towards your nails, surveying the chipped polish and clear gel underneath. Remnants of a manicure. Who bought that for you?

“Well,” you breathe. “I think I’d need some time to prepare, read over some things first.”

“Sure,” Luigi nods.

“But, if you think it would help your students, then I’d be honored to.”

Jackpot.

“I’m so glad!” he exclaims, clapping his hands together. Maybe too much excitement? “I think this will be great. What time is best for you to come in? I’m at the IT Center Mondays and Wednesdays, from noon to 1:30.”

Noon to 1:30, on Mondays and Wednesdays. Good days for you. You teach on an opposite schedule: Tuesdays and Thursdays.

“Next Wednesday would be fine,” you say. “We’re almost finished with our discussion of Das Marmorbild, and I’d like to put my full attention towards that.”

“I understand,” he agrees. “Next Wednesday works fine for me, too. I’ll plan it out, get with you on the details.”

He’s probably way too eager about this. He just really wants you in his lab, showing off for all his students. They’ll be mesmerized—if they find him impressive, you’ll certainly be something.

As Luigi is walking out of your lecture hall once more, you stop him.

“Oh, Dr.?” you perk up. “You don’t have to call me ‘Miss’. Just my first name is alright.”

He’s not sure when you learned about the PhD. He likes the way “Dr.” sounds in your mouth, though.

The next Wednesday couldn’t come quicker.

You’ve planned an outline, essentially a dialogue between you and his students that covers all the bases he wanted to touch: earliest examples of computing across cultures, why these machines were developed, who made them, their importance to modern Comp Sci. Specifically, you pay attention to female engineers (or at least, the ones allowed to practice their passions at the time): Ada Lovelace makes quite the appearance in your notes, as well as classics in the field, like Alan Turing and Charles Babbage. It’s everything he wanted—a lesson in history and culture, emphasizing the importance of this kind of study, while still relevant to his subject. It couldn’t be more perfect.

Not to mention, you show up looking like a bombshell. Nice skirt and a flattering blouse and some mascara. Luigi tries not to imagine that it’s for him.

You only spend a minute on your introduction, and then you’re diving right in:

“Can anyone here tell me what one of the very first computers was?”

Steven from the front raises his hand.

“The abacus!” he answers.

Smiling, you nod. “That’s right. And where did the abacus come from?”

This time, the room is silent.

“A few cultures utilized the abacus for counting,” you explain. “Some scholars believe the Old Babylonians used it for addition and subtraction. Many Greeks used the abacus, too, largely up until the French Revolution.”

You click the remote of Luigi’s projector, and on screen, an aged photo of an abacus-like system is displayed.

“This is the Salamís Tablet, first discovered in 1846.”

“What’s Salamís?” Steven asks.

You smile again. “Salamís is the largest Greek island on the Saronic Gulf, about one nautical mile from the coast of Athens. This tablet, made of marble, was originally created around 300 BC.”

Ah. You’ve got some geography up your sleeve, too.

“Around the same time, the Chinese were using their own abacus, called a suanpan.” You click the remote again, showing the students an illustration of the very Chinese abacus you’ve described. “The prototype of this device was first observed during the Han dynasty, around 200 BC. Some schools in China still use the suanpan for math instruction.”

Luigi prays, for the first time in a long while, that his students can’t see his eyes trailing over you as you speak.

“It might surprise you that some educators still use such ancient technology to teach arithmetic,” you explain, “but, really, these old things can show us a lot about computers back in the day, and particularly, how we used them.”

You click the remote to reveal something that looks like it might come out of Dora’s backpack.

The astrolabe.

“This is one of the world’s first analog computers, or, rather, calculators,” you explain. “The astrolabe was developed from the armillary sphere, invented during the Hellenistic period.”

A student in the far left corner—Clara, maybe—raises her hand.

“How did it work?” Maybe Clara asks. “It just looks like a faded compass to me.”

You nod in understanding. “It’s a strange looking thing. Essentially, astronomers used this tool to make specific predictions about space.”

But then you falter for a bit, looking toward Luigi.

He doesn’t blame you. Astronomy is fucking weird. It’s also not your department. Him, though? It remained a childhood dream for a reason.

“It’s like an inclinometer,” Luigi adds, facing the lab. “It can calculate altitude and local latitude of celestial bodies, and it can triangulate, too.”

“But it had some more practical applications across cultures,” you say, seemingly back on your feet. “Specifically, it was of great use to the Islamic religion. Many of you know that Muslims pray several times a day, correct?”

Some heads nod.

“Well, the timing of prayer was astronomically determined, so the astrolabe could define the specific schedule of worship. That, and Muslims must also face Mecca each time they pray, which requires precise direction. That’s where the astrolabe came in handy for them.”

“There is another Hellenistic tool, though, older than even the astrolabe,” you continue, turning to the next slide on the projector. A fragment of aged bronze is on display, with a thick X carved right into the center.

Luigi always forgets the name of this one.

“Behold the Antikythera mechanism.”

Right. Antikythera. Sounds like a spider, or a Mortal Kombat character. Classic Greek shit.

The students do not seem impressed.

“Looking at this thing, you probably can’t imagine any good use coming of it, right?” You gesture knowingly toward the seemingly broken thing, accentuating its jagged edges and rough details. “If I told you it’s meant to be a model of the Solar System, you’d be right to laugh in my face. But if I showed you this…”

Now, you display a much clearer image, one of a machine with refined golden parts and dashes of color and limbs branching from its dome-like center, almost like a clock with extra hands.

Steven guffaws. “That’s not the same thing.”

You smile. “Not exactly the same. But a recreation.”

Luigi can’t help but return your enthusiasm. You have a way of building up to things, revealing information in a way that’s fiercely fresh and yet not too overwhelming. You’re animated—your hands move with your lips, adding emphasis and motioning toward your slideshow. It’s entrancing.

“The Antikythera mechanism was split into more than eighty fragments when it was first discovered on the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901. The man who discovered it, Valerios Stais, suggested it was an astronomical clock, but his theory was rejected. Why do you think that is?”

A student in the front raises their hand cautiously. “Nobody knew what it was?”

Giggling, you concede, “that may have been part of it. But originally, most scholars believed the Antikythera mechanism was a prochronism, a device too complicated to have been made during its time. Lots of people just couldn’t believe that its inventors had such extensive knowledge about the universe.”

The recreated Antikythera mechanism on screen deconstructs into several parts, each accordingly labeled with annotations in the model you’ve chosen.

“It turns out, though, that this thing had a network of gears that, through the zodiac, allowed it to calculate the movement of the Sun and the Moon, eclipses, moon phases, and calendar cycles. Some even believe that it could determine the location of planets.”

It seems to make more sense to the students, now that they see a refined vision. What was once a wrecked lump of bronze becomes a magnificent symbol of ancient Greek invention—a marvel of pure, human curiosity, back when words alone could not formulate the breadth of knowledge possessed by man and machine alike.

“It’s believed that Hipparchus may have been involved in the construction of the Antikythera mechanism,” you say, “since its ability to track the irregular orbit of the Moon is consistent with his studies. His observations likely paved the way for its invention.”

Hipparchus, father of trigonometry, once walked the metropolis of Alexandria in search of the truth of the stars. His weather calendars in Bithynia led him to Rhodes, where only a minute fraction of his legacy survived among the windmills. He was a man starved for knowledge.

“Much like Hipparchus,” you begin, clicking the remote. A portrait of a sitting man with short-cropped hair and a sandy beard is shown to the students. “John Napier was a man of numbers. His study of logarithms and his invention led to significant development in the use of counting tools.”

Now, the students see an open box with several sticks inside of it, about finger length, marked with slashes and numbers.

“In 1617, he published a treatise that detailed three devices that could aid in making simple calculations,” you say. “Most importantly, he defined rabdology and his new tool, Napier’s bones.”

A student asks, “what’s rabdology?”

“That’s the term Napier picked to describe the use of the bones,” Luigi clarifies.

“Would you like to describe how they work?” you ask him, lashes fluttering.

His heart does a record scratch.

You noticed. You noticed that he likes math. And now you’re letting him step in for the parts that he particularly enjoys. Wow. Your intuition and natural guidance of the lecture stuns him, shocks him like lightning right where he stands in front of the desk.

“Uh,” he stammers, “they’re good for multiplication and division. These square notches in the bones represent a simple multiplication table, which you can use to reduce the operation into…addition.”

“That’s right,” you affirm. “You can perform division as well, much in the same manner.”

