Meet Bryan

Bryan Chen

Postgraduate Certificate in Information Technology and Master of Information Technology

Before I began my postgraduate study, I worked as a TV journalist on one of the Asian channels. I was interested in how the algorithm and technology behind the news feed works and I hope one day I can be involved in this field to improve news quality.

I chose the University of Auckland because I did my four years of undergraduate study here, so it felt very familiar for me. The Master of Information Technology also gives people like me, who have no computer science background, the opportunity to take courses that are usually only offered to postgraduate Computer Science students.

I liked the fact that we were able to take some courses along with other postgraduate Software Engineering and Computer Science students. This helped me to evaluate my own standard and urge myself to improve. The interactions with other students also helped me to broaden my scope of the field beyond my own study within the limited period of time.

I hoped this qualification would help me to start my career in IT and it did. I’m currently working as a junior artificial intelligence (AI) engineer. I am focused on machine learning and the AI field – I’m especially interested in the field of natural language programming (NLP). Now I hope this qualification will also help me to open up other potential postgraduate study opportunities.

I think nowadays there are a lot of online resources that you can learn from. But what the University of Auckland provides is an environment to meet like-minded people. Looking back now, I feel I grew the most during my involvement with the Data Science Club, doing group projects and participating in the Hackathon.