Before becoming an ECE student at DKU, I already held a Master’s degree from Imperial College London and had worked full-time at a domestic IoT company in China. However, during my professional experience, I realized a disparity between the actual job content and my ideal career plan. The work I was doing did not effectively utilize the knowledge I had acquired during my undergraduate studies, and there was little correlation between my work and the subjects I had studied. Furthermore, the short duration of postgraduate programs in the UK resulted in compressed courses with a heavy workload, making it difficult to balance the depth and breadth of learning.

Through my work experience and postgraduate studies, I discovered my true calling: software development and becoming a software engineer. Consequently, I decided to continue my education and switch tracks, transitioning from algorithms to the software development industry. As most of my Master’s courses at Imperial College London focused on algorithms and data science, after learning about the DKU ECE program, I was captivated by the “one year in China, one year at Duke” program structure and the opportunity to obtain a Duke University degree. After carefully examining the curriculum, I found that the career orientation of the ECE program at DKU aligned perfectly with my professional development plans, leading me to submit an application to the ECE program at DKU.