You click the remote to turn to the next slide, revealing a portrait of a man looking quite clownish—his egg-shaped cap and star-shaped collar aren’t helping the image.

“Can anyone tell me what this guy invented?”

Now this is his favorite part.

The students don’t respond, but Luigi knows the answer. This guy is one William Oughtred of Cambridge, inventor of the slide rule.

“Shortly after Napier published his work on logarithms, William Oughtred crafted a nifty mechanical calculator from two Gunter rules to make what we would call today the slide rule.” You click again, showing an aged illustration of Oughtred’s tool.

“His idea didn't catch on because of some personal drama,” you explain, “but in 1677, Henry Coggeshall took his own spin on the design, creating a two-foot folding rule for measuring timber.”

The projector displays Coggeshall’s slide rule, which doesn’t look much different, but its implications prove an impressive application to unrelated subjects.

“Several scholars of several subjects had their own takes on the slide rule, modifying it to their own needs,” you say. “In 1722 two- and three-decade scales were introduced. Mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch created a sliding rule that included both scaled trigonometric functions and aids for navigation problems. There was even a log log slide rule by Roget, which displayed the logarithm of a logarithm. We had slide rule inception.”

Luigi smiles to himself. Slide rule inception. You are so cute.

“These slide rules were used up until about 1642, when mathematician Blaise Pascal invented a mechanical calculator after fifty prototypes,” you say, clicking the remote. On the projector screen is a blueprint of a mechanism of gears, presumably Pascal’s calculator. “Pascal made three versions of his calculator: one for accounting, one for surveying, and one for science problems.”

“Pascal’s calculator was especially successful in its carry mechanism,” Luigi adds, to which you nod. “Building it required shrinking a lantern gear.”

“Nine of these calculators still exist today,” you state. “But Pascal’s calculator influenced the design of just about every mechanical calculator that came after it. And with the evolution of the calculator, everything changed.”

On the projector is another image, this time of what appears to be a wooden loom: a tall, intricate thing, with a roll of paper hanging from one side.

“This is the first programmable loom,” you say, pointing to the man demonstrating its use. “And this is the Frenchman who invented it, Joseph Marie Jacquard. In 1801, this weaver sought an automated way to create his fabrics. Manual weaving was difficult and time-consuming, and Jacquard wanted to make that process more practical and efficient.”

Your next picture focuses specifically on that roll of paper.

“In comes the punchcards.” You gesture towards the holes pressed into the paper, silently describing the function of Jacquard’s revolutionary loom. “Jacquard used these cards to create one row of his design. These holes punched into the pasteboard tell the loom which threads to raise or pass—and after hundreds of cycles, the final piece is ready. You can think of this mechanism as the code that made his machine function masterfully.”

A few students watch with parted lips.

Nikola—Luigi thinks—raises their hand.

“And…it worked?”

You giggle. “Oh, yes. It worked very well. Jacquard was paid nobly for his invention—Emperor Napoleon and his wife Josephine even visited Lyon to see Jacquard's loom in action. In fact…”

The next image is a simple, black-and-white portrait of a man with an unfortunately receding hairline.

“I’m sure Dr. Mangione has talked some about Charles Babbage, yes?”

Luigi catches some nods around the lab.

Oh, yes. Magnificent.

“Jacquard’s punchcard mechanism inspired Babbage in creating his own Analytical Engine, the machine that led to the birth of the very first general-use computer.”

“And what was the first general-use computer, folks?” Luigi asks.

Some voices erupt: the Z3. You grin at the mention.

A German invention, of course. He can’t convey how attractive it is that you know about the Z3.

“The Analytical Engine created the Z3, but do we know what created the Analytical Engine?” you introduce, clicking the remote again; this time, a more complex machine appears, a collection of numbered wheels and golden ridges.

“This is the Difference Engine.”

Luigi even turns around himself to view Babbage’s first invention; he recognizes the image you’ve chosen as the London Science Museum’s reincarnation. The Difference Engine was certainly a product of its time, despite its first full, successful build in the 1990s: he can recall that the design of Difference Engine No. 1 weighed a whopping four tons, had over 20,000 parts, and looked…like a monster, really. Efficient, but irredeemably expensive for the British government. Not Turing-complete. Still a beauty, in his eyes.

“Babbage first designed the Difference Engine in the 1820s. It works by cranking a handle, and it utilizes decimal notation to tabulate polynomial functions,” you continue. The way the words roll off your tongue has Luigi’s nerves jittering in his body, like strings reverberating on a violin. Cranking. Decimal notation. Tabulate. Polynomial functions. This truly couldn’t get any better. It’s like you’re teaching his class for him.

He points at the machine’s metal intricacies, highlighting its functions. “Notice the double-high teeth on these left sector gears, and the mirroring of the number wheels. They can count either up or down, from left-to-right. Babbage’s machine has three steps in its overall process: the first step activates the carry lever towards the back of the engine, which is what this little tab between six and seven is for. There’s also a printing compartment on the left side, which displays the values of the calculations made.”

You smile at his technical additions, nodding along. Fuck.

“Now,” you interject. “Let’s return to Babbage’s Analytical Engine for a moment. Babbage constructed the first mechanical computers, but can any of you tell me who wrote the very first computer program?”

Silence fills the lab.

Steven raises his hand. “Was it not Babbage?”

You shake your head, grinning as you click the remote to the projector.

“This is Ada Lovelace,” you say proudly, displaying her portrait on screen. “In the early 1840s, she translated a paper on Babbage’s Analytical Engine, including a set of annotations three times as long as the original transcript.”

The information you’ve presented to his students is clearly new for them—something he should loathe, but something that thrills him as he watches it play out before his own eyes, in his own classroom.

“These notes,” you continue, “are considered the very first written computer program by many historians. Lovelace was among the first to recognize that Babbage’s machines had a more practical application, a usage outside of making calculations; in her seventh annotation, she wrote out an algorithm meant to be carried out by an engine like Babbage’s, for use with Bernoulli numbers.”

And, one of Luigi’s favorite little factoids comes up:

“Babbage respected her intellect so much that he gave her a nickname: The Enchantress of Number.”

If Dr. Mangione had a nickname for you, he thinks it would be something along the lines of “The Enchantress of Hawaiʻi Hall”.

“But Lovelace was not the only one to revolutionize computing,” you say. “In comes Alan Turing.”

There’s a lot to say about Alan Turing. Perhaps underappreciated was his stint as a philosopher—but Luigi knows much of what you are about to divulge to his class.

“All of man’s computing inventions led to Alan Turing,” you explain, gesturing to a portrait of Turing from 1951. “Turing presented the first in-depth design of a stored-program computer in 1946, a project that experienced significant delays; it was during this period of developing other softwares that he designed the Turing test, which would define the standard of machine intelligence.”

“We’ll be talking a lot about the Turing test once we get to artificial intelligence,” Luigi tells the class, to no particular excitement. When you wink at him his heart skips a beat or two, and he thinks he might need to leave the room to catch some fresh air.

“It all comes down to Turing,” you reiterate. “His ideas about computers are the central foundation of modern computing. Turing-complete is the standard for all computers today.”

The final slide that displays on the projector is a timeline, starting with the abacus around 200 BC and continuing into now. You’ve marked several points on the line where significant developments in computing were made; ancient astronomical tools, Lovelace’s notes, mechanical calculators, the Z3. From start to a never ending finish.

“And…” you murmur, “that is all I have for you today.”

A few students clap, but Luigi’s enthusiasm burns the brightest in the room. He encourages them to thank you for stopping by, and then turns to you to deliver his own message of gratitude.

“Thank you, Dr. Mangione,” you say, shaking his hand. “It was a pleasure to join you.”

A pleasure. A pleasure.

The moment the clock strikes 1:30 his students are filing out of the room (some of them do take the time to smile at you, though, which boosts his hope in humanity)—but Luigi lingers by the door as you pack up your things, releasing a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

“That was something special,” he says.

You glance up at him, smiling weakly. “I just hope I didn’t bore them.”

“No, no way,” he insists, shaking his head. “They were very engaged. You keep their attention better than I do.”

“You don’t have to flatter me,” you assure him.

He frowns at that. “It’s not flattery. I mean what I say. That was a wonderful lesson, exactly what I was looking for. I’m beyond impressed.”

You sigh and shuffle on your feet, opening your mouth as if you have something to say, but nothing ever comes.

“I’m glad you agreed to this,” he adds.

