BEng & BSc Computing

BEng Computing graduate, Francesco Belvedere, discusses his experience in Edinburgh, his ongoing projects, and academic achievements

I moved to Edinburgh in 2015 and have a passion for programming and solving problems with technologyComputing student, Francesco Belvedere, standing in front of a purple backdrop
I am a young Italian man who moved to Edinburgh in 2015. I have been living with my girlfriend for over 2 years. I have several passions, among which are programming, kickboxing, playing piano and travelling. Travelling allows me to experience foreign technology and public services, which I always look with a critical eye. I try to uncover problems with the aim to develop technology that can make the life of the public easier, be that securing a parking spot or finding water from a tap - the two most critical things during a summer in Rome! 
The course at Edinburgh Napier seemed to encompass a great variety of fields, from Multi Agent Systems to web development
The course at Edinburgh Napier seemed to encompass a great variety of fields, from Multi Agent Systems to web development. Many of these modules, some of which were optional, looked very interesting. Moreover, this gave me the opportunity to gain an understanding of the many areas of programming and make a careful choice about where to specialise. 
I have a passion for knowledge and experience
My biggest passion is gaining lots of experience, learning and succeeding in my projects. For example, I like to work in teams and share my knowledge, and I like others to share their knowledge with me. I like the intellectual challenge and that is what drives me, be that learning a new difficult piano piece or kickboxing with someone more experienced than me.
I want to make the world a better place than I found it
I am motivated by seeing the appreciation of my hard work from my peers. I want to surprise and make an impact. This is something I achieved for my final project, which was proposed for the Scottish Engineer of the Year Award, and for my university group project, where some of my collaborators referred to me as an exceptional mentor. 

My final aim is to leave the world a better place than I found it, which means I want to get as much experience as possible to then change the world. 
I see myself as a world-changer because of the exciting things I鈥檓 working on in the field on machine learning
Yes, I do see myself as a world-changer. For example, when I led my team to the victory of the 鈥済roup project of the year鈥 award. For this project, we created a working prototype of an event discovery platform based on the user鈥檚 feelings and interests. I worked as a project manager, was in charge of devOps, and worked on the front and back end development. My main tasks were coordinating the team, scheduling, structuring meetings, writing documentation, and guiding on web development. I also had the opportunity to mentor another student 1-on-1 on web development, which was an enlightening experience. It feels good to have successfully led the team to win an award together, and although that required some sacrifice from my side, I鈥檓 glad I did it.  

Another example is the platform we are building at work for GP practices, which will make doctors' and nurses鈥 patients easier to manage.  

Furthermore, my dissertation project gained traction and research was extended. Here, I enabled a NAO robot to recognise objects through the computer vision algorithm Siamese Networks, that I implemented in my dissertation. The novelty of the project comes from the fact that the robot only needs to see an object once to 鈥渓earn鈥 it. This makes the system flexible in situations where data is scarce, for example in the case a robot needs to collaborate with a human to complete a task and does not know the new object brought into the environment.   

As a practical example, a generic robot programmed to search and pass objects to a human collaborator could be installed in a vehicle repair shop. The human could teach the robot what new tools look like simply showing them once. When asked, the robot could then be able to handle the learnt object to the human. Obviously, the ability to learn from only one example could be useful in a variety of domains.  

