Bonaventure Dossou

What aspects of the university captured your interest and convinced you to study here?
The multidisciplinary focus, and mostly the kindness of people working there. Throughout the application process, I learned the high standard the university holds (the best private university in Germany). I also interacted with several members of the administration, who made the whole process very enjoyable. Additionally, a famous AI researcher (Dzmitry Bahdanau) was a former student at the university.

Which aspects of your studies brought you the most joy and fulfilment in your learning journey?
Being able to promote and expand the scope of my research. I have been received on many podcasts, radios, TV shows, daily newspapers, etc. This has allowed people to be more aware of my research and its importance (especially in Germany). When I got my internship to study at Mila (Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute) with Yoshua Bengio, the university was extremely supportive, including Prof Kappas and Dr. Stefan Kettemann.

What is your career highlight thus far, and what are you most proud of as a young professional?
After completing my degree, I became a PhD student at McGill University and Mila Quebec AI Institute, specializing in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) for African Languages and Healthcare.

I have received several awards like the McGill Engineering Doctoral Awards (MEDA) and been mentioned frequently in Mila’s Impact Report. I’ve won several competitions aimed at using AI to help health equity and diagnose early stages of breast cancer. I have also been on podcasts, interviewed on TV platforms, and was recently nominated for Canada's most prestigious scholarship - the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship.

I continue to publish papers, attend conferences and give scientific talks.  You can find more information about all my work on my personal website Bonaventure F. P. Dossou (bonaventuredossou.github.io). I am proud of these achievements as they’ve allowed me to meet people and share knowledge with them, mentor them, motivate them, inspire them, and impact them.

What advice would you give to the current students at Constructor University?
I always tell my peers to dream big and impact the world around them; to leave a trace, a mark. My self-created motto is "Living to be immortal" - act and change the world around us, for the better, as if it literally depended on us. There are going to be obstacles of course, but never give up.