Exploring New Frontiers in ML as a PhD: Irene and Gabriele’s Winter Research Stay at Mila Montréal
Irene is a 3rd year PhD student in the Translational Immunoinