Portrait - Mariam Gedenidze in exchange at Nanyang Technological University

Currently enrolled in her third year of École Polytechnique's Bachelor's degree, Mariam Gedenidze (BX2023) comes from Tbilisi, Georgia, but started to go out to the wide world very early: At 17, she won a scholarship during her final year of high school, which enabled her to move to the UK, where she completed her A-levels in Mathematics and Physics at Worksop College.

Fascinated by the STEM field (Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), Mariam Gedenidze was eager to pursue higher education in Europe. "The Bachelor Program at École Polytechnique offered the flexibility of choosing a major after the first year, which gave me more time to think about my career plans and make more informed decisions before choosing", explains Mariam Gedenidze.

Opting for the double major in Mathematics and Economics has enabled her to deepen her knowledge in Economics while developing coding skills thanks to an additional minor in Computational Mathematics. In addition, a recent internship at Banque de France, during which Mariam Gedenidze worked on “encoding an economic indicator in the programming language R”, allowed her to put her knowledge into practice. “This experience motivated me to take more data science classes”, she relates and adds: “Currently, machine learning and its applications in Environmental and Health sciences are my main interests.”

At NTU, the fall semester started at the beginning of August, and Mariam Gedenidze has already spent the first half of her exchange semester. Among the courses she has chosen at the partner university are Statistical learning & Data mining, Complex Analysis, Artificial Intelligence, Development Economics, Environmental Economics, and Scientific Communication. “I enjoy working with local students on various projects as part of the courses. It enables me to learn about their perspective and broadens my understanding of the local culture. For example, we are working on the cost-benefit analysis of electric vehicles in Singapore as part of the Environmental economics class. While for the final year project in Machine learning, my group chose to work on predicting heart attack risk according to health attributes of individuals”, explains Mariam Gedenidze.

École Polytechnique and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) signed a new partnership agreement, enabling their undergraduate students to join the partner institution for an exchange semester. Mariam Gedenidze, who applied for an exchange semester at NTU as part of her studies in École Polytechnique’s Bachelor of Science program, is one of the first students to benefit from this opportunity.

But however enjoyable her time in Singapore, Mariam Gedenidze says she cannot wait to get back and start the final semester with the rest of her classmates at École Polytechnique. Since joining the School, she has been very involved in the student life on campus and was elected as a student representative of the Mathematics and Economics double major. So her classmates are undoubtedly looking forward to seeing her back on campus soon.

A prestigious research university in Singapore

Regularly ranked among the top 20 institutions globally, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is home to several world-class institutes: The National Institute of Education, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering. In addition, NTU’s campus is a living testbed of tomorrow’s technologies and strives for sustainability, an ambition recognized with 61 Green Mark Platinum awards for its building projects.

École Polytechnique and NTU signed the exchange agreement in 2021, but due to the Covid-19 crisis and constraints, students had to be patient before benefiting from it.