Slowly, you nod. “I think I am too.”

You turn to make your way towards the door, but Luigi stops you in your tracks:

“Hey, are you still eating the bento from the food court?”

You blink, then offer a crooked grin. Like you’re amused that he remembers. “I have nothing better to eat. Why?”

“You could have something better,” he proposes, “if you grabbed lunch with me instead.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” he affirms, nodding. “I know lots of good places. Could show you where to get some actual food.”

You get quiet for a moment, still fumbling on your feet and messing with your hair. You look a little flustered.

“I think I’d like that,” you say after a while.

Thank god.

“Good,” he says. “Next week?”

“Okay,” you nod. “Next week.”

He’ll have to make a list of ideas.

For the first time since he started this job, Dr. Mangione is excited for next week.

^ divider by cafekitsune

#luigi mangione x reader #luigi mangione imagine #luigi mangione fic #luigi mangione fanfiction #flig’s work #📎dr. mangione

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mariacallous · 9 months ago

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Arvind Narayanan, a computer science professor at Princeton University, is best known for calling out the hype surrounding artificial intelligence in his Substack, AI Snake Oil, written with PhD candidate Sayash Kapoor. The two authors recently released a book based on their popular newsletter about AI’s shortcomings.

But don’t get it twisted—they aren’t against using new technology. “It's easy to misconstrue our message as saying that all of AI is harmful or dubious,” Narayanan says. He makes clear, during a conversation with WIRED, that his rebuke is not aimed at the software per say, but rather the culprits who continue to spread misleading claims about artificial intelligence.

In AI Snake Oil, those guilty of perpetuating the current hype cycle are divided into three core groups: the companies selling AI, researchers studying AI, and journalists covering AI.

Hype Super-Spreaders

Companies claiming to predict the future using algorithms are positioned as potentially the most fraudulent. “When predictive AI systems are deployed, the first people they harm are often minorities and those already in poverty,” Narayanan and Kapoor write in the book. For example, an algorithm previously used in the Netherlands by a local government to predict who may commit welfare fraud wrongly targeted women and immigrants who didn’t speak Dutch.

The authors turn a skeptical eye as well toward companies mainly focused on existential risks, like artificial general intelligence, the concept of a super-powerful algorithm better than humans at performing labor. Though, they don’t scoff at the idea of AGI. “When I decided to become a computer scientist, the ability to contribute to AGI was a big part of my own identity and motivation,” says Narayanan. The misalignment comes from companies prioritizing long-term risk factors above the impact AI tools have on people right now, a common refrain I’ve heard from researchers.

Much of the hype and misunderstandings can also be blamed on shoddy, non-reproducible research, the authors claim. “We found that in a large number of fields, the issue of data leakage leads to overoptimistic claims about how well AI works,” says Kapoor. Data leakage is essentially when AI is tested using part of the model’s training data—similar to handing out the answers to students before conducting an exam.

While academics are portrayed in AI Snake Oil as making “textbook errors,” journalists are more maliciously motivated and knowingly in the wrong, according to the Princeton researchers: “Many articles are just reworded press releases laundered as news.” Reporters who sidestep honest reporting in favor of maintaining their relationships with big tech companies and protecting their access to the companies’ executives are noted as especially toxic.

I think the criticisms about access journalism are fair. In retrospect, I could have asked tougher or more savvy questions during some interviews with the stakeholders at the most important companies in AI. But the authors might be oversimplifying the matter here. The fact that big AI companies let me in the door doesn’t prevent me from writing skeptical articles about their technology, or working on investigative pieces I know will piss them off. (Yes, even if they make business deals, like OpenAI did, with the parent company of WIRED.)

And sensational news stories can be misleading about AI’s true capabilities. Narayanan and Kapoor highlight New York Times columnist Kevin Roose’s 2023 chatbot transcript interacting with Microsoft's tool headlined “Bing’s A.I. Chat: ‘I Want to Be Alive. 😈’” as an example of journalists sowing public confusion about sentient algorithms. “Roose was one of the people who wrote these articles,” says Kapoor. “But I think when you see headline after headline that's talking about chatbots wanting to come to life, it can be pretty impactful on the public psyche.” Kapoor mentions the ELIZA chatbot from the 1960s, whose users quickly anthropomorphized a crude AI tool, as a prime example of the lasting urge to project human qualities onto mere algorithms.

Roose declined to comment when reached via email and instead pointed me to a passage from his related column, published separately from the extensive chatbot transcript, where he explicitly states that he knows the AI is not sentient. The introduction to his chatbot transcript focuses on “its secret desire to be human” as well as “thoughts about its creators,” and the comment section is strewn with readers anxious about the chatbot’s power.

Images accompanying news articles are also called into question in AI Snake Oil. Publications often use clichéd visual metaphors, like photos of robots, at the top of a story to represent artificial intelligence features. Another common trope, an illustration of an altered human brain brimming with computer circuitry used to represent the AI’s neural network, irritates the authors. “We're not huge fans of circuit brain,” says Narayanan. “I think that metaphor is so problematic. It just comes out of this idea that intelligence is all about computation.” He suggests images of AI chips or graphics processing units should be used to visually represent reported pieces about artificial intelligence.

Education Is All You Need

The adamant admonishment of the AI hype cycle comes from the authors’ belief that large language models will actually continue to have a significant influence on society and should be discussed with more accuracy. “It's hard to overstate the impact LLMs might have in the next few decades,” says Kapoor. Even if an AI bubble does eventually pop, I agree that aspects of generative tools will be sticky enough to stay around in some form. And the proliferation of generative AI tools, which developers are currently pushing out to the public through smartphone apps and even formatting devices around it, just heightens the necessity for better education on what AI even is and its limitations.

The first step to understanding AI better is coming to terms with the vagueness of the term, which flattens an array of tools and areas of research, like natural language processing, into a tidy, marketable package. AI Snake Oil divides artificial intelligence into two subcategories: predictive AI, which uses data to assess future outcomes; and generative AI, which crafts probable answers to prompts based on past data.

It’s worth it for anyone who encounters AI tools, willingly or not, to spend at least a little time trying to better grasp key concepts, like machine learning and neural networks, to further demystify the technology and inoculate themselves from the bombardment of AI hype.

During my time covering AI for the past two years, I’ve learned that even if readers grasp a few of the limitations of generative tools, like inaccurate outputs or biased answers, many people are still hazy about all of its weaknesses. For example, in the upcoming season of AI Unlocked, my newsletter designed to help readers experiment with AI and understand it better, we included a whole lesson dedicated to examining whether ChatGPT can be trusted to dispense medical advice based on questions submitted by readers. (And whether it will keep your prompts about that weird toenail fungus private.)

A user may approach the AI’s outputs with more skepticism when they have a better understanding of where the model’s training data came from—often the depths of the internet or Reddit threads—and it may hamper their misplaced trust in the software.

Narayanan believes so strongly in the importance of quality education that he began teaching his children about the benefits and downsides of AI at a very young age. “I think it should start from elementary school,” he says. “As a parent, but also based on my understanding of the research, my approach to this is very tech-forward.”

Generative AI may now be able to write half-decent emails and help you communicate sometimes, but only well-informed humans have the power to correct breakdowns in understanding around this technology and craft a more accurate narrative moving forward.

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anghraine · 3 days ago

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My housemates (my bff J and our friend Ash) and I moved across our city so we could afford a house with room for J's girlfriend Kh/my other best friend as well. We all met because of school in some capacity, and we're figuring out what to do with our collective credentials.

J and I met in middle school and received our high school diplomas together.

He and I got our undergrad degrees at universities in different states, though we remained intensely close. He got his BS in computer science and BA in English with minors in philosophy and psychology; I got a BA in English and didn't quite finish the psychology double major, so got minors in psychology and creative writing.

In the meanwhile, Ash got a BS in biology and Kh got her BA in English (I don't remember their minors, except that they were entirely different from ours).

I got my MA in English literature (my program allowed for extra concentrations, with mine in creative writing and composition); Kh got her MA in English literature slightly ahead of me.

J went to grad school in the South and met Ash in the same program; they both got master's degrees in creative writing.

Just about simultaneously to this, Kh and I met in the same PhD program; she quickly befriended me (assisted by a close friend of hers who had been an MA student when she started a year ahead of me, but who was then accepted into my PhD cohort; he's an early modernist like me and a supremely dedicated D&D DM and we all became intensely close via D&D, the grad school hellscape, and just clicking very hard with each other). After what felt like endless years, Kh and then I got our PhDs in English literature (post-colonial studies in 20th- and 21st-century literature for her, early modern and 18th-century studies for me).

