Over the winter break, I spent a month on the US East Coast — the first half in Cambridge, Boston, and the second in New York City. While in Boston, I travelled to many places in the City, and I had the chance to attend physically on campus for the MIT’s Introduction to Deep Learning (6.S191) course. It was one of the most engaging short courses I’ve attended. There were a few hands-on labs, one about building RNNs for music generation, one on facial recognition biases, and one on fine-tuning LLM. It was a great refresher and broad overview of key deep learning concepts. The video and slide materials can be found here and the repo for the lab materials.
What made my trip more meaningful, were the people I met on the campus. Allen, William, Charles and Roberto. Conversations with these amazing people flowed from AI’s potential to global shifts in tech and society.
New York brought a different kind of energy. I took the Amtrak train down from Boston, and stayed for a week around Times Square. From the subway rides to fast-paced streets, I caught a glimpse of how finance, culture, and innovation collide. I met Lam Cao, whose journey is genuinely inspiring, and reconnected with Shi Jie to talk about the evolving AI space.
This month gave me a deeper perspective on how people live, think, and build with technology. It was a reminder that learning doesn’t just happen in classrooms, but in every conversation, city, and connection. The US left a strong impression on me with its openness to ideas, the ambition in its people, and the sheer pace at which things move.