I have been offered a job as a Research Scientist at BAe Systems and I have accepted the offer. I personally owe my highest gratitude to you for all your efforts!

I feel ViBOT has been one of the best choices I have made. The program has given me an opportunity to interact with the best. I remember my first day at the induction, with a nervous heart and thousands of miles away from my friends, I kick start a new journey making new friends and preparing myself. ViBOT has given me the opportunity to travel, live and study with people all around the world. This unique effort adds five stars to this program. ViBOT helped me to orchestrate my dissertation thesis and in a short amount of time I found a job with one of the leading technological driven company. I owe my highest gratitude to the teachers. Their never ending patience, willingness to solve our problems related to travel, visas and accommodation is remarkable. I consider myself fortunate to have met so many different people on this program in the last two years with a sole purpose to learn and share.

Puneet Chhabra

It was a challenging and awesome experience to be the first graduates from the ViBOT, one of excellence programs from Erasmus Mundus Masters. During these two years of study, we did not only gained knowledge and strength from our research modules but we also learnt many things that would not found in other classrooms. I have met good friends here and had a very good time.

Another key benefit of ViBOT is languages and culture exchanges among three different countries (UK, Spain, and France) where we lived in, as well as multi-cultural exchange from our international classmates. The program also provided us a good reputation to ease the higher education and job opportunities. Besides that, the grant itself and consortiums settlement allowed us to easily travel around and discover European lifestyles. Lastly, I would like to thank also European commission, first batch ViBOT friends, colleagues, teachers, and all ViBOT program staffs for such an impressive experience and your kind assistance


Intuon Lertrusdachakul

From my early days of my Master\'s in Computer Application in India I was motivated to do research in the domain of Image Processing and Pattern Recognition. On receiving Erasmus Mundus scholarship for Master\'s in Computer Vision and Robotics (VIBOT) in the year 2007, I was in cross roads as I was on the verge of registering for my PhD in a prestigious university (Jadavpur University) in India. However, weighing on pros and cons I decided to join VIBOT as I felt that a formal education in the domain of computer vision will accelerate my objective of establishing me as a researcher not to mention the unique experience that I would have in the process.

For the last two years I can describe the VIBOT experience as enthralling, rewarding and exhaustive at the same time. VIBOT fulfilled my objective of having a formal education in the domain of computer vision. The course was exhaustive with high standard and gave a good overview of the state of the art technologies related to computer vision and robotics. The course provides confidence to potential researcher to carry out independent research.

However, the experience of studying in three different countries with diverse cultural and social structure was unique. Not to mention that the group itself was made up of students from fifteen countries with diverse cultural background. This gave us the opportunity of sharing our culture and celebrating various cultural occasions together. Painstaking and patient effort put on by our local culture teachers helped us to develop our social skills. This made us more presentable to the locals and gave us much needed confidence to mix and mingle with them. Sometimes, I feel this was equally if not more important than our course to thrive and be fruitful in this global village. Learning Spanish and French to communicate with local people developed our language skills. I believe that combination of language skills, social skills and the course that we have studied for the last two years have given us a distinctive advantage in the domain of computer vision and robotics in both academic and industrial sector. This has been proved as many of our batch mate has been given research positions in different research labs in Europe, Australia, and USA. Many have found placements in industrial sector of their desire. My desire to do my research in the domain of medical image analysis has been fulfilled. I have secured a PhD position in the domain of cancer image analysis. This will be a collaboration program between the two partner university in VIBOT, University of Bourgogne and University of Girona. I would like to thank everyone involved with VIBOT for their wonderful support, encouragement and the numerous troubles they took in solving our problems related to finance, accommodation, visa and residence permits. Thank you all.


Soumya Ghose

I am very greatful for getting the chance of being one of the students. As I have told you in the induction week, I have already started my PhD in Texas Tech University under Dr. Sarraf. So far, I am doing the litrature review on \"Topic Modelling for images\" and taking courses.