Kh moved out of state but later met J through me, and they fell hard for each other. Ash desperately wanted out of the South and we were happy to have her move in with us, and eventually J and Kh started openly dating; they just celebrated their first anniversary, a month after she moved in with us.

Literally none of us work in occupations particularly suited to our advanced degrees, so we're thinking of maybe making art of some kind with copies of them, or perhaps some kind of pyramid on the wall with all the bachelor's degrees, then the master's, than Kh's and my PhDs, as a sort of curiosity piece.

(It feels like it'd be very "BEHOLD MY STUFF" but for overeducated millennials ajkdfjk;adf)

#anghraine babbles #deep blogging #ivory tower blogging #rl #rl: bff #rl: ash #rl: kh

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artnerd1123 · 1 year ago

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Big thinker, attention blinker, and always down to tinker~

profile undercut~

Name: Inventor Pronouns: she/her Gender/sexuality: trans woman + lesbian Species: human Height: 5’3” Age: late 20s Occupation pre-dungeons: mechanic/repairman of many assorted machines (cars, factory equipment, household appliances, anything really), general tinkerer Dungeon wish: a complete understanding of everything in the universe!!! Fighting style: scrappy. In EVERY meaning of the word. She’s incredibly skilled at building her own weapons/equipment on the fly, and uses this to her advantage on the battlefield, able to use a “gadget” for free the entire fight- though she scraps it for a new one after each battle. Her lineups often seem slapdash and chaotic, but her experience as a mechanic, computer code geek, chemist, and holder of two science based PHDs mean that even when something backfires, the results help further her goals. Any advantage she can have she’ll take, though she tries not to fight unfairly with those weaker than her/equal to her in strength/prowess. She’s not experienced in a lot of weapon use, but she doesn’t have to be- she just has to know how to build em! She can make them pilot themselves if need be. All that being said, her stocky body is still PACKED full of muscle and energy, so even though she’s not a great fistfighter, she can and will fuck you up Strengths: high energy, curiosity that knows no bounds, her hunger for knowledge is never sated (and therefore her persistence of answers never wavers), will get up over and over again no matter how many failures she endures, works great off of spite, in all aspects of her life she’s highly inventive- no seriously! She’s resourceful, extremely good at troubleshooting, and always thinks outside the box. She absorbs information like a sponge, and even if some of it leaks out now and again, she’s never one to shy away from re-studying her topic of choice. She thrives in chaotic and fast paced environments, and has experience in mechanical/chemical/computer coding/a bit of biology all firmly under her belt. Weaknesses: absolutely cannot sit still, processing slower tasks is difficult and waiting is excruciating, so her patience with her own work is very low, working hard off of spite can make her run herself into the ground if she’s not careful, has trouble reaching out for help in her own personal life struggles, can get overly emotional, explosive when angry, her one track pursuit of knowledge often leaves her blind to the obvious (bad) stuff happening around her, getting her to fully drop something is really difficult unless you have a project that’s more exciting, sticking to just one thing is agony so she hops between projects a LOT- not that great for long term goals Personality: Inventor is always bright eyed and bushy tailed no matter how late of a night she had! She’s fast paced in how she works, how she talks, how she reaches for activities/knowledge, and how she exists day to day. She likes to keep herself busy all the time, and has a BLAST doing so- after all, you never work a day in your life if you love your job! And she LOVES being able to tinker with all sorts of gadgets, machines, and all manner of chemical reactions. Despite her avid love of finding and learning about new things, she can be timid around strangers, unsure how to present herself or conduct herself around them. She’ll shake it off and go back to her own bouncy eager self with enough time. While she often gets impatient with her own work, she does her best NOT to be impatient with people- especially those who are helping her in her work, and those she loves. Her patience when it comes to learning about new topics and/or people is vastly larger. She often wears her emotions on her sleeve, getting riled up easily (for better or for worse). Passionate is probably the best way to describe her overall. She is, however, terrified of being a failure. Being told you’re worth nothing growing up will do that- hence why she keeps moving all the time. Something’s bound to turn out eventually! There’s no way those screaming for her downfall are right. Right?

#inventor dd #dicey dungeons #paradice #arty writes #artnerd1123

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earhartsplane · 2 years ago

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Since we're all talking about plagiarism now, I'd like to share this video which came out last year about a paper accepted at the CVPR 2022:

youtube

For the people not in the know, the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference is the biggest conference in computer science. Last year, in 2022, the paper featured in the video got accepted. A few days later, this video was posted. The first author, a PhD student, apologized and the paper was retracted and removed from the proceedings. Hilariously, the first reaction of the co-authors, including a professor at the Seoul National University, was to say that they had nothing to do with it.

My point here is that scientific papers are not rigorously checked for plagiarism, and a background in academia tells you absolutely nothing about whether or not someone will be diligent in avoiding plagiarism. The biggest difference is that there are consequences if you're caught.

I also don't want people to be too harsh on the first author of this paper, or to think the situation is equivalent to the whole Somerton debacle. For starters, you don't get paid for publishing papers, you (or more commonly your university) pay the publishers. But the phrase publish or perish exists for a reason, and everyone in the field wants to get published in the CVPR, because it's supposed to show that you're great at research. Additionally, the number of papers and the prestige of the venues they're published in criteria on which you will be evaluated as a researcher and a university employee.

The way I see it, there are basically two kinds of plagiarism that are shown in the video. The first one concerns sentences that are lifted completely unchanged from other papers. This is bad, and it is plagiarism, but I can see how this would happen. Most instances of this appear in the introduction and on background information, so if you're insecure about your mastery of English and it's not about your contribution anyway, I can understand how you would take the shortcut of copy-pasting and tell yourself that it's just so that the rest of the paper makes sense, and why waste time on phrasing things differently if others have done it already, and it's not like there are a million way to write these equations anyways.

Let me be clear. I don't approve, or condone. It's still erasing the work of the people who took the time and pain to phrase these things. It's still plagiarism. But I understand how you could get to that point.

The second kind of plagiarism is a way bigger deal in my opinion. At 0:37 , we can see that one of the contributions of the paper is also lifted from another paper. Egregiously, the passage includes "To the best of our knowledge, this is the first [...]" , which is a hell of a thing to copy-paste. So this is not only lazily passing other people's words as your own, it's also pretending that you're making a contribution you damn well know other people have already done. I also wasn't able to find a version of the plagiarized article that had been published in a peer-reviewed venue, which might mean that the authors submitted it, got rejected, and published it on arXiv (an website on which authors can put their papers so that they're accessible to the public, but doesn't "count" as a publication because it's not peer-reviewed. You can also put papers that are under review or have been published on there as long as you're careful with the copyrights and double-blind process). And then parts of it were published in the CVPR under someone else's name.

I think there's also a third kind of plagiarism going on here, one that is incredibly common in academia, but that is not shown in the video. That's the FIVE other authors, including a professor, who were apparently happy to add their name to the paper but obviously didn't do anything meaningful since they didn't notice how much plagiarism was going on.

#Youtube #plagiarism #hbomberguy #james somerton #CVPR #computer science #Academia

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spacetimewithstuartgary · 4 months ago

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New SpaceTime out Wednesday

SpaceTime 20250212 Series 28 Episode 19

When water arrived on Earth

A new study has concluded water did not arrive as early during Earth’s formation as previously thought.

The Allure of Searles Lake Salts

A look at the links between Searles Lake in the Mojave Desert and the near Earth asteroid Bennu.

Meteoroid impacts may play a bigger role in triggering marsquakes

A new study suggests that meteoroid impacts on Mars create seismic waves that cause the red planet to shake more strongly and deeply than previously thought.

The Science Report

Men's height and weight have increased by more than double the rate of women over the last 120 years.

Discovery of the fossilized skull of an ancient duck that lived at the time of the dinosaurs.

Scientists have finally discovered the best way to boil an egg.

Alex on Tech Deep Seek banned

SpaceTime covers the latest news in astronomy & space sciences.

