I have attempted writing yearly reviews for about half a decade now. Drafts here and there, and mostly the time needed for the review escaping. As I sit to pen this down, I realise around 8% of the year is gone already. A very subtle reminder of how fast time goes. And time, really goes by fast….

Just like that, we returned from our first Euro trip on the first of January with aching bodies, empty wallets, but hearts full of new memories. It was the start of 2024, in the harsh winters of Finland, and little did I know, it would mark the beginning of a very eventful year.

I concluded the first year of my EDISS masters on a high note balancing rigorous theoretical coursework, collaborative projects and gazillions of presentations. Thereafter, I spent the summer interning at Fingletek, where I had near-total ownership of a Reinforcement Learning project focused on optimizing resources for 5G network slices. Applying RL towards solving a real world optimization problem in telecommunications was a great learning experience. Within the chaos of that internship, I also participated in three research schools across Europe: the Oxford Machine Learning Summer School (Oxford, England), the Cornell, Maryland, and Max Planck Pre-Doctoral Research School (Saarbrücken, Germany), and the Mediterranean Machine Learning Summer School (Bicocca, Milan, Italy). These experiences gave me the chance to learn from some of the brightest minds in machine learning working on the breakthroughs happening today. It was also a great opportunity to meet and connect with some of the most talented peers I’ve ever encountered. Though intimidating at times, I left each program feeling deeply inspired and grateful for the opportunity. It reminded me of the wonder and creativity of childhood “How much can we build?” and “How much can knowledge truly benefit humanity?”. Beyond just hype and demo projects, AI is a technology that has the potential of making a lot of what was previously deemed impossible, possible. While in the UK, I also visited my family there, and it was such a joy to enjoy tuwo and miyan zogale again after a very long time!

Alongside all of this, I was also working with a US company on LLM responses for code generation. I was promoted within a short period of time and was given the chance to lead a team of seven talented people from all over the world. It was challenging, but it pushed me to grow in ways I hadn’t anticipated. Diving deeper into the practical aspects of LLM training also revealed a lot of their shortcomings and the necessity of finding better ways to improve their performance. In September, I began my second year of EDISS, focusing on CV & Robotics in Spain—finally making a childhood dream of studying robotics a reality. Robotics is really cool and with the advancements in perception, intelligence and control, I believe it will definitely be the next technological frontier.

Towards the end of the year in December, I completed the Zad Academy Diploma in Arabic and Islamic Studies, after two years. Not long after, I was also accepted to the Pi School of AI Fellowship in Rome, Italy, as one of the top engineers worldwide. To cap off the year, I took a second Euro trip, visiting the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, bringing the total number of countries I’ve visited to 15. Looking back, it feels nothing short of extraordinary.

But amid all the highs, lies the challenges. The summer was one of the most intense periods of my life. Balancing an internship, a remote job, and attending demanding summer schools at the same time tested my limits. In that time, I also missed weddings, family gatherings during Eid, and the sounds of tricycles in the busy streets of Kano. It’s a reminder of how life can hold conflictig emotions, all at the same time - the duality of the human experience. And in the end, what we can do is maximise the opportunities we’ve been afforded with while praying for the opportunity to make up for the moments we missed.

This year has been filled with mostly educational and professional pursuits. Some goals were met (most), others were not (few) and that’s okay. We are only human, and ultimately, it is He who wills. This year was largely about personal growth, but for the coming year, perhaps something different.

Finally, I received one of the most heartbreaking news ever while I was in Nottingham: my grandfather passed away. It struck me deeply, as he was one of my greatest supporters. The last time I saw him, he gave me a copy of Hisnul Muslim and asked me to hold on to its prayers. That was who he was: a man of God. He never missed a prayer in congregation and visited the Prophet any chance he got. May Allah have mercey on him and grant him Jannatul Firdaus. Ameen.