As one reads through a book, each page unfolds new stories, details and lessons. So let me share about a new page in my life. It has been a year since I have last written here. In this year quite a number of things happened: graduation from PhD program, joining a university as a lecturer and starting my own research and social projects.
I have submitted my dissertation titled 'A Study of Randomness and Groups using Finite Automata' in May and defended it around end of August. So on 30 of September National University of Singapore (NUS) has conferred me the doctorate degree. Strangely, I did not feel any surge of emotions at that time. People we congratulating me with this 'achievement', however the degree itself meant quite a little to me. I was happy to contribute a knowledge discovered during my PhD rather that with PhD itself. I felt that I have really contributed something to the society, so it was one of the few times I kind of liked my work.
In June 2018 I have joined Suleyman Demirel University (SDU) as a lecturer. I have loved my new workplace. People seem to be enthusiastic and passionate about their work. Since the university is very new, there are many things to be done, so I am happy to be a part of this process of building the educational and academic foundation of SDU. In September I have began teaching 'Introduction to Algorithms' course. It seems that teaching this course was a valuable learning experience to me. Before I used to be a teaching assistant at NUS, which meant quite a little responsibility. However teaching the whole course in SDU I had to learn the skills of coordinating the work of multiple people, organizing study process and developing a pleasant learning environment. By letting students to engage in team projects, students could explore various important algorithms which have changed the world. I was surprised with students' ability to understand and implement relatively complex algorithms and using quite a modern frameworks in doing their work. In the end, I feel proud of the students' journey and hard work they put into the course.
I have started several projects such as 'Neural Nets as Morphisms' and a few Machine Learning based projects. The interesting thing is that these projects have almost nothing to do with Automatic Randomness, the theme of my PhD work. I somehow realized that I am no longer interested in Automatic Randomness. I have given 2-3 years of my life to this topic, however a new directions are lying ahead of me. For one I became quite interested in Applied Category Theory and Machine Learning. So I was trying to carry several theoretical and applied research projects in these directions. One thing I realized is both excitement and difficulty of carrying one's own research projects. Though I was quite used to be researching on my own, having almost no one to consult makes it a bit harder to continue one's research. On the other hand, there is an immense possibilities of reaching out to various people around the world. Probably, I need to tap into this resource.
This has been a rather long post, partly due to a long break that took place. I hope to write here more often.
