Marco Damonte

Marco Damonte (PhD 2015–2019) researched Natural Language Understanding, advancing methods for interpreting and processing human language. He is now a Machine Learning Scientist at JetBrains, working on AI-powered coding agents.

PhD start and end years	2015 - 2019

What was your PhD research about?

Natural Language Understanding.

What motivated you to undertake doctoral study?

I wanted to explore a career in research and I was eager to learn more about the field of NLP and AI.

What was a highlight (one or several) of your time as a doctoral researcher?

Presenting talks at conferences and being recognised/acknowledged by peers for my work.

What challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them?

When experiments after experiments you don't get any successful results it can be challenging to remain positive and not want to give up. You need to endure and dig deep, ask for help and mentorship. The results will arrive with hard (and smart) work eventually.

What are you doing now career-wise, and how did your PhD prepare you for it?

I'm a ML Scientist at Jetbrains, working on their coding agent. The PhD thought me how to look at a problem, plan for research roadmaps, devise experiments, evaluate the results with scientific method.

What’s one key skill or mindset you developed during your PhD that you still rely on today?

Write down clear research questions, prepare experiments that can help answer the question; draw conclusions based on the evidence from the experiments.

What advice would you give to someone considering a PhD in Informatics?

I would ask them if and why they are passionate about the subject, whether they are willing to think about that full-time (and more) for 3-4 years, knowing that they would probably have higher financial benefits from joining the workforce instead.