When I look backwards, I can not belive how much the VIBOT program has shaped me academically as well as mentally. Honestly speaking, I am now very confident to try any recent approach from the journals and to understand quickly on the area of Computer Vision. As always, you will understand what you had on your hand when you missed it. Now, I am very thankful for organizing such courses which are all based on the state-of-art applications and researches.

I hope all the other VIBOTians are having the same feeling and VIBOT was , is, and will be our biggest spot in our life.

Mesfin Adane Dema

Right now, I\'m doing a project related to Underwater Robotics for a private firm here in India. It is related to a government project. I can thank the Universities of Girona and Heriot Watt for their help in training me for this! :) I really feel blessed for this oppurtunity. However, this is only a 3 - 4 month project. By which time, I hope to have a PhD in one of the following fields:

My VIBOT experience:

My VIBOT experience can be summed up in three major headings: Interesting projects, Good professors, Fun in different places and travelling to different parts of the country.

When I say interesting projects, I mean the small projects which were part of each course (Pascal project in SSI, Webots in Autonomous Robotics, Lab work with really interesting robots in Fundamentals of Robotics, Prostate Cancer detection in Medical Imaging, Second life project in Machine Learning) as well as individual projects (for me masters and my internship in Girona)... Fun times included visitng the different places in the country as well as playing music in different bands!!!

I can never forget the people involved most importantly. It will always occupy a special place in my life.

Shanker Keshavdas

I am currently work for Intel as a Product Engineer, the main resposibility is taking care of CPUi\'s production.

Very luckily, I found this pretty good job within 10 days after I back home this summer, the same time as the worst world economic years. To think back, why the employers are interested about me? I always trust this two years VIBOT experince gives me a great advantage which distinguishes me from thousands of other candidates: high education standard in computer and robotics fields, global minds and languges skill as well as the good motivation and willings to success which the VIBOT has gave me, made me a right person for the industrials.

Thanks for the VIBOT program, and thanks to Fabrice, father of VIBOT!

Harley Huang

The VIBOT programme is a great asset to my personal and academic profile. The programme was enriching in terms of real-life experiences and exceptional skills in Vision and Robotics. Personally, I was able to explore cultures from three different countries and communities not forgetting interacting with my fellow students from all continents. The three Universities involved in the programme offered world class learning and research environments not forgetting exceptional programme organisation and co-ordination offered by the University of Burgundy. Infact, after finishing the two year Msc programme, I was offered a PhD studentship in NeuroImaging by the Scottish Imaging Network (www.sinapse.ac.uk) under the Centre for Neurosciences at the University of Dundee-Scotland.

Benson Irungu

I finished internship with Toshiba and I am taking a month and a half break in my country. I am looking forward to do a PhD sometime in January. VIBOT was excellent. I got a life time experience from high level education in computer vision, cultural exposure, introduction to French and Spanish languages. It offered me the opportunity to work with people of different cultural and linguistic background. I experienced an exceptionally welcoming and friendly professors through out the two year study. Also, gave me the opportunity to meet commercial companies and research institutions beyond the horizon of VIBOT.

Above all, I want to mention the exceptional coordination and support rendered by the VIBOT coordinators in the three institutions in all aspects. It gives me great pleasure to advertize VIBOT wherever I go and whoever I meet. Definetly will keep this up.

Last ,but by no means least, specially thanks goes to Professor Fabrice Meriaudeau for EVERYTHING he has done and made VIBOT such a life time experience.

Fitsum Reda

I am a VIBOT second generation student from India. I was a lecturer back in India in an engineering college. My areas of teaching were computer graphics and multimedia and operating system concepts. My research interest was in the field of image processing and was planning to pursue a part-time PhD along with the lecturer-ship. Fortunately, I came to know about Erasmus Mundus (EM) Masters from my cousin who got selected in EM Master\'s in Media and Communication. When I went back to check the EM Master\'s website VIBOT (Vision and Robotics), \'VOILA\'!

