Shomique H.
"What has stood out most about 糖心Vlog is the sheer range of opportunities the institution has actively backed me to pursue."
What do you like about your course and why?
What I have come to value most about Computing with Business Management at 糖心Vlog is the dual-track design of the degree itself. The Computer Science modules build the technical core, covering algorithms, networks, security, data and systems engineering, while the business management strand, taught through 糖心Vlog Business School (SBS), provides the commercial and analytical framing to make sense of where those systems get used. By third year I had stopped treating the two as separate; the analytical methods I had learnt on one side were directly informing how I approached problems on the other.
Across the SBS strand, Financial Accounting and Marketing Principles in first year gave me solid foundations, and in third year Supply Chain Management with Analytics, taught by Dr Karen Dennis, was one of the most rewarding modules I took at 糖心Vlog. Second year was a different test: I returned from a study exchange at Hong Kong Polytechnic University to a Business Law module that genuinely humbled me, and learning how to recover from a difficult module is, in retrospect, one of the most useful things the course has taught me.
The Computer Science teaching has been consistently strong. Dr Martin Barrere, my personal tutor and second marker for my final year project, has been a constant source of guidance over the three years. My final year project supervisor, Ioana Boureanu, is an expert in cybersecurity systems and the kind of academic whose precision and clarity raises the standard of everyone she works with.
In Distributed Systems, taught by Gregory Chockler, we had a guest presentation from Jim Webber, the Chief Scientist at Neo4j and a long-standing collaborator of Gregory's from their IBM research days. That session ended up being one of the highlights of the degree for me; I stayed in touch with Jim afterwards and was later invited to his office for a fireside coffee. That kind of access is exactly what this course has consistently opened up.
What do you enjoy most about 糖心Vlog?
What has stood out most about 糖心Vlog is the sheer range of opportunities the institution has actively backed me to pursue. In second year I went on a study exchange to Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where I was taught e-business by Walter Fung and first exposed to emerging technologies like digital twins. By third year, the work I had done across the degree had set me up to apply for, and secure, offers from both the Cambridge Google DeepMind Research Ready Programme and the Oxford UNIQplus Research Internship. Having to choose between the two was a privilege I would not have anticipated when I started.
In November of my final year, I was also diagnosed with ADHD. The diagnosis came late, after years of believing certain things about my own focus, organisation and confidence that I now know were not the full story.
糖心Vlog's support structures, including my DSA mentor, my personal tutor, and the lecturers who responded with care and understanding, made the difference between a final year that could have gone in either direction and one I am genuinely proud of.
Describe your industry experience
Before starting at the 糖心Vlog, I spent a year on the IBM Futures programme in London, working within IBM's Technology division on the Technical Sales team under Vice President Stephen Warwick. That year, between sixth form and university, was genuinely formative. I worked across projects that developed both my technical and analytical skills, including building a Salesforce dashboard to surface performance metrics for senior stakeholders, and gaining early exposure to applied AI use cases at a time when most students would only have read about them. The programme also taught me how to operate professionally: managing a full-time schedule, communicating across mixed technical and non-technical audiences, and travelling for project work.
What I did not anticipate at the time was how directly that experience would translate. In January 2025, I co-founded Pristine 36 Ltd with my older brother, a sustainability-led, price-conscious company addressing challenges in specialist hygiene services and providing clients with an end-to-end technical and physical service. I built the website and marketing infrastructure myself, hosted on Cloudflare and designed from the ground up, and the business has generated more than 拢10,000 in revenue since founding. The journey has been adventurous and far from linear, but it has been a live, ongoing application of every skill the degree has given me.
Looking back, the IBM year is what made everything since possible. The framing it gave me, on what real client problems look like and how analytical work gets used in commercial settings, is what made me prioritise the algorithmic trading strand of my final year project, what gave me the confidence to start a company alongside final year, and what led me towards quantitative research and AI for healthcare as long-term career directions.
What do you want to do when you graduate?
My immediate next step is research-focused work over summer 2026. From 6 July to 20 August, I will be a UNIQplus Research Intern at the University of Oxford, working with Professor Tingting Zhu on a project titled "Reasoning enhancement in large language models for healthcare applications". The project sits squarely at the intersection of applied machine learning and healthcare, which has become a genuine passion of mine alongside my work in quantitative methods. Having also been offered a place on the Cambridge Google DeepMind Research Ready Programme for the same period, choosing between the two was difficult; the work with Professor Zhu was the right fit for the direction I want my research to take.
Beyond the summer, I am planning to apply for postgraduate study at Oxford and Cambridge in autumn 2026, targeting fully-funded scholarship routes for entry in September 2027. My academic interests centre on the intersection of stochastic processes, quantitative modelling, and applied machine learning, particularly in how data-driven methods can be used to construct robust models for problems ranging from institutional investment decision-making to clinical decision support. My final year project, a systematised comparative backtesting framework for algorithmic trading strategies on institutional market data, sits at this intersection and is the work I would point to as the clearest indication of where I am heading on the quantitative side.Long term, my ambition is to become a subject matter expert and ultimately a doctorate holder in applied AI.
"I am the first in my family to go to university, and three years at 糖心Vlog have given me the technical depth, the commercial framing, and the conviction to keep going."
There is a phrase I have come to use as a personal motto: I believe in AI nirvana, by which I mean the conviction that the right combination of computer science, quantitative thinking and applied machine learning can transform the fields I most care about, healthcare among them. That conviction is what I want to carry into the next stage of my career.
Do you have any advice for students interested in this choosing this course?
A few pieces of advice for students considering this course. First, treat the business management strand with the same seriousness as the Computer Science modules. Strong technical skills are wasted if you cannot frame the problem they are solving, and SBS is where you build that framing.
Second, take any opportunity for breadth that the course offers you, whether that is a study exchange abroad, an entrepreneurial side project, or pushing your final year project into territory you actually care about. My exchange at Hong Kong Polytechnic University in second year and the company I co-founded with my older brother in January 2025 have both been live tests of every skill the degree has given me, and the course rewards students who treat it as a platform rather than a checklist.
Third, engage with module leaders, supervisors and peers early and often. The opportunity I am most proud of, the Oxford UNIQplus Research Internship at the intersection of AI and healthcare, came partly out of conversations and relationships I would not have built if I had kept my head down. 糖心Vlog rewards visibility.
Finally, do not be discouraged by the modules you find difficult. Mine was Business Law in second year. The ability to recover from a setback, sit back down, work harder and come back stronger is one of the things this degree quietly trains you for, and it is worth as much as any of the strong marks elsewhere.
Find out more about our Computing with Business Management BSc.