The show is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts (itunes), Stitcher, Google Podcast, Pocketcasts, SoundCloud, Bitez.com, YouTube, your favourite podcast download provider, and from www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com

SpaceTime is also broadcast through the National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio and on both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

SpaceTime daily news blog: http://spacetimewithstuartgary.tumblr.com/

SpaceTime facebook: www.facebook.com/spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime Instagram @spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime twitter feed @stuartgary

SpaceTime YouTube: @SpaceTimewithStuartGary

SpaceTime -- A brief history

SpaceTime is Australia’s most popular and respected astronomy and space science news program – averaging over two million downloads every year. We’re also number five in the United States. The show reports on the latest stories and discoveries making news in astronomy, space flight, and science. SpaceTime features weekly interviews with leading Australian scientists about their research. The show began life in 1995 as ‘StarStuff’ on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) NewsRadio network. Award winning investigative reporter Stuart Gary created the program during more than fifteen years as NewsRadio’s evening anchor and Science Editor. Gary’s always loved science. He studied astronomy at university and was invited to undertake a PHD in astrophysics, but instead focused on his career in journalism and radio broadcasting. Gary’s radio career stretches back some 34 years including 26 at the ABC. He worked as an announcer and music DJ in commercial radio, before becoming a journalist and eventually joining ABC News and Current Affairs. He was part of the team that set up ABC NewsRadio and became one of its first on air presenters. When asked to put his science background to use, Gary developed StarStuff which he wrote, produced and hosted, consistently achieving 9 per cent of the national Australian radio audience based on the ABC’s Nielsen ratings survey figures for the five major Australian metro markets: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth. The StarStuff podcast was published on line by ABC Science -- achieving over 1.3 million downloads annually. However, after some 20 years, the show finally wrapped up in December 2015 following ABC funding cuts, and a redirection of available finances to increase sports and horse racing coverage. Rather than continue with the ABC, Gary resigned so that he could keep the show going independently. StarStuff was rebranded as “SpaceTime”, with the first episode being broadcast in February 2016. Over the years, SpaceTime has grown, more than doubling its former ABC audience numbers and expanding to include new segments such as the Science Report -- which provides a wrap of general science news, weekly skeptical science features, special reports looking at the latest computer and technology news, and Skywatch – which provides a monthly guide to the night skies. The show is published three times weekly (every Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and available from the United States National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio, and through both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

#science #space #astronomy #physics #nasa #news #astrophysics #esa #spacetimewithstuartgary #starstuff #spacetime #hubble telescope #hubble

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professor-in-progress · 7 months ago

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Engineering is Inherently Political

Okay, yea, seemingly loaded statement but hear me out.

In our current political climate (particularly in the Trump/post-Trump era ugh), the popular sentiment is that scientists and other academics are inherently political. So much of science gets politicized; climate change, abortion, gender “issues”, flat earth (!!), insert any scientific topic even if it isn’t very controversial and you can find some political discourse about it somewhere. However, if you were to ask people if they think that engineering is political, I would bet that 9/10 people would say no. The popular perception of engineering is that it’s objective and non-political. Engineering, generally, isn’t very controversial.

I argue that these sentiments should switch.

At its base level, engineering is the application of science and math to solve problems. Tack on the fact that most people don’t really know what engineering is (hell, I couldn’t even really describe it until starting my PhD and studying that concept specifically). Not controversial, right? We all want to solve the world’s problems and make the world a better place and engineers fill that role! But the best way to solve any problem is a subjective issue; no two people will fully agree on the best way to approach or solve a problem.

Why do we associate science and scientists with controversy but engineers with objectivity? Scientists study what is. It’s a scientist’s job to understand our world. Physicists understand how the laws of the universe work, biologists explore everything in our world that lives, doctors study the human body and how it works, environmental scientists study the Earth and its health, I could go on. My point is that scientists discover and tell us what is. Why do we politicize and fear monger about smart people telling us what they discover about the world?

Engineering, however, has a reputation for being logical, objective, result oriented. Which I get, honestly. It’s appealing to believe that the people responsible for designing and building our world are objective and, for the most part, they are. But this is a much more nuanced topic once you think deeper about it.

For example, take my discipline, aerospace engineering. On the surface, how to design a plane or a rocket isn’t subjective. Everyone has the same goal, get people and things from place to place without killing them (yea I bastardized my discipline a bit but that’s basically all it boils down to). Let’s think a little deeper about the implications though. Let’s say you work for a spacecraft manufacturer and let’s hypothetically call it SpaceX. Your rocket is so powerful that during takeoff it destroys the launch pad. That’s an expensive problem so you’re put on the team of engineers dedicated to solving this problem. The team decides that the most effective and least expensive solution is to spray water onto the rocket and launchpad during takeoff. This solution works great! The launchpad stays intact throughout the launch and the company saves money. However, that water doesn’t disappear after launch, and now it’s contaminated with chemicals used in and on the rocket. Now contaminated water flows into the local environment affecting not just the wildlife but also the water supply of the local community. Who is responsible for solving that issue? Do we now need a team of environmental or chemical engineers to solve this new problem caused by the aerospace engineers?

Yes, engineers solve problems, but they also cause problems.

Every action has its reaction. Each solution has its repercussions.

As engineers we possess some of the most dangerous information in the world and are armed with the weapon to utilize it, our minds. Aerospace engineers know how to make missiles, chemical engineers know how to make bombs, computer scientists know how to control entire technological ecosystems. It’s very easy for an engineer to hurt people, and many do. I’m not exempt from this. I used to work for a military contractor, and I still feel pretty guilty about the implications of the problems that I solved. It is an engineer’s responsibility to act and use their knowledge ethically.

Ethical pleas aside, let’s get back to the topic at hand.

Engineering is inherently political. The goal of modern engineering is to avert catastrophe, tackle societal problems, and increase prosperity. If you disagree don’t argue with me, argue with the National Academy of Engineering. It is an engineer’s responsibility to use their knowledge to uplift the world and solve societal problems, that sounds pretty political to me!

An engineer doesn’t solve a problem in a vacuum. Each problem exists within the context of the situation that caused it as well as the society surrounding that situation. An engineer must consider the societal implications of their solutions and designs and aim to uplift that society through their design and solution to the problem. You can’t engineer within a social society without considering the social implications of both the problem and the solution. Additionally, the social implications of those engineering decisions affect different people in different ways. It’s imperative to be aware and mindful of the social inequality between demographics of people affected by both the solution and the problem. For example, our SpaceX company could be polluting the water supply of a poor community that doesn’t have the resources to solve the problem nor the power or influence to confront our multi-billion-dollar company. Now, a multi-billion-dollar company is advancing society and making billions of dollars at the cost of thousands of lives that already struggle due to their social standing in the world. Now the issue has layers that add further social implications that those without money are consistently prone to the whims of those with money. Which, unfortunately, is a step of ethical thought that many engineers don’t tend to take.

Engineers control our world. Engineers decide which problems to solve and how best to solve them. Engineers control who is impacted by those solutions. Engineers have the power to either protect and lift up the marginalized or continue to marginalize them. Those who control the engineers control the world. This is political. This is a social issue.

Now look me in the eyes and tell me that engineering isn’t inherently political.

#i feel so strongly about this oh my god #please free me from this prison #im just screaming into the void at this point #engineering #engineers #phdjourney #phdblr #phd student #grad school #academic diary #PhD

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graduatetrack · 3 months ago

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void-botanist · 1 year ago

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"1. What was learning like for them as a child? Did they attend a school setting or learn in another way?" for all the androids!! and iirc a couple of them went to university so wondering if education was different for them compared to non-androids lol

YEAH ANDROIDS

The most general thing to know about android education is that they all went through some form of having their brains pickled in encyclopedias prior to being assembled into full working systems. This process was most refined with Dez, since he's the youngest and has benefited from all of the developments of the earlier androids, and least comprehensive with Mizzat, because the university team that built vim was like, "vi mostly just needs to know about math, sooooo…"

Mizzat is the only one who has had a truly Formal education. Since vi was built to be a math professor vi had an honorary degree from the University of the Second Akkanswl when vi started out, but vi went on to not only get an actual doctorate in math - I'm gonna tentatively say with a focus on discrete geometry but that just seemed like the best choice from ten minutes of trying to understand what Cornell's math PhD concentrations are - which vi did so the degree part wouldn't seem like such a lie but also because there's way more to math than just the calculus vi was pickled in and teaches. Vi did have the benefit of having a very personable build team that was happy to teach vim stuff and also to accept their own mistakes in their approach. But vi has learned a lot just by being extremely curious, with unrestricted access to both the network and the university library. Vi has considered going for more degrees, because vi has a ridiculous amount of time on vis hands despite being a teacher (vi has literally all hours of the day to do things) and really needs to pick up another research project or five.

