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Rohith Kunnath
Rohith Kunnath

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Mentor = Teacher, supervisor, friend

Finally I am done with my Masters degree from Heriot Watt University Dubai (HW). It was one of the wise decision I took on enhancing my technical knowledge. As my bachelors was on Computer Science I was eager to learn more about the core concepts of Networking, Algorithms and data structures.

Learning is a continuous process which involves hard work, eagerness to learn new things and patience. But I always believed there should be someone who really shows you the right direction on achieving the targets. During my time at HW I was fortunate to meet a lot of technically skilled, caring and loving mentors who really wanted their students to understand what they are learning. Among them I met a great Mentor Talal Shaikh a tech enthusiast. I really wanted to thank him for guiding me in the right direction.

In this busy world, finding a mentor who spends enormous time just to understand their students and helps them to pursue knowledge by showing them the right path is really hard. He did this not to me alone but to many others as well. He will be right there in his office during holidays and post working time on weekdays always with a smile in his face.

What made me write this article is, soon after the graduation i was only able to spend few minutes with him as there are many other students waiting just to thank him. It was just like a crowded train station, students coming over hugging, shaking hands, asking for references. That point of time I understood the real meaning of the word β€˜Mentor’.

I was very fortunate to undertake my research thesis under him. The thesis was completely new to me, as it was all about Recommender Systems, Natural Language Processing, Anagrams etc. But throughout the whole period he supervised me on choosing related research papers and choosing some great reference books.

Thank you for everything Talal Shaikh. You have added many synonyms to the word Mentor in my dictionary. I really hope you will be shining light for the future graduates as well. :)

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