A paper is about to be published about this project and be freely available, as well as all the software involved. It is hoped that the public release of the project will inspire the research community to advance in the areas of one-shot learning for computer vision, perhaps developing on my base project. The advance of one-shot learning will minimise the resources spent on collecting and labelling huge amounts of data needed for current object recognition. 
I started alone in Edinburgh and have since achieved academic excellence
I started all alone in Edinburgh and I sustained myself through working from the very first month to this point in time. I reached academic excellence and was awarded a class medal. I鈥檓 also mentoring some younger developers at work which is extremely rewarding for me personally. 
My biggest challenge has been my managing my workload and timings
My biggest challenge thus far was to manage my life and at the same time the workload coming from university. I was ambitious and working on a complex final year project which required much time. Often, I had to stop and think about planning the next steps. Overall, learning to plan one鈥檚 own time is the biggest takeaway from this experience that let me overcome that tough period. 
My aspiration is to start my own software development company
My aspiration is to start my own software development company where I can develop services for the public to make everyone鈥檚 lives easier, and in the future manage and lead my own team. I want to create a different environment where people are free to learn and are motivated to grow professionally and personally. 
Life in Edinburgh as a student is great
Life in Edinburgh as a student is great. There are plenty of places where you can go to eat and have fun, and it is very easy to meet new people through activities and sports. I liked Merchiston campus, where I was based. In the city it is easy to find a job to sustain yourself, I must have changed 6 or 7 jobs during my 4 years here.  

Edinburgh offers spectacular sightseeing; it is very good for nature lovers and also to spend some time with friends and family. 
My advice would be to not be afraid if you have no previous experience in the field
My advice to someone considering the course would be to get the most out of it, get as much experience as you can, interact with your peers, make friends because you will build connections that last and perhaps grow into professional ones. Try to excel in everything you do because the experience you get doing that will change the person you are.   

Another piece of advice would be to not be afraid if you have no previous experience in the field. Before starting the course, I had never seen a line of code but now I am a fully confident programmer. 
Next for me is to get more experience, travel, and keep developing my projects

What鈥檚 next for me is to get some more work experience, travel the world, keep working with the university as a researcher, and develop my own online services. The robot project will likely be continued by another Napier student, for which I will be glad to act like a mentor and give guidance. I am also currently working on a Machine Leaning website that will include the information gathered in my dissertation and an explanation of the theory behind the algorithm I implemented. This has the aim to make such knowledge as accessible as possible, gather interest from the research community and collect their feedback.

Ben studied BSc Computing at Edinburgh Napier and was able to shape his future with a programme that is designed for flexibility. Read more to find out what Ben discovered throughout his journey.

Ben BSc ComputingI knew that I wanted to study computing. 

The problem for me is that I didn't really have a great background in mathematics. I was always quite weak at maths, but I knew that I wanted to work with computers and obviously maths is an important factor for computing in general. I searched around for different courses across Scotland and found a course called Creative Computing at Edinburgh Napier. When I started on the course, I quickly realised that it would be possible for me to move and transition courses to find something within computing that suited me. I decided that I wanted to focus on the computing side rather than design, so I transitioned quite easily into computing during my first year. I was still able to keep some of the design aspects as well, which were very important to me. 

It was easy to shape my direction. 

When I first started at Edinburgh Napier, I didn't have this exact idea of which route I wouldn't take, and I didn't know what job I would find myself in. The course is quite malleable however, and I found the lecturers and the support staff really helpful in pushing that forward and giving me all sorts of opportunities. I initially sat down with Jodie, who told me a little bit about what each course entailed and the sort of opportunities that can be gained from taking one or the other. I think there's something nice about that felt very human, felt better than some of the ways that I've been sort of treated at other universities in my application process.  

You're introduced to these different ideas and ways of thinking. 

One of the first modules that I took centred around creating this business idea, which was surprising to me. I thought, 鈥淗ang on a minute. I'm taking a computing course. Why am I being faced with a business-related module?鈥 But what that showed me is that computing is much more than just that hard science and mathematics. It involves communication, talking to others and coming up with your own ideas. I believe what鈥檚 beautiful about computing is that you can try to solve a problem that you have in your everyday life, so there's a lot of planning and deliberation that goes into that. You can meet a lot of really good people too.  

I think in the future there's going to be a higher demand for this sort of work. 

Something I discovered while studying at Edinburgh Napier is that you're not restricted to one particular pathway, and you can work across disciplines. You can combine a little bit more of your creativity with your logical side of your course. I've seen from my third-year work experience at Edinburgh Napier, that there is this trend towards engineers that have a better understanding of the product design, the user interface design, and can converse with UI designers to better incorporate the vision that they're trying to create.