Michael Allen, Cogent Computing Applied Research Centre

I started at Coventry University as an undergraduate in Computer Science. I am originally from Coventry, and as a mature student, I didn't want to travel away from my already-established life.

Coventry's Computer Science department had just received substantial funding, which provided me an extra incentive to want to study here.

During my final year of study, I was keen to get a first-class honours degree, and key to this was a high quality honours project. To this end, I became affiliated with the Cogent Computing research group during a presentation given about the group's research with pervasive computing and wireless embedded sensing.

I was incredibly impressed by the potential for novel research in the group, and subsequently joined.

Throughout my final year, I became a valuable member of the group, and got a taste of research through my lecturers and advisors (who were now my peers). I contributed to demonstrations and presentations given by the group and gained invaluable experience as a result of this.

I finished my degree with first-class honours, and was accepted directly into the MPhil/PhD program as a student with Cogent Computing. Since then, my life as a researcher has taken a path I could have never imagined.

My supervisors arranged for me to spend the summer at the University of California, Los Angeles in an internationally renowned multidisciplinary research centre. While I was there, I gained an enormous amount of experience in such a short time, and almost all of it was directly applicable to my thesis research.

I would not have had these opportunities had I not become associated with the Cogent Computing Applied Research Centre during my final year project. This allowed my supervisory team to gain confidence in me as a young researcher and provided me the support and motivation to begin my academic and research career.