"I am a European citizen with a wide range of career options across Europe"

“I was still finishing my masters degree in Finance, so I needed to split my time. The hardest part for me was to keep up with other students with computer science related backgrounds. They could program on a much deeper level than I could. I had to take extra programming classes. The first year was quite difficult, but it was worth it. I got plenty of help from the co-location centre in Budapest. They even organised extracurricular programming lessons for me.”

“Our company operates within the digital fitness industry. We believe that through sports we have the power to change lives by engaging and empowering 1 billion connected athletes. We develop two mobile applications, adidas Running and adidas Training. With our apps users can track their sport activities, connect with others and stay motivated to achieve their fitness goals. adidas Running is designed to track running and other activities, review statistics, join challenges. With adidas Training users can do standalone workouts and enjoy expert guidance with workout plans for every level. We make more than 155+ million users live a more active life.”

“I believe that machine learning and innovation is the means how the company can work towards its mission. My main contribution to that is bringing innovation closer to our users. I do that by delivering machine learning based features to our applications. I work closely with different internal stakeholders. On one hand, with data scientists, who develop prototypes for cool projects, such as recommending personalised workouts to users. On the other hand, I collaborate with our cross-functional product squad (especially with backend engineers) to integrate machine learning models in the backend systems.“

“I do use these apps myself. I am a keen yogi. I’ve recently started to do barre, which is a mix of ballet and yoga. I love hiking, and in the winter skiing. Our company encourages us to live a healthy life-style and share feedback about the apps. The feedback is then integrated into the product roadmap.”

“Our apps have a social network feature and just like in other social networks users can follow each other and share their sport activities. Seeing others doing sports, is motivating. Therefore, the social aspect is very important for our users. Currently I’m working on making our social network even stronger: based on their existing social connections we suggest users who to follow. My team collaborated with a cross-functional product squad to bring the suggestions generated by our algorithm to the users. I am proud to say that the first iteration of this feature is already live and it works well.”

“In 2019, I attended the annual alumni meeting in Porto. There, I met the former alumni board president Francesco Bonadiman and fellow alumni Michele Pittoni who were presenting the company they worked for. They were hiring a machine learning engineer at the time. Having talked to Francesco and Michele in person gave me a great impression of the company and the role so I decided to apply and got hired.“

“During my time at Spaziodati, I had the chance to work on interesting projects, like building a machine learning model to predict if certain Italian companies export products and services. My colleagues were great, I worked with two fellow alumni of the EIT Digital Master School. I was living in the mountains surrounded by breathtaking hiking and skiing opportunities and beautiful mountain lakes.”

“I would not have a career in Machine Learning Engineering at all without EIT Digital. Because of the international aspect, I feel like a European citizen who has options all over Europe. Somehow, through the master school, national borders do not seem like high barriers anymore. Having studied at the EIT Digital Master School, I have wide range of possibilities to work in different industries and in different countries. It empowered me with the freedom to work on projects I care about and helped me grow in my career.”

“During the Kick-Off in Rennes in France. At first I wasn’t really engaged with the alumni foundation. I was just too excited that I was studying at the EIT Digital Master School. When I studied in Trento, I became more curious. I also met Francesco Bonadiman - President of the Alumni Foundation at that time - in person and I got more connected with various alumni members. I became friends with Anna Prudnikova, for example. So, I had now different strings leading to the EIT Digital Alumni Foundation. At the Annual Meeting in Porto, it was clear to me that it was a cool community of which I wanted to be part of and to contribute to.”

“For me, the alumni foundation is about the individual connections between people. I have good friendships with people from different countries and different majors. I want to keep these alive and build new ones. In the coming two years, I will try to focus to strengthen one on one connections within our community. In a time where organising big events is not easy, building these connections between alumni is key. This is one of the topics that we discussed with the other board members: focus on local communities. As a secretary my main responsibility is enabling the board to deliver our vision and make us as efficient as possible.”

“The biggest benefit is the networking aspect. If you register on our website, you have the option to connect with others. In the alumni directory, you can look up people to see who came from the same major, who are in the same country as you are, or simply give options for others to contact you. We are also trying to help members in fulfilling their career aspirations. We have a job portal, as well where they can look for and publish jobs. I also publish roles when adidas Runtastic is looking for new people. And we are in contact with companies to get discounts for career counselling services. We have a good value proposition for our partners: they can tap into a valuable market of over 1000 digital innovators across the globe.”

• Anna Prudnikova, the Marketing and Communication Officer of the EIT Digital Alumni Board: "Thanks to the EIT Digital Master School I am boosting my career real fast".
• Jeroen van Lent, the President of the EIT Digital Alumni Foundation Board: Jeroen van Lent likes to end his presidency of the EIT Digital Alumni Foundation with good news.
• Jaakko Laiho, the Treasurer of the EIT Digital Alumni Foundation Board: "This is the community that I wanna be a part of".
• Luca Vavassori, the Events Officer of EIT Digital Alumni Foundation Board: "I developed an eagerness to meet people".
• Bruno Marafini, the Technology Officer of the EIT Digital Alumni Foundation Board: "Bruno is always looking for things to do".
• Carlos Callejo, the Outreach and Partnerships Officer of the EIT Digital Alumni Foundation Board: "I discovered in me an entrepreneurial mindset".