SFU Computing Science Graduand Travels The World While Completing His Degree

October 03, 2022

By: Andrew Ringer

For computing science graduand Jeremy Fell, his degree allowed him to travel while also gaining the skills to succeed in his future career. This month, he graduates with a BSc from the School of Computing Science, First Class with Distinction.

During his degree, he co-authored a paper on privacy-preserving cryptography and won numerous awards, most recently receiving the Mark and Nancy Brooks Innovation Award. Despite this, the highlight of his degree was completing two separate international co-ops where he worked on research projects at two German Universities through the DAAD RISE program.

“My international co-op experiences were extremely rewarding and defining periods in my life. I was able to learn a lot, while working on interesting research projects,” says Fell.

While on these internships, he travelled Germany and neighboring countries during the weekends. He finished off his journey by backpacking around Western Europe and the Balkans.

“Travelling on a student budget can be difficult, but my international co-ops were an affordable way to achieve this, as they provided some funding for travel and living costs while abroad,” he says.

Fell acknowledges multiple courses for preparing him for his international co-ops. For his first co-op, professor Andrei Bulatov’s course on Cryptography and Cryptographic Protocols helped spark Fell’s interest in cryptography and was crucial to understanding his research project. For his second co-op, professor Ke Li’s course on Machine Learning taught him about the research areas of machine learning and artificial intelligence, which gave Fell the confidence to work on his second research project. On top of this, he also recognizes the courses that he took with professors Anoop Sarkar and Brian Fraser as preparing him for his internships.

“When I started at SFU, my perception of what computer science entailed was very narrow,” says Fell.

“As I took more courses, got involved, and learned about the vast disciplines within computer science, my interests shifted and expanded.”

Now graduating, Fell is eventually planning on completing a Master’s degree, but is first planning on gaining experience in industry. He is seeking a position as a software engineer or machine engineer, potentially abroad.

“I think anywhere there are interesting problems to solve, where solutions provide tangible positive impacts to people, I find the work compelling and rewarding.”

Read more about our outstanding CS graduands >>