My name is Patanamon Thongtanunam. I’m a first-year Ph.D student of Software Design and Analysis Laboratory (SDLAB) in NAIST. Recently, I have a great opportunity to visit Queen’s University in Canada for 9 months (from September 2014 to April 2015). This internship is supported by NAIST Global Initiatives Program 2014. Today, I am pleased to share my experience of my internship on NAIST Edge.
Queen’s university is a public research university located in the peaceful city of Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Similar to Nara, Kingston is a city that close to many famous cities such as Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa. The university is also located near the lake Ontario, which is one of the five great lakes of North America. Therefore, it would be no doubt that the view and the weather in summer time is really nice but I still have to say that the winter season here is extremely cold :)
During my internship, I am doing research under supervision of Professor Ahmed E. Hassan of Software Analysis and Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) at Queen’s University. The main research topic of SAIL is to investigate approaches and create techniques to support practitioners who are producing, maintaining and evolving in large scale software systems. Since the research area of SAIL is similar to my current research studies in SDLAB, it is not so difficult for me to extend my research under the same topic. In my opinion, SAIL is a highly-active research laboratory in software engineering. Every SAIL’s student enthusiastically does high-impact research and publish their research in the top venues. This environment encourages me to be more energetic as well. Moreover, SAIL is a multi-cultural working environment. There are many visitors from Japan, Brazil, and Singapore working in SAIL. It’s a good chance to connect people not only from Canada but also from other countries around the world. Interestingly, SAIL is located in a house instead of a building!! This is quite surprised me as you know that NAIST’s laboratories are often in buildings. Working in a house is a kind of new experience for me. I think that it makes me feel like I am working at my home rather than working in an office.
Although NAIST gives us valuable knowledge and research skills, we can open our vision in other aspects as well as globalize our thinking system by collaborating with other people and doing internship abroad. During my internship at SAIL, I have learned how do they work and think, which is a good example that I should follow and improve myself. I wish that I can share my experience more when I come back to NAIST.
Last but not least, I would like to thanks to my supervisors, Iida-sensei and Ichikawa-sensei who always kindly support and give me this great opportunity. I would like to thanks to NAIST Global Initiatives Program 2014 for their financial support as well. Without them, I would not be able to gain this precious experience.
Thank you very much.