Ruolan
Ruolan is from China and is in a joint programme with Southeast University and KTH. She’s been doing the 4th year of her bachelor's degree in Electronics Engineering at SEU online and the first year of a master's degree in Embedded Systems here in Stockholm at the same time for the past year. She’s an illustrator for the KTH journal ‘Osqledaren’ and an enthusiast of art and travelling. She held several workshops for international students to experience Chinese festivals last year and loved embracing different cultures.
Why did you choose this master's programme at KTH?
KTH offers courses in English and is friendly to international students. I've heard that the programmes here at KTH give more space to hands-on projects, and I was looking forward to gaining more knowledge in hardware electronics; that's why I chose Embedded Systems at KTH.
What are some of your favourite courses so far?
For the first year, my favourite course was Digital Systems Design and Verification using Hardware Description Languages. It is a mandatory course for students who track Platforms and Electronics. I learned a little Verilog in my bachelor's school but hardly practised it in real projects. This course is relatively new but subtly designed. It starts with combinational and sequential logic and ends up with the fancy functions of System Verilog. During the semester, we have to do homework and lab every week - I admit that the schedule is intense – and all the homework is closely related to the new knowledge we learned this week. The best part is the labs. We started by designing some ALUs and registers and then tried to pipeline all the stages using FSM. By the time we reached the last elaboration, we had found that we almost built a CPU, and the only thing we had to do in the last lab was connect all the parts we'd done in the previous labs. This course perfectly combines knowledge with practice and gradually guides us into building a CPU using System Verilog.
How would you describe your time at KTH so far?
Vibrant and colourful. There are many student associations in KTH. As soon as I stepped onto the land of Stockholm, I felt the vitality of KTH students. THS (the student union of KTH) held hundreds of welcoming activities for new students, including hiking and campus tours where we got to know other international students and experience Swedish culture. Aside from attending courses, there are many things you can do: join a student association and organise workshops, travel up north with THS to see the aurora, go to concerts, join a research team… Everybody's making full use of their spare time creatively.
Are there any student events/associations that you enjoy and can recommend?
I am currently an illustrator at the KTH journal Osqledaren, which publishes four editions every year. I have a comic page, and sometimes, I collaborate with writers to create an illustrated article. The work is voluntary, and we sometimes have workshops where we can make sculptures and play VR sets. I have met some real talents in art and photography from different countries.
Last year, during the Nobel week, I worked as the manager of the Décor team in SNNC (Student Nobel Night Cap). It was a massive team of 500 students, and we worked day and night to decorate the Nymble student hall. It was an excellent opportunity to get to know people in different programmes.
We used to have a place called 'Mentor Space' on campus, Kista. It's an open lab for students who want to do electronic projects. I was a frequent guest of the Mentor Space and made some cool things with the 3D printer.
Except for the activities on campus, the student community where we live holds events from time to time, like barbecues and discos. I participated in a staircase art competition in the Lappis community, and they attached my painting to a vast staircase. Students from different countries also hold parties on their traditional holidays, and everybody's free to join.
What do you want to do after graduating?
I want to work as an engineer in Stockholm, but recently, I've been working on a social app project. I want to take advantage of KTH innovation – a KTH organisation where you can get entrepreneurial advice – and start my own business.