Introduction
Today is the deadline to apply to attend the Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF) 2020, one may ask why am I writing now — few hours to the official close? Well read below, I have a story.
Sincerely, I've been extremely busy recently, and that is one reason I'm writing now — but another thing is that my application to HLF19 was special as I made it just hours before the deadline. By the way, since my experience with HLF, one of my friends has decided to always submit all his applications few hours to the deadline :).
I got introduced to HLF during my MSc at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in South Africa, Cape Town — specifically during a talk by Professor Bernd Schroers from Heriot-Watt University.
I'm the kind of student who, when I hear about something, goes directly online to get more details. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the deadline for HLF 2019 was only a few hours away from the time I first heard about the conference. But I decided to give it a try and try to secure an opportunity to meet the laureates.
Acceptance
After a few months of waiting, I finally got accepted to attend HLF19. This was my first travel experience outside Africa, and I was very much looking forward to attending the conference.
Experience
The experience was amazing — my first international conference. I went to HLF with some specific targets in mind, including talking to Yoshua Bengio. We spent some time discussing the progress in the field of Natural Language Processing while having supper. It was incredible to spend such time with one of the fathers of Deep Learning.
My second target was to discuss with Jeff Dean about his work and personal journey in tech, as well as how he got into Google.
Conclusion
There is much more to say about HLF19, but the reason for this post is to motivate you to finish your application — to give you a feel for what it's like to be accepted and attend the conference.
Remember: the deadline is in a few hours from now. Don't let this opportunity go.
The HLF is one of the most unique scientific events in the world, bringing together young researchers and winners of the Abel Prize, the Fields Medal, the Nevanlinna Prize, and the ACM A.M. Turing Award. If you're a young researcher in mathematics or computer science, apply without hesitation.