welcome to the udacity learning lab i'm jennifer scholmenov and today we'll be chatting
with udacity student rubenia borje roubenia why don't we start off with you telling us a little
bit about yourself well hi i am rubinia my my background is originally in systems engineering
then at uno i studied management and i was interested in databases business intelligence
and data analysis over the time i understood that i needed technology in my career if i wanted to
tackle complex problems and i was invited by a professor at unt to join his lab and
i had some other mentors and professors who encouraged me to do a phd in computer science
and and now i am doing research about how machine learning can be applied in epidemiology and public
health and how can it can it can be used as a tool to help out public um health planners
which udacity nano degree program have you taken i completed the deep learning nanodegree
and when i finish this interview i will go finish and submit my
data visualization project for the business analytics nanodegree
uh i like studying in the nanodegree programs at udacity because for me it's important to have
academia and industry working together i believe that what we go and do in the companies have to
be backed up in science and and and that is what i like about udacity is that you have professors and
and um and industry leaders both working together in the programs and for me that is exciting
what inspired you to start learning with udacity in the first place first it was the topics like
uh the the the most important topics are there in the udacity of computer vision
natural language processing artificial intelligence data science machine learning
and and those skills are on demand and there is there there are two parts there's that the
literature part like when you read the book but then it's the practical part
you actually need to get the skill and practice the project and get a real work experience so
that was the first thing that i like about udacity i also love the way they teach because they make
very short videos so when i forget or i don't understand i just watch the video again and i like
that i can take notes and i like the exercises that i can have feedback in the project so for
me that was very important i'm like i love this site has your udacity nanodegree program
impacted your life at all i i am getting into the world of computer science and for me udacity
has been great support because it has been an eye-opening experience like this is what is
happening in industry these are the tools that you need in industry and and these are the topics and
the skills that you need to acquire from in that regard for me udacity has been a great support
as a phd student i understand that securing an internship in 2021 is the next step for you what
type of internship are you looking for and do you feel like udacity has helped prepare you
well i have this dream that i want to become an ai engineer i know this is a very big one
but it sounds like you're taking the right steps to get there thank you it is kind of intimidating
but i love how computers can help us to make a better world for everybody that we can um
find solutions to complex problems with all these new tools and so my dream is to find
an internship in artificial intelligence but i have two nanodegree programs that i completed
i have business analytics and deep learning so if plan a doesn't work i have plan b if i understand
correctly you're most interested in artificial intelligence data science and data analytics
what is it about these fields that interests you most started in my undergrad when i saw that if we
analyze information we can find answers we can use resources more wisely we can save workers
from fatigue and i saw the potential of creating uh like effect efficient solutions to business
problems to society problems when i saw that with data managers can make better decisions that will
impact in a positive way of people and society i said there's room for everybody to work here and
and this is worthy that is why i started with databases i started um with tools like tableau
to a data visualization and then i understood that we actually needed algorithms and we needed
tools to deal with big data and that is why i ended up learning in udacity because i i said
they have what i need to keep going do you have plans to pick up or learn any additional skills
how are you going to approach getting them and applying them i do have plans to complete the
artificial intelligence nanodegree at udacity and this is something that that i like is that
if we don't have the background there are a lot of free courses at udacity
that we can take before the nanodegree so that we build the background and then we can um
complete the nanodegree faster or when we enroll the nanodegree they say if this is familiar to you
we recommend that you complete this list of courses and then you keep going so what i am doing
right now is i'm taking all the free courses to to build up their requirements and then i'll take
the complete nano degree i'm very excited about your career and i'm confident you'll get there
really soon especially with the ai nano degree program under your belt yes i think so yes that's
that's my goal for 2021. thanks again for joining us today and it's been great chatting with you