From Aalto exchange student to start-up entrepreneur and Ph.D.

Inspired by a friend and the good reputation of Aalto, Tartu University computer science student Vilen Looga joined Aalto (then HUT) as an exchange student, although he had never visited Finland before. After one year of exchange studies, he decided to apply to the NordSecMob double-degree programme, which today runs by the name SECCLO.

“The most interesting things about the programme were, apart from the courses and the course topics, a multicultural environment with people from around the world, a more practical approach to studies, great contacts with the industry, as well as summers spent working as a summer trainee in a research group, “ says Vilen looking back at his studies in the Security and Mobile Computing master’s program.

When thinking about the tools and skills for working life he acquired through his studies, Vilen refers to his graduation day speech:” Studying  here  made  me  realize  that  things  that  I  was  expecting  to  learn  are  actually not  that  important, and  I  learned  a  lot  of  valuable  things that  I  didn't  expect  to learn.” He wants to highlight the importance of presentation and communication skills he got to practice on many courses, as well as team working skills he acquired when working in groups with other students.

After graduation, instead of going to work in the industry, Vilen was more tempted to pursue on the doctoral track, and alongside his doctoral studies, to join a start-up called VimAI that originated from an Aalto research project. The company is developing an application related to indoor navigation that guides the user to the right place with the help of a picture taken with a smartphone. As one of the founders, Vilen’s role includes both engineering work like data mining and data analytics, and business and customer relationship management. The company that originally started with Business Finland funding is planning to organize a seed funding round in the coming autumn.

Following somewhat his master’s thesis topic on energy efficiency of mobile phones, Vilen’s dissertation that he defended in June, “Energy effiency in large-scale Internet-of-Things networks", looked at how user and application behaviour impacts the battery life of a device, specifically by influencing the network traffic volume and profile.

Happy with his studies and degree, Vilen wants to wish the best of luck to the current and coming double-degree programme students.
 

NorSecMob runs by the name SECCLO (Master's Programme in Security and Cloud Computing). The next application round to this Erasmus Mundus double-degree programme will be 15 November 2018 – 4 January 2019.