New visa pilot adds to "booming" opportunities at Imperial: Houston Chronicle
Coming across the pond for study is one of the best opportunities going for US students, writes President Alice Gast.
In a comment article for the Houston Chronicle, Professor Gast highlighted a new visa pilot for international students who win places on one-year Masters courses at Imperial.
President Gast wrote: “The most popular destination for Americans studying abroad is the UK. For all the rhetoric around UK immigration rules as the country debates Brexit, it has actually just become easier for highly qualified Americans to study here. A new pilot program allows those who secure entry to one-year master's degrees at Imperial, Oxford, Cambridge or Bath to access a streamlined visa system. They can also spend a further six months in the U.K. to work, develop a business or simply travel.
As an American in London, I think that US students should be especially excited by the unique entrepreneurial opportunities here.
– Professor Alice Gast
President
“There are interesting options in British higher education right now. At Imperial College London, we offer specialist Masters degrees in artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as fields like climate change, biomedical engineering and finance. We combine some of the world's finest academics with a very international environment.”
She emphasised the success of Imperial and other UK universities’ leadership in AI research and innovation: “In growth areas like artificial intelligence, Britain has become a global hub, where academic and business minds interlink. While AI fell in and out of fashion in U.S. universities, it has been sustained in the U.K.'s computer science departments, and is attracting serious American investment.
“Magic Pony founder Rob Bishop and his Imperial College classmate Zehan Wang recently sold their machine-learning visual processing tools to Twitter for $150 million - and they are staying in London to help build Twitter's global AI research and development center. The young graduates' success came soon after Microsoft bought another London AI spinout, Swiftkey, for $250 million, while Amazon, Apple and Google have invested hundreds of millions in UK AI startups such as Evi, Vocal IQ and Deepmind. Britain's academic-driven tech scene is becoming a home away from home for technology startups.”
The full op-ed can be read at the Houston Chronicle.
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