Postgraduate profile: MSc artificial intelligence

Noel Welsh studied an MSc in artificial intelligence and a PhD in computer science, and went on to set up his own IT business.

During my undergraduate studies I'd become used to constantly learning something new and I missed this when I began working full time in software development. I began researching postgraduate study. At the time I was living in Australia, but I hold UK citizenship and wanted to live overseas for a while. I searched online for the top-rated computer science (CS) departments in the UK and accepted the University of Edinburgh's offer of a place as I was impressed with their facilities. Having completed my masters, I decided to go on to do a PhD specialising in an aspect of AI: reinforcement learning.  Reinforcement learning is the problem of choosing the best sequence of decisions given infrequent rewards.  It's a difficult problem, which also makes it fun!

Being a PhD student

As an Australian, I still qualified as an international student, despite being a British citizen. I couldn't afford the international fees and worked for three years to meet the criteria for being a 'home' student. Completing a PhD in CS is very different from studying it as an undergraduate and even as a masters student. Your time is unstructured and your work largely unsupervised, and this can be difficult to get used to when you're used to following a clear programme of learning. I found it important to be self-disciplined and create my own working routine.

On a day-to-day basis I do a lot of reading and then make changes to computer programs before checking the results. While the emotional strain of doing a PhD shouldn't be underestimated, contributing to a cutting-edge area of CS is exciting. I'm more than halfway through my thesis now and I should be finished on schedule at some point next year.

Juggling study and self-employment

As well as finishing off my PhD, I've set up my own IT business with a friend. Our work centres around developing software to help universities and colleges with their admissions and student administration. There have been some legal aspects to take care of, making sure that we are registered as a company so that we are not liable as individuals, but I have not done any specific career planning while at university. It can be tricky to balance the demands of work and study and have a social life as well - it needs a bit of organisation! My business partner and I usually split the work so that I do the preparatory work and my partner does a lot of the coding, although this will change when I finish my studies.

Knowing what you want from your studies

It's vital to be very clear about what you want from your PhD. I applied for it thinking that I would go into research and, to be honest, I don't need a PhD to run my own business. However, doing the PhD has given me lots of life skills that are useful for entrepreneurship: good time management, self-motivation and problem solving  Plus, being able to call myself a doctor will help to impress clients!

Noel studied his MSc in artificial intelligence at the University of Edinburgh and his PhD in computer science at the University of Birmingham.