Week 31: End of My PhD Application

Since July, after my Master thesis defence. I got my professor’s invitation on the PhD study.

My professor’s focus is on sequenctial neural network. There are three ways to study PhD in TLU.

• PhD Student
• Junior Researcher
• Knowledge Transfer Student

The first one is unpaid. The second one is to work at school and to be paid by school. The third one is paid by government or the companies.

I was applying the third one. That is said, Eventhough I pass the school exam, I hvae to find an Estonian company to support my study. My professor provides me an opportunity in SekMo that the gonvernment will pay me for 3 years of study. But I have to find one Estonian company.

Then I sent emails to almost all the Estonian companies that I have connection. However, it was Jaanipäev, nearly no one responded.

I finally got respond from Wise. But after further study, Wise is more focused on graph based neural network and they were concerning about GDPR if I started my research. They offered an idea for me to do research on cross-border Romance Scam. While that is not my interests on.

Then I turned to Twilio, sadly, the company’s core part is in the US. They do not support research outside of the US.

So, seems my PhD application should stop here. Then I wrote to my professor about changing my mind, maybe apply next year.

Now, left me some awkward time, as my room has 8 month in due. My new exchanged passport is on the way. I have to stay in Tallinn. Probably I will to find some job in Estonia. Since I studied in TLU, I do not need any sponsorship on then employment VISA. Maybe the new job can support my future PhD study. Or I should go back to China, the AI trend is better than any where in the world. Too many choices, and they are all good ones.