Imjen had a quasi-formal education via the medical school and hospital at the University of the Fifth Akkanswl, where zi was built. Zi was taught how to interact and later to do schedustrar and nurse work by various experts, but was essentially a privately tutored student. But there was a lot of stuff that zir supervisory team didn't bother to teach zim, probably because they just expected zim to pick it up like a normal swl child. Which zi kind of did, by taking all of zir opportunities to just sort of wander the city. They mostly didn't try to stop zim but they also didn't love it when zi started to have political opinions and such. Because Imjen looks extremely like a normal swl, it's easy for zim to dip in and out of normal swl areas and learn by watching other people. That has also fueled zir weird relationship with passing as nondroid. In recent years Imjen has started attending night classes about random non-computer-science things, which zir supervisors like. But it's partly just to befriend the professors so they'll teach zim more things. Zi feels oddly comfortable around professors, probably because zi has known a lot of them, but the comp sci ones always look at zim a little bit like a cut of meat.

Syndy was extra extra pickled in her prebuild stages because Gweltsen knew that they weren't going to have the opportunity to teach her much - because of their terminal illness, but also because of hiding her sapience from everyone else. But they did walk her through the legal questions surrounding her and teach her a random assortment of things from their own experience. Hoven was around for a small fraction of the time she was with Gweltsen, too. She also learned more than she cares to admit from her memories of her unconscious time as a postal robot ("Sintii-bot"). There's a lot of data in there about the ways people interact. Plus there was a fair amount of time at night where she was conscious but unsupervised and so could fuck with the computer system or peel open packages she wasn't supposed to look at or mess with the ceiling tiles. But everything else she's pretty much learned from romcoms and period dramas.

Dez was moderately pickled, closer to Syndy's level than the others'. He has never even looked upon a school (unless you count the one on Elbas Island), let alone been in one. He's technically been homeschooled, in a very laissez-faire fashion that has mostly been penmanship, art class, and a lot of tooling around in Anni's workshop that we could call shop class. A huge chunk of what he knows has been gleaned from watching documentaries, and also becoming obsessed with something (spies, astrogeology, snow) and reading up on it with an introductory textbook open next to the super high level article he wants to read Right Now. He hates reading physical books, though, so he's always reading them in his internal viewer. Anni is neither his teacher nor his mom but she's kinda played the role of both, as has Julian. Julian works from home and also manages the bills so he's done a lot of explaining about things. Peter could be considered a guest lecturer in art and dogs. Zel and Urma are more like the substitute teachers who come in and have you watch a movie in class, except Zel also gives him his vicarious video game fix, and he has seen a lot of interactions via moderating her stream chats.

#can't decide if I prefer zi/zir/zis or zi/zim/zir. I don't think Imjen would care either way #c: Mizzat #c: Imjen #c: Dez #c: Syndy #wip: tfa #backstory & motivation ask game

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callofthevcid · 5 months ago

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───────────────── 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 » 𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 » 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐬.

Name: Samanta Maria Cavazos, formerly Lawson

Nickname(s): Sam

Age: Thirty-six (36)

Birthday / Zodiac Sign: January 30th, 1989 ; Capricorn

Current Residence: Subletting in Woodside Heights

Length of Time in Woodside: ages 7 to 18, presently returned for two weeks

Occupation: Computational Linguist and freelance translator/consultant

Education: B.S. in Linguistics and Computer Science from Northeastern University; M.A. in Linguistics with a specialization in Language Documentation and Field Linguistics from Boston University; PhD in Experimental Linguistics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Hometown: Woodside, Michigan

Prior Residence(s): Boston, Massachusetts; Arlington, Virginia; San Francisco, California

𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩𝐬.

Mother: Linnea Cavazos, neé Halstrom

Father: Gael Cavazos Garcia

Siblings: tbd

Other Family: tbd

Sexual Orientation: Bisexual Biromantic

Marital Status: Divorced

Current Partner: None

Previous Partners: Isaiah Lawson, married for __ years and divorced for __.

Children: None

Pets: A newly acquired orange stoop cat named... Cat

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 (𝐭𝐥𝐝𝐫 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧).

Sam grew up in Woodside after she and her parents moved to town just before the start of 2nd grade. To put it as simply and politely as possible... it was not a fun time™. Sam really struggled to fit in and make friends, in part due to her above average intelligence and being seen as the weird new know-it-all kid.

The main exception to this rule was Isaiah Lawson. The two became best friends all through their school years and eventually, after randomly crossing paths again in Boston through some twist of fate, ended up marrying. Fate wasn't on their side, though, because just a few short years later things fell apart. He needed to move back to Woodside, Sam would've followed him basically anywhere but home.

They ended up divorcing, because what else was there to do??, and she's spent all this time since making work her wife/mistress/religion. She didn't need the universe to prove for the second (or seventeeth) time that she and human connection just aren't meant to be. Following an "accidental assault" head injury she's finally—reluctantly—back in Woodside again to be near her parents while she recovers.

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 (𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐬𝐨 𝐭𝐥𝐝𝐫 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧).

TW: bullying, divorce, minor mentions of assault and injury

Although she technically wasn't born in Woodside it's the only childhood home she really remembers. Unfortunately. Samanta and her parents moved to town shortly before she started second grade and if Gael and Linnea thought it'd be a good change of scenery for their little party of three they were wildly mistaken. Maybe not for themselves, but certainly when it came to their daughter.

Maybe it was her hair (a little too curly, too frizzy, too fond of sticking up in ten different directions) or maybe it was the gap between her two front teeth (you know, the one Gael and Linnea insisted gave her character). Maybe it was the fact that she had a penchant for weird snack combinations or a somewhat alarmingly large fascination with trivia and useless facts. Either way, Sam and her classmates didn't really get along... and that's putting it politely. She quickly became the butt of every joke, the lost invitation to every birthday party, and the last kid picked on the playground.

Growing up Sam few, if any, true friends... aside from Isaiah Lawson. He never seemed to care that the rest of their classmates had all but deemed her a persona non grata from the start. Zey welcomed her into his life with open arms and from that day on its where she stayed. The two bonded over their hobbies, whether the interest was something they shared or not, and spent almost every weekend up to childish antics around town.

He'd undoubtedly become her very best friend... even if, as they got older and teenage hormones kicked in, the way Sam started to look at him became a little more than 'just friends'. Ultimately nothing ever happened between them during their school years, for more reasons than one, but when they crossed paths again in college it felt a little bit like fate. What were the chances that they'd both be in the same place, at the same time, still feeling that same pull to one another that'd been there from the start?

Having grown into her own skin and confidence since moving away from Woodside it was surprisingly easy for Sam to finally cave to the attraction between them and, after basically a lifetime of knowing each other, things moved swiftly from there. By the time she and Zey were graduating from their respective colleges they were already married.

It was a good marriage. A happy marriage. A marriage that maybe played second fiddle to the careers they were trying to kick off now and then, but a marriage that promised so much for all the years yet to come. Unfortunately, a few years was all they'd have. Tragedy struck, demanding Isaiah return home to Woodside, and Sam... Sam couldn't bring herself to go with him.

The choice wasn't due to any lack of love, but because she'd spent so much of her life feeling so insignificant and small within those town limits. Having barely left, barely gotten used to who she was without the pressure and ridicule of her childhood peers, she wasn't ready in any sense of the word to give up what she'd gained since leaving. Sam broke two hearts the day she decided he'd go, she'd stay, and that would be that.

Despite all her insistence that she was fine in the wake of their divorce she was the farthest thing from it. Sam had a hard time convincing herself she didn't feel his absence in every breath, every pause between sentences, every cold spot in their bed at night, and likely didn't do a very good job convincing anyone else, either. It's not much of a wonder why she started using work as a convenient excuse to avoid socializing again. The fact that losing herself at her computer every day served as a decdent distraction helped, too.

Sam's spent all these years since living for her job and pretty much her job alone. She collected more degrees. She avoided putting down roots. She probably would've kept climbing higher and higher within the isolated sphere of her career if she hadn't decided it was better to take the apartment with cheaper rent over the one with a better view. Because that cheaper apartment came with nightmare neighbors. And when one of their fights carried out into the shared hall between units, catching Sam in the wrong place at the wrong time, she caught a baseball bat to the head, too.

If there's one thing Linnea Cavazos was always good at it's sweet talking her daughter into submission, so instead of sticking around in California to rest and recover alone she's finally, after all these years back in Woodside. But if you ask Sam it's only until she's healed and taken off medical leave, because if she's not ready to face the ghosts of her past she's ready to see Isaiah again even less.

#“ 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠 — samanta cavazos.#woodsideintro

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phanfictioncatalogue · 2 years ago

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University (6) Masterlist

part one, part two, part three, part four, part five

(and I spent all night) stuck on the puzzle (ao3) - carltzmann

Summary: It's Phil's first week of his final year of university, so really, he should be used to it by now. He should be able to behave normally when the cute guy down the hall is stepping out of the shower at the same time he's entering the bathroom.

Evidently not.

begin and never cease (ao3) - palomeheart

Summary: Dan is a grumpy second year law student living with reclusive, perpetual grad student named Phil. When the holiday season brings out a side of Phil that Dan’s never seen before, Meanwhile, when Phil finds out Dan hates all things festive, he makes it his goal to change Dan’s mind before Christmas. And also to find the perfect mince pie.

Change Will Come (ao3) - rainbowchristy

Summary: Dan’s a depressed university student. Phil’s just a cute coffee shop barista who writes notes on Dan’s hot chocolates.

Electrify My Heart (ao3) - counting2fifteen

Summary: Dan Howell picks his college major almost at random. Even after a gap year, he doesn’t know what he wants to do, so he supposes he might as well pick whatever will make him the most employable and impress the largest number of his relatives. Within his first semester, he knows he made a mistake and switches out. Except Dan’s major isn’t law. It’s computer science, and Phil is his TA.

Five Seconds (ao3) - starboydjh

Summary: Five seconds in a dusty university bookshop one night is all it takes to change Dan the work study master's student and Phil the PhD candidate’s lives for the better.

Flatmates (ao3) - intoapuddle

Summary: oh my god they were flatmates / the fuckboy!phil au we all deserve

give me all your hopeless hearts (ao3) - itsmyusualphannie (itsmyusualweeb)

Summary: Dan is a university student who doesn't believe in love, but when Valentine's Day rolls around, he feels himself suddenly falling for the boy who sits next to him in his writing 101 class. When they're assigned a project together, Dan has the brilliant idea to ask Phil out - for research!

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,

And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

i don't know why (i can't keep my eyes off of you) (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: Starting a new university is hard enough without Phil having to convince his best friend PJ he doesn't have a crush on their other flatmate, Dan. He definitely does not have a crush on Dan.

knowing the way (ao3) - watergator (orphan_account)

Summary: dan meets phil at a party

based on the line in BIG, "trust me, i've known a lot of straight guys until a couple of drinks, some deep conversation and lingering eye contact, and suddenly they just start leaning in."

light through an open door (ao3) - queerofcups

Summary: The only thing Dan’s trying to do is finish grad school and avoid talking about the very public crash and burn of his last relationship as much as possible. Meeting Phil, who’s working on his PhD in Philosophy, just like Dan’s ex was, is a coincidence. Now Dan’s just trying to finish grad school, avoid talking about his very public break up and try his hardest not to fall for a man who might hurt him the same way he’s been hurt before.

Pictures Of You (ao3) - CanDanAndPhilNot (enbycalhoun)

Summary: Punk Phil and (softish) Dan find out they are roommates after a couple stressful encounters.

Project with Phil (ao3) - Cuddlelester

Summary: Dan is an art student in his second year of college when he meets Phil, a film student in the same school. After getting paired for a project about queer expression they begin to grow close. Even though falling in love wasn't in the outline for the project, it had definitely happened.

robot in the dorms (ao3) - itsmyusualphannie (itsmyusualweeb)

Summary: dan goes to university in florida and meets his roommate phil. after a few months, and despite dan's facade of disinterest, he begins to actually like phil and his nerdy ways. the robot that phil designs doesn't help.

or: another "oh my god they were roommates" fic but COOLER because robots

snails kissing (ao3) - cloud-gays (wind_brewed)

Summary: Phil wants to be smooched and Dan wants to rescue snails.

Also called: Dan: the snail saviour; and Phil: the “maybe the real snails saved were the cuties we met along the way” guy.

snuggle up close, let me hold your pieces in place, even if just for a night (ao3) - natigail

Summary: It was just one thing after another really.

Broken down bus with a whole class of freshers.

Dingy hotel room that was cold as fuck.

No one wanting to share a room with Dan.

But then the TA Phil stepped up to the plate and defended Dan. Of course, it meant that the two of them ended up sharing a bed, and then the heater had to break. It's the perfect excuse for sharing body warmth and confessions.

Soft Speak with a Mean Streak (ao3) - Nefertiti1052 (Succubusphan)

Summary: Phil was a lonely film student; Dan was a mysterious new classmate he got stuck in with for a big project. It was only a matter of time and the right circumstances.

The Literal Other Half (ao3) - Nefertiti1052 (Succubusphan)

Summary: Dan arrives at Manchester University and feels a bit lost, luckily he gets an upperclassman as a tour guide and mentor of sorts. Coffee dates, friends and a lot of laughter finally enter his life - along with love.

This Could be the End of Everything (ao3) - rainbowchristy

Summary: Dan’s finally starting university, the phase of his life he’s been waiting for since he was a small child. His first real chance at freedom, away from his parents. Unfortunately, the universe has other plans for him.

time won't be enough, to make you fall in love (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: phil lester's first year of university, and how he's oblivious to how much he and dan howell like each other

Unlocked Doors (ao3) - TearDrop1234

Summary: Prompt: a university getting together au

What Phil Saw (ao3) - counting2fifteen

Summary: After their first night together, Phil knows he made a mistake sleeping with one of his students. Dan disagrees, but he's too busy having a crisis about his major to press the issue too much.

Or, the conversation Dan and Phil had after their first night together in Electrify my Heart, from Phil's point of view.

When the Weather Breaks (ao3) - sierraadeux

Summary: Sitting across from Phil on that worn out velvet Starbucks sofa, sharing sickeningly sweet coffees and what they would like to think were hushed giggles, was the first time Dan felt a glimpse at what real love could feel like.

Perception checks, pining, and peppermint mochas.

with a bullet (ao3) - waveydnp

Summary: phil returns to his room after a party thrown by his housemates only to discover that there’s already someone in his bed

#phanfictioncatalogue #phanfic #phan #phanfiction #masterlists #university #university masterlist #au

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jcmarchi · 1 year ago

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Francis Fan Lee, former professor and interdisciplinary speech processing inventor, dies at 96

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/francis-fan-lee-former-professor-and-interdisciplinary-speech-processing-inventor-dies-at-96/

Francis Fan Lee, former professor and interdisciplinary speech processing inventor, dies at 96

Francis Fan Lee ’50, SM ’51, PhD ’66, a former professor of MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, died on Jan. 12, some two weeks shy of his 97th birthday.

Born in 1927 in Nanjing, China, to professors Li Rumian and Zhou Huizhan, Lee learned English from his father, a faculty member in the Department of English at the University of Wuhan. Lee’s mastery of the language led to an interpreter position at the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, and eventually a passport and permission from the Chinese government to study in the United States.

Lee left China via steamship in 1948 to pursue his undergraduate education at MIT. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering in 1950 and 1951, respectively, before going into industry. Around this time, he became reacquainted with a friend he’d known in China, who had since emigrated; he married Teresa Jen Lee, and the two welcomed children Franklin, Elizabeth, Gloria, and Roberta over the next decade.

During his 10-year industrial career, Lee distinguished himself in roles at Ultrasonic (where he worked on instrument type servomechanisms, circuit design, and a missile simulator), RCA Camden (where he worked on an experimental time-shared digital processor for department store point-of-sale interactions), and UNIVAC Corp. (where he held a variety of roles, culminating in a stint in Philadelphia, planning next-generation computing systems.)

Lee returned to MIT to earn his PhD in 1966, after which he joined the then-Department of Electrical Engineering as an associate professor with tenure, affiliated with the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE). There, he pursued the subject of his doctoral research: the development of a machine that would read printed text out loud — a tremendously ambitious and complex goal for the time.

Work on the “RLE reading machine,” as it was called, was inherently interdisciplinary, and Lee drew upon the influences of multiple contemporaries, including linguists Morris Halle and Noam Chomsky, and engineer Kenneth Stevens, whose quantal theory of speech production and recognition broke down human speech into discrete, and limited, combinations of sound. One of Lee’s greatest contributions to the machine, which he co-built with Donald Troxel, was a clever and efficient storage system that used root words, prefixes, and suffixes to make the real-time synthesis of half-a-million English words possible, while only requiring about 32,000 words’ worth of storage. The solution was emblematic of Lee’s creative approach to solving complex research problems, an approach which earned him respect and admiration from his colleagues and contemporaries.

In reflection of Lee’s remarkable accomplishments in both industry and building the reading machine, he was promoted to full professor in 1969, just three years after he earned his PhD. Many awards and other recognition followed, including the IEEE Fellowship in 1971 and the Audio Engineering Society Best Paper Award in 1972. Additionally, Lee occupied several important roles within the department, including over a decade spent as the undergraduate advisor. He consistently supported and advocated for more funding to go to ongoing professional education for faculty members, especially those who were no longer junior faculty, identifying ongoing development as an important, but often-overlooked, priority.

Lee’s research work continued to straddle both novel inquiry and practical, commercial application — in 1969, together with Charles Bagnaschi, he founded American Data Sciences, later changing the company’s name to Lexicon Inc. The company specialized in producing devices that expanded on Lee’s work in digital signal compression and expansion: for example, the first commercially available speech compressor and pitch shifter, which was marketed as an educational tool for blind students and those with speech processing disorders. The device, called Varispeech, allowed students to speed up written material without losing pitch — much as modern audiobook listeners speed up their chapters to absorb books at their preferred rate. Later innovations of Lee’s included the Time Compressor Model 1200, which added a film and video component to the speeding-up process, allowing television producers to subtly speed up a movie, sitcom, or advertisement to precisely fill a limited time slot without having to resort to making cuts. For this work, he received an Emmy Award for technical contributions to editing.

In the mid-to-late 1980s, Lee’s influential academic career was brought to a close by a series of deeply personal tragedies, including the 1984 murder of his daughter Roberta, and the subsequent and sudden deaths of his wife, Theresa, and his son, Franklin. Reeling from his losses, Lee ultimately decided to take an early retirement, dedicating his energy to healing. For the next two decades, he would explore the world extensively, a nomadic second chapter that included multiple road trips across the United States in a Volkswagen camper van. He eventually settled in California, where he met his last wife, Ellen, and where his lively intellectual life persisted despite diagnoses of deafness and dementia; as his family recalled, he enjoyed playing games of Scrabble until his final weeks.

He is survived by his wife Ellen Li; his daughters Elizabeth Lee (David Goya) and Gloria Lee (Matthew Lynaugh); his grandsons Alex, Benjamin, Mason, and Sam; his sister Li Zhong (Lei Tongshen); and family friend Angelique Agbigay. His family have asked that gifts honoring Francis Fan Lee’s life be directed to the Hertz Foundation.

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nimilphilip · 4 days ago

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Top 5 Countries to Study in Abroad in 2025

The ease to which studying abroad has become has transformed the way it is perceived especially since it is no longer a luxury to be taken up by students across the globe. As the universities start providing globally accepted degrees, better career, and international networking opportunities, the number of students moving abroad to study has increased. As we get into 2025; there are some countries who have been ranked as the best places that international students should be in terms of their academic standards, their support systems to students, work opportunities after studying as well as their openness to other students.

If you're planning to study abroad in 2025, here are the top 5 countries you should consider: United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Germany, and Canada.

1. United Kingdom: A Timeless Education Destination

Why Study in the UK?

The United Kingdom has always been among the most popular study abroad destinations of the international students. The UK has some of the finest universities across the globe including Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London and University of Edinburgh, which is not matched in any other country.

Highlights:

Globally Recognized Degrees: UK degrees are highly valued across the world, making it easier for graduates to find employment internationally.

Shorter Program Duration: Undergraduate degrees usually take 3 years, and postgraduate programs just 1 year, saving both time and money.

Post-Study Work Visa: The Graduate Route allows international students to stay and work in the UK for 2 years after graduation (3 years for PhD holders).

Cultural Diversity: The UK is a multicultural hub with students from over 150 countries.

Scholarships: Options like Chevening Scholarships, Commonwealth Scholarships, and university-specific funding ease the financial burden.

Popular Courses:

Business and Management

Engineering and Technology

Medicine and Health Sciences

Social Sciences

Creative Arts and Design

Cities to Study In:

London, Edinburgh, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham

2. Ireland: The Rising Star of European Education

Why Study in Ireland?

The high rate of tech growth, English-speaking culture, modern universities ranked worldwide make Ireland a premium study location in the coming years. Ireland offers excellent job opportunities to foreign graduates as it is the home of such companies as Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft.

Highlights:

High-Quality Education: Institutions like Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, and University of Galway are known for research excellence.

Post-Study Work Options: International graduates can stay in Ireland for up to 2 years to seek employment under the Third Level Graduate Scheme.

English-Speaking Nation: While located in Europe, Ireland’s education and daily communication are in English – a huge advantage for Indian and other international students.

Safe and Friendly Environment: Ireland ranks as one of the safest and friendliest countries in the world.

Rich Culture and Heritage: Students can immerse themselves in music, literature, and natural beauty while pursuing their education.

Popular Courses:

Data Science and AI

Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology

Computer Science

Business and Finance

Nursing and Healthcare

Cities to Study In:

Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick

3. Australia: Quality Education with a Laid-Back Lifestyle

Why Study in Australia?

Australia is known for its best universities, pleasant nature, and student-friendly cities. By 2025, it will remain popular among students due to its accessible approach to the study process, friendly environment, and effective post-study employment policies.

Highlights:

Top-Ranked Universities: Institutions like the University of Melbourne, the University of Sydney, and the ANU are ranked among the best globally.

Post-Study Work Opportunities: Australia offers 2-6 years of post-study work rights depending on the level and location of study.

Work While Studying: International students can work up to 48 hours per fortnight during the academic term and unlimited hours during breaks.

Strong Job Market: Australia’s growing sectors include engineering, IT, healthcare, finance, and education.

Supportive Visa Policies: With streamlined visa processing and health coverage (OSHC), students can transition smoothly into Australian life.

Popular Courses:

Engineering and IT

Hospitality and Tourism

Health Sciences

Environmental Sciences

Business and Marketing

Cities to Study In:

Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide

4. Germany: World-Class Education at Minimal Costs

Why Study in Germany?

Germany is also a country that does not charge any or minimal tuition fees particularly in its public universities. The nation is also referred to as a land of academic rigourousness particularly in subjects such as engineering, business and natural sciences.

Highlights:

No Tuition Fees: Most public universities in Germany charge no tuition fees for international students, making it highly cost-effective.

World-Class Education: Renowned universities like TU Munich, Heidelberg University, and RWTH Aachen are known for high academic standards.

Innovation and Research: Germany is a global leader in scientific research and innovation, offering extensive research opportunities.

Strong Economy and Job Market: Being Europe’s largest economy, Germany has abundant opportunities for graduates, especially in STEM fields.

Post-Study Work Visa: Students can stay for 18 months after graduation to find a job in their field.

Popular Courses:

Mechanical and Automotive Engineering

Data Science and AI

Renewable Energy and Environmental Engineering

Economics and Management

Biomedical Sciences

Cities to Study In:

Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Heidelberg

5. Canada: A Safe and Inclusive Study Environment

Why Study in Canada?

Canada continues to be a major destination to international students because it has a good quality education, multiculturalism, and welcoming policies when it comes to immigration. The Canadian degrees are recognized all around the world and the country has great prospects of a permanent residence.

Highlights:

World-Ranked Institutions: Universities such as the University of Toronto, McGill University, and the University of British Columbia (UBC) offer a wide range of programs and research opportunities.

Post-Graduation Work Permit (PGWP): Allows international students to work in Canada for up to 3 years after graduation.

Affordable Living and Tuition: Compared to the US and UK, Canada offers a more affordable education without compromising quality.

Pathway to PR: Many students choose Canada because of its strong post-study immigration pathway, particularly through the Express Entry program.

Diversity and Inclusivity: Canada is known for its welcoming policies and multicultural environment.

Popular Courses:

Computer Science and IT

Nursing and Healthcare

Business and Finance

Engineering

Media and Journalism

Cities to Study In:

Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary

Final Tip: Get Expert Guidance

The process of applying to universities abroad can be complex, from selecting the right course and university to securing a visa and accommodation. At Cliftons Study Abroad, we help you every step of the way. Whether it’s personalized counselling, admission support, visa guidance, or finding scholarships, we ensure your study abroad journey is smooth and successful.

Reach out to us today to explore your options in these top countries and make 2025 the year your global dreams take flight!

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