Doctoral students from WUST Doctoral School will soon go on internships to renowned universities and research centres around the world. By participating in the InterDocSchool project, they will cooperate with research teams from the USA, Portugal, Italy, Denmark and Estonia. The Faculty of Information and Communication Technology will be represented by three winners.
 
This is the fourth group of young researchers from Wrocław University of Science and Technology who will use the InterDocSchool project to go on an internship abroad. The project is financed by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (Narodowa Agencja Wymiany Akademickiej – NAWA) as part of the competition "Ster – Internationalization of doctoral schools" and will have one more recruitment, scheduled for May 2023.

The opportunity is offered to a total of 30 people. The trips organized by WUST Doctoral School last one or three months.

Our Faculty will be represented by:

Dominika Kunc

•    one-month internship at the University of Southern California (USA).

Since her master's studies, she has focused on the use of artificial intelligence in recognizing emotions from physiological signals collected using wearable devices (e.g. smartwatches).

– I am particularly interested in the application of machine learning models in everyday life – explains Dominika Kunc, who is doing all her research in the Emognition team under the supervision of Prof. Przemysław Kazienko and Dr. Stanisław Saganowski (both from the Faculty of Information and Communication Technology).

She will go on internship to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where she will work with the SAIL (Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab) team. Its head is Prof. Shrikanth (Shri) Narayanan and the members include world-class scientists specializing in both affective computing and signal processing. This is where she will develop deep learning methods in the field of self-supervised learning of physiological signals.

– The goal will be to create a representation of these signals, which will then be used as input to a machine learning model for emotion recognition – explains Dominika Kunc. – Owing to the obtained representations, it will also be possible to develop unsupervised learning methods, which in turn will make it possible to identify physiological states related to affect (especially emotions).

Aleksandra Knapińska

•    one-month internship at Politecnico di Torino (Italy).

In her doctoral thesis, written under the supervision of Prof. Krzysztof Walkowiak and Dr. Piotr Lechowicz (both from the Faculty of Information and Communication Technology) she deals with optimization methods for multi-layer optical application-aware networks.

– I focus on developing machine learning supported algorithms that allocate various types of traffic in the network, taking into account their specific requirements, e.g. regarding permissible delay limits or encryption requirements – says Aleksandra Knapińska.

She decided to go to Politecnico di Torino because it has a world-class team that deals with the use of machine learning techniques for problems related to optical networks.

She will start her stay in Italy with a seminar summarizing the results she has obtained so far. – This seminar will open a discussion on further research directions, including the analysis of trends visible in the simulation results and the improvement of the proposed network optimization algorithms – says Aleksandra Knapińska. – We also plan to work on the use of optical networks in practice to create a low-latency connection between Wrocław and Turin and to organize a remote concert – explains our Ph.D. student.

Bartosz Perz

•    three-month internship at the University of Southern California (USA).

His doctoral thesis, written under the supervision of Prof. Przemysław Kazienko (Faculty of Information and Communication Technology) investigates the recognition of emotions from physiological signals, e.g. ECG, photoplethysmograms, or sweating of the skin.

– For this purpose, I use machine learning methods, in particular deep architectures, which are able to automatically find important signal features – says Bartosz Perz, who focuses on designing such architectures, especially for the needs of personalized emotion recognition, i.e. of models that can adapt to specific persons or group of people.

He chose to apply for an internship at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and specifically at the Signal Analysis and Interpretation Laboratory (SAIL). The laboratory is led by Prof. Shrikanth Narayanan, an expert in working with physiological signals and sound, and especially in using them to recognize emotional states.

– This laboratory has the equipment necessary to perform calculations on emotion recognition, and is in the possession of data sets collected in everyday life, which enable the developing and testing of solutions aimed at applications outside the laboratory – explains our Ph.D. student.

In the USA, he will focus on developing new ways to personalize emotion recognition using machine learning models and on properly testing such models tailored to a person or a group of people.

– I believe that working with Prof. Narayanan and his team will allow me to expand in the field of signal processing and developing solutions which allow drawing conclusions from them – says Bartosz Perz.

The apprenticeships have also been awarded to WUST students from other faculties. More information about the award winners is available here.
•    Paweł Zielonka ( Faculty of Mechanical Engineering ) – one-month internship at the University of Porto (Portugal).
•    Natalia Tyszkiewicz ( Faculty of Chemistry ) – one-month internship at the University of Tartu (Estonia).
•    Vishwajeet Na ( Faculty of Mechanical and Power Engineering ) – three-month internship at Aarhus University (Denmark).
•    Mateusz Dymek ( Faculty of Mechanical Engineering ) – three-month internship at the University of Virginia (USA).

Our university received almost PLN 2 million from NAWA for the project. It includes – in addition to foreign internships – also scholarships for the best doctoral students who pursue their doctorate in cooperation with foreign institutions, organization of summer and winter schools, lectures by foreign scientists or the organization of new courses. The total budget of the project is PLN 2.2 million.

This is another activity aimed at improving the academic mobility of young researchers at Wrocław University of Science and Technology. Their stay in teams of renowned scientists is also intended to attract these often leading research units to a long-term cooperation in fields and topics complementary to those that our researchers deal with at Wrocław University of Science and Technology.