Big Hi 👋.

My story.

One of my strongest memories is associated with fear feeling. Around the age of 14, I had to decide on my future high school, I wasn’t a brilliant student in class but tried to aim high, so I applied for a nice high school. I won’t ever forget it, I am sitting with my mom in front of the high school principal and she is saying “I see that your average score isn’t sufficient”, the first thought that came up was “What an idiot I am, I waste my time doing nothing”. Then she noted “I see that in addition, you didn’t participate in Language lessons at all”, at that point I said to myself “That’s it, no second chance!”. Miracly, she decided to eliminate Language lessons from the average and congratulated me with an exception.

As it turns out, I still was a bad student, but luckily graduated high school with an average diploma. I think what most influenced my understanding regarding my abilities occurred after my recruitment. As a soldier I had to pass professional training, as I wasn’t a fighter, the training was associated with computer networks and surprisingly for me the training had to be done in English and most of the time self-learned. At that point, I realized that I had no choice but to succeed in it, recall that I had really bad grades in English, and by translating word by word and understanding sentences I gradually improved my “technical” English and was able to understand and learn the material. After passing the training, getting my Cisco certificate, and finishing my three years of military service I understood one important concept: “To learn how to swim you have to jump into the water”.

This experience empowered my self-confidence, so I decided to pursue a BSc in computer science. Since my aunt had one and she was in a highly paid position, it makes sense for me to get one too. So after the army I worked for around a year to save some money, I also took a few vacations, and in 2013 I enrolled in a university. It wasn’t the best university, but they accepted me according to my high school diploma with one condition, which was passing the pre-academic course in Math. Here I am with another challenge to face, but I remember that I wanted it and have been ready for it. So I enrolled in a Math course and magically all I was learning made some much sense and came very easily, I cloud not believe how come I am so good at it because based on my high school experience I suck at it. I remember some trigonometry association exercises, which I never could understand, suddenly I was solving them and I did them all my life, it was amazing, I was the best student in class, and very proud of myself. This leads me to the understanding of “If you want to accomplish/achieve something, you have to want it” No one can force you to do something and make it the best if you don’t want it.

Long story short, I passed the Math course with excellent grades and continued to academic studies. After three years of lectures, 32 courses, and around $30,000 in payments along with many many ups and downs, I finally made it in the top 5 best students in the cycle. Along the way, I hit it off with one of my colleagues, while being a research assistant, so I decided to pursue my M.Sc in computer science, in particular Indoor Navigation Algorithms, during which I also published my first scientific paper. In addition, my collaboration with the colleges led to starting a small startup in the drone industry. At that point, my path vision was clear, I was going to achieve my Ph.D.

Finally, I finalized my Ph.D. (vladlanda.scholar), and currently, I am writing this blog to help and share my experience and knowledge with the readers, while assisting startups seeking mathematical, algorithmic, or AI solutions.

I hope My Story motivates and encourages you to take the destiny of your life into your own hands because you are capable of changing the route you are currently on just by making a decision and pursuing it. Based on my experience I am writing this blog to help thousands and thousands of people who are willing to achieve the goals they really whats to and make their thoughts a reality.

Thank you for reading,

VLAD LANDA

Researcher, Mathematician, Developer, Blogger, and Entrepreneur.