AFAM - Blog / News

Details: Published: 01 February 2019

How did you come to the US- why and when?

I arrived in San Francisco on January 12^th 2019 with my spouse, Cécile. For the moment we are planning to stay in SF one year. My spouse is starting a postdoctoral fellowship in psychology, in San Francisco, at SKERI (Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute). So, in 2019, I took an unpaid leave of absence to come to SF with her. I have applied for a US work permit and hope to get it quickly. I would love to find a job linked to the maintenance or investment projects, as it is how my career started and is what I like doing. I am also ready to work in any other field if I have an interesting opportunity, as this year I am open to try something new.

Tell us about your career path and area of expertise today. How did it come about?

In France, I have worked for 7 years at ArcelorMittal in Dunkerque, a big factory of 2500 employees - which produces steel coils from iron ore and coal. I spent these 7 years in a Central Maintenance Department. During the first four years, I led maintenance projects and I implemented 5 numerical control machine tools for our workshop.

When I found out that our mechanical workshop manager is leaving the company, I applied for this position. I was young and it was a challenging position as the job implied managing 100 people, but it worked out. So for the past 3 years, I was responsible for the site mechanical workshop, which main mission was to repair mechanical parts for the production facilities.

My area of expertise is the maintenance strategy, the mechanical repairs (including machining and welding), and I have a good experience of team and project management.

How did being a Gadz’Arts help you in your everyday tasks and team management?

Gadz network was very helpful! In ArcelorMittal, we were a good team of Gadz’Arts seeing each other at work and spending time outside of work together. Thanks to my network, I knew some maintenance managers who later became my friends. It helped communicate faster.

What is the best advice someone ever gave you? Why?

“Set your objective. If you have an objective, work hard for it, you will manage to achieve it”. This is pretty much what my best friend said to me when I was following preparatory classes. The first semester, I was ranked in the second half of the class, as I was not working enough. My friend talked to me about Arts et Métiers engineering school, and this is how I started working for this goal, and was 1^st of the class after that for 2 years.

What is your favorite way to spend your free time (hobbies, weekend activities)? Tell us about places, activities you have discovered in SF and surroundings.

My favorite activity is hiking, especially in the mountains. The last big hike I did was in Switzerland: “Le tour des dents du midi” in 4 days. I also enjoy biking, running.

In France, I often played tennis and squash.

I also love playing music. I have been playing the saxophone for 16 years, and the guitar - for 5 years.

A place I really like in the SF Bay Area is Marin Headlands, especially by bike. I bought a used bike and like to explore the area going down from Hawk Hill to Point Bonita Lighthouse. I hope to discover a lot of new places I will enjoy here in San Francisco.

Thank you, Pierre-Edouard, for sharing with AFAM!

On the picture: Pierre-Edouard with his wife Cécile

Details: Published: 14 January 2019

Georgia Institute of Technology (GT) has a really nice campus. For a French student, it is so different than what we are used to. The best place on campus is definitely Tech Green, which is a nice place in the middle of the campus where people gather, eat or relax. It is really cool to stop there at noon and have your lunch under the sun.

Beyond that, another place that you can’t miss is the CRC, the Campus Recreational Center! There, you can run, swim or climb in an amazing facility. And the swimming events of the 1996 Olympics took place here.

Swimming poll at the CRC

Also, you can’t miss a football game at Bobby Dodd Stadium! Football here is a religion and people gather hours before the game with friends and families.

Photo: Georgia Tech football game at Bobby Dodd Stadium

But the campus is one thing. The city of Atlanta has plenty other places to show!

To be continued....

Details: Published: 04 January 2019

This year, I am studying Electrical Engineering & Computer Science in a one-year Master of Engineering program at UC Berkeley. This program combines technical courses and leadership ones as well as mixing them in a year-long capstone project. Mine was about autonomous driving, meaning we have to work on a car in order to allow it to drive by itself. Thus, this project is about robotics, sensors, controls and machine learning, which are the classes I took in parallel.

When I first arrived, what was very striking was how huge the university is compared to what we've been used to in our engineering schools. Indeed, 40 000 students are enrolled at UC Berkeley in very diverse departments.

The best class I took in the Fall semester is, without doubt, the Introduction to Machine Learning, which is basically a mathematics class I was very glad to study again, especially in a very applied context rather than a theoretical one. Classes are also taught very differently, mostly because of the number of students. Every class is composed not only of some teachers but of a group of a dozen Teacher Assistants, which are currently enrolled students who often aced the class in a previous semester. Every week, these TA give Office Hours, during which students can ask questions about the class material or the current homework. They also teach during Discussions, which is a review of the previous week's material in small groups to make sure the students understood it and to go over some exercises.

Moreover, even though the amount of in-class time is very small compared to what we have back in France, the out of class workload is significant and we learn a lot from weekly homework.

All in all, this year starts very well and I'm already starting to feel that one year is definitely not enough to experience everything the campus has to offer.

Pictures taken on Berkeley campus and in SF: