My experience in Diverse Intelligence Summer Institute, University of St Andrews, Scotland

Last summer (September 2018), I participated in Diverse Intelligence Summer Institute, University of St Andrews, Scotland. The goal of this DISI is to gather scholars and students working in the field of cognition and build connections. The "intelligence" includes the human brain, animal cognition, artificial intelligence and even plant intelligence. The summer school was intensive two weeks of lectures, discussions, a project and for sure fun.
During those two weeks I met scholars from my field of artificial intelligence and had new friendships with smart students from different countries. This experience opened my mind to other research work that I haven't thought about. Human and animal cognition for example is highly related to develop a machine cognition. Before this summer school, my focus was mainly on the computational side of the artificial intelligence. During and after the summer school my imagination got broader and new perspective where opened in my mind. Besides, I learned about cultures and of nations from other part of the world where I couldn't visit such as the US.
I would encourage every student to take the opportunity to participate in summer school activities as it brings a knowledge and experiences that are not found in the daily university life or even in scientific conferences. Although it was a dense course, I extremely enjoyed it with the kind organizers.