Thomas Dall'Agnese

Fateful encounter on an exchange program

Thomas Dall'Agnese graduated from " Lycée Pierre de Fermat" High School, Toulouse, France in 2004. He then chose to go to preparation school in order to enter the "Grandes Ecoles". He joined the National Polytechnic Institute of Engineering in Electro-technology, Electronics, Computer Science, Hydraulics and Telecommunications (ENSEEIHT) in 2006 and received his Master Degree in Telecommunications and Networks in 2009. He spent his last year at the ENSEEIHT abroad, first with a 6 months exchange program in the University of Hong Kong and then with a 6 months internship with HITACHI in Yokohama in Japan. After meeting the girl of his life in the University of Hong Kong, a Japanese girl that became his wife in 2011, Thomas decided to follow his studies in Japan with something more global than his current background.

Various real-world projects involving all aspects

Thanks to his first Master in Telecommunications and Networks, he obtained strong technical skills. However, he felt that he missed some more global knowledge like management or social skills. He thinks the Graduate School of SDM is a perfect balance between technical and social skills, and its main force remains in the diversity of both the students and the professors. Back in France, all his classmates were people of his age, interested in IT, computers, programming, etc... and they barely don't have chance to work with people doing risk management, requirement analysis, human resources, or other fields not related to a very narrow field in Telecommunications and Networks. SDM strength is that students work a lot on different real-world projects, in collaboration with companies and sponsors, and with very diverse teams. The projects students work on are handled from the very beginning to the very end, taking into consideration all the aspects involved. Back in France, he was doing only one part of that, the very technical one. Now he sees the projects in a more global view, closer to the real world.

His current research is about vehicular networks (a kind of Wifi between cars). He had a strong interest in his research about vehicular networks done with HITACHI in 2009 and wanted to continue research in this field while acquiring social and management skills, so SDM is exactly what he needed.

Diversity and strong team work

Except his research, he put a lot of effort on a class project that he enjoyed a lot. It was a competition between two teams and each team was given a definite amount of yens to design and implement a system from scratch, according to his sponsor requirements (same sponsor and same requirements for both teams, and the sponsor chooses one system at the end). They formed a team of 5 people, 3 students from business and management background and 2 students from technical background, including him as a software developer. In 5 months they planned, designed, and implemented the system. He had a critical role making the final decisions but also had the main programming part as he was the most qualified for the system they designed. He was also the one simplifying the discussions between the business people and the technical people and really enjoyed it. The project was finally a great success and his team won the competition. He believes this project was close to what he will have the chance to experience in his future life at work: diversity and strong team work.

Environment to broaden vision and increase ability

To conclude, someone with only technical or only social skills can only see the tip of the iceberg when a graduate student of SDM can see it whole. SDM enlarges your vision and increases your ability to take right decisions in the real world.