Emir A.
"I have always been fascinated by the potential of AI to transform and enhance healthcare, and this placement has allowed me to work directly in the field, gaining hands-on experience."
Placement company
National Physical LaboratoryDescribe your placement experience.
My placement was undertaken at the National Physical Laboratory, located in Teddington, London. NPL is the national measurement standards laboratory of the United Kingdom, and is one of the oldest metrology institutes in the world.
I worked in the Data Science and AI department. The core focus area of my placement was the use of deep learning in healthcare, most notably in mammography (X-ray breast imaging). In the first half of this placement, my work consisted of evaluating style transfer models (i.e. GANs and diffusion) trained to produce synthetic mammograms. This involved conducting literature reviews and writing Python code to evaluate the generated images using image quality metrics.
"This project resulted in two conference proceedings, including my first-author paper, which I presented at the 47th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC)."
The second paper, where I was a co-author, was presented by my workplace supervisor at the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN).
The second half of my placement focused on honing my technical skills and scripting up deep learning models from scratch (i.e. autoencoders). In particular, I received intensive training in PyTorch, the primary deep learning framework currently used in both research and industry, and learnt the theory behind how deep learning works.
What were the best things about it?
One of the highlights of this placement was my participation in the 47th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC) in Copenhagen, Denmark.
EMBC is a major annual conference on medical imaging and biomedical engineering, and this year (2025) attracted nearly 3000 attendees from 71 countries around the world. Here, I presented my paper to an audience of leading experts in the “Challenges with Trustworthy AI” session. This experience taught me how to clearly communicate technical ideas, and how to design presentations in a simple but engaging way for the viewers.
"I had never presented at, nor even attended, an international conference before, and it was an amazing opportunity to engage with world-leading experts."
The conference featured talks by professors from institutions including Stanford University, University of Oxford and Imperial College London, and it was fascinating to see emerging technologies with the potential to aid clinicians and enhance disease diagnosis. This was an incredible experience, and I hope to participate in future conferences.
Emir presenting his paper to the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Copenhagen.
Over 3,000 people from 71 countries attended this year's conference.
Have your career plans been informed by your placement?
This placement has inspired me to pursue a career in academia. I am keen on pursuing a PhD, possibly continuing and expanding the work I've started here. I have always been fascinated by the potential of AI to transform and enhance healthcare, and this placement has allowed me to work directly in the field, gaining hands-on experience. I now aim to build my portfolio further by contributing to more projects, and deepen my expertise in this area through taking a PhD.
What advice do you have for students considering doing a placement?
In my opinion, a work placement is extremely important for career development and should be customary for any degree taken. It teaches you how to transfer your studies to workplace practices, and there are a wide range of skills that can be acquired, many of which are more easily attainable on the job than in university.
"My main piece of advice is to seize every opportunity that comes your way, as it might not come around again. During my time at NPL, I embraced many opportunities, and I'm extremely grateful I did, as they have now opened the door to new possibilities for my future career."
Much of my success in this placement comes from being placed in challenging situations and working my way up from the bottom. I am extremely grateful to my workplace supervisor, placement tutor, and the team at NPL and University of Surrey for making this all possible.