The course structure was exactly framed according to my research interests. VIBOT is a master\'s course in the specialized domain of Computer Vision and Robotics. The course gave me a formal exposure to the principal concepts of image processing, pattern recognition and robotics concepts, which can be applied in any area of computer vision (industrial, biomedical, satellite, etc).

VIBOT provided an opportunity to break from my shell and sense the world around. We had students in our batch from 13 different countries and the master\'s was conducted in three different countries in Europe. We exchanged a variety of social and cultural aspects with our friends as well as enjoyed the festivals of Scotland, Catalunya (Spain) and France.

To summarize, I would say VIBOT was a great experience in terms of learning, enjoyment and fun and it has exposed us to a great standard of education compared to any general master\'s degree. I am now pursuing my PhD in medical imaging in collaboration with the two partner universities of the VIBOT consortium (Universit de Bourgogne and Universitat de Girona). These two years of VIBOT pushed me towards my goal.


Jhimli Mitra

I came to the MSc Vibot program after a bachelor where I got \"introduced\" to computer vision. The ViBot program attracted me by the fact that it takes place in an international environment with 3 different European universities and with students from all over the world. This is, in my opinion, the real strength of the MSc! I got the chance to be part of a program which provides the opportunity to learn attend seminars, use cutting-edge research tools and enjoy a placement in a laboratory from their world-wide research networks.

In all honesty, courses have been tough sometime but in the end it was a great experience with a real sense of friendship and mutual help within the students.

The skills, that I have gained, provide me a solid foundation that I\'m currently using for my PhD research.

So completing the Master ViBot was the best decision I have made in my academic career. It definitely fulfils my expectations for the quality of the courses and the great atmosphere among the students.

I often say it, but definitely mean that I would recommend MSc ViBot without a doubt to anyone interested in computer vision and robotics.

Romuald Jolivot

Now I am a PhD student in Computer Vision Centre of University Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain.

VIBOT master was simply great ! It provided me with solid knowledge, great opportunities and amazing experience of travelling around Europe. I enjoyed every moment of vibotian life :)

Nataliya Shapovalova

I finished internship with Toshiba and I am taking a month and a half break in my country. I am looking forward to do a PhD sometime in January.

VIBOT was excellent. I got a life time experience from high level education in computer vision, cultural exposure, introduction to French and Spanish languages. It offered me the opportunity to work with people of different cultural and linguistic background. I experienced an exceptionally welcoming and friendly professors through out the two year study. Also, gave me the opportunity to meet commercial companies and research institutions beyond the horizon of VIBOT.

Above all, I want to mention the exceptional coordination and support rendered by the VIBOT coordinators in the three institutions in all aspects. It gives me great pleasure to advertize VIBOT wherever I go and whoever I meet. Definetly will keep this up.

Last ,but by no means least, specially thanks goes to Professor Fabrice Meriaudeau for EVERYTHING he has done and made VIBOT such a life time experience.

Fitsum Reda

After finishing my Bachelor degree from National University of Science & Technology (NUST) Pakistan, I immediately started working in industry, but it has always been clear to me that I have to look for an opportunity to go for further studies and it was my wish to go abroad for that. I heard about VIBOT master programme from my senior and I thought to apply for this course in 2006 and was lucky enough to get selected. My batch was first promotion of VIBOT Master Programme.

At first instance, it seems quite interesting to study in three different countries, but was little bit conscious as well to get adjusted in different places in short time. Partially confused but enough confident to meet the challenges, I came to France to join the course. Today, I would say that this period came out to be an exceptional experience in my life; no doubt that studying in Europe has contributed a lot to broaden my vision to see different aspects of life and in achieving personal and professional goals. I am a lot more confident person now, who is not at all afraid to take initiatives.

The most important thing, I enjoyed during this course was the learning in diverse teaching environments and interaction with the people from different cultural background and countries, which results in giving an opportunity to make new friends all around the globe.

Jalil Bushra