I might drive you around one day!

[mike_2000_17]

That's right! One day you might buy a car equipped with several autonomous driving features, maybe even door-to-door autonomy, and guess what? A part of me might be driving you around that day. I recently accepted an offer to join the autonomous driving systems team at Bosch's Research and Technology Center in Palo Alto, CA, as a R&D engineer working mostly on methods to plan safe and comfortable maneuvers in difficult traffic scenarios. I'm obviously super excited about this opportunity!

And by the way, I successfully defended my Ph.D. thesis yesterday! So, the usual formalities and paperwork aside (which will take a few more months), you can now call me Dr. Persson! This thing has been quite a long time in the making (4 years / 9 months, more than 5 years by the time I get the diploma), so I'm really happy that it's finally done!

If you've noticed that I've been rather absent from Daniweb lately, well, now you know why. There's just been so much to do, between preparing for my defense and making multiple trips for on-site interviews with potential employers over the past few weeks. Of course, it's not over, there are still a lot of busy days ahead, as I'm moving to Silicon Valley in three weeks. Hopefully, when things settle down again, I can start being more active on Daniweb again.

[Dani]

Absolute congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Warrens80]

He is truly worthy of title he possess both "Doctor" and the self-proclaimed "21st century Viking"

[iamthwee]

Congratulations, I've not been on a while but this is great news. I've logged on to congratulate you. Doctor, has a nice ring to it.

[Slavi]

Congratulations Mike, hard work pays back =]

[diafol]

Well done Mike. Thoroughly deserved.

[pritaeas]

Congrats dr.

[ddanbe]

Congratulations Dr. !!!

[happygeek]

Nice one doc.

Now, I've been getting these headaches...

[mike_2000_17]

Thank you all for your kind words!

Sorry about your headaches happygeek, I can't really help you with those. Except maybe by driving you autonomously to the hospital!

[vegaseat]

Congratulations!
Getting your diploma after five years and finding an interesting job, nice work!

[Reverend Jim]

Awesome opportunity. We just spent 8 hours driving to the cottage and we were both wishing we had a self-driving van. Congratulations on the PhD. It's well deserved.

[Ene Uran]

Swell job!

Are the driving skills of the software only as good as the skills of the programmer?

[Reverend Jim]

Getting your diploma...

FYI, in Canada a diploma is issued when you graduate from a community college, sometimes in two years. Mike has earned his PhD which is orders of magnitudes more difficult. First you get your degree. As I recall, an Engineering degree is four years. Then you do a masters (let's say one year), followed by a PhD which can be multiple years.

[diafol]

Yep agree. I did a diploma in a year while doing my phd (uk). it was not taxing.

[mike_2000_17]

FYI, in Canada a diploma is issued when you graduate from a community college, sometimes in two years.

And FYI, in Quebec, we call those "certificates", and we don't have community colleges.

Mike has earned his PhD which is orders of magnitudes more difficult.

Orders of magnitude is putting it mildly. ;)

You warm up by taking the most advanced graduate courses your university has to offer, i.e., the few courses that can still teach you something you don't know. Then, you spend a while studying the bleeding edge of research. Then, you spend a few years doing things that no one else has done before, creating the new bleeding edge of research, meanwhile trying to convince everyone that what you're doing is worth doing. And finally, take a few experts out of about two dozens in the world that actually can understand what you've done, and convince them that your work is worthy of a PhD degree.

Quite a step up from undergraduate studies, where all you need to do is keep your head down, hand in your assignments and pass your finals. If a PhD is the main course, undergrad is the appetizer.

As I recall, an Engineering degree is four years.

It is. But also, Quebec education system has one more year total before starting university (6 primary + 5 secondary + 2 cegep = 13 years total), which means that any international or canadian from outside Quebec has to do an additional year to get up to the same level as the Quebecois freshmen. So, for them, here, an engineering degree is 5 years. Most northern European countries also have 5 years engineering degrees. By contrast, I know some U.S. universities that give 3 years engineering degrees, and I can tell you that those degrees are a complete joke.

[Slavi]

In Denmark you can do bachelors and masters together, that is 5 years. Though, what I did was I did a 'diploma' engineer, which was 3 and a half years (highly practical + a whole semester internship in a company) and then master's degree that is 2 years

[HiHe]

A true hero of DaniWeb!

[<M/>]

Congrats man! Glad you are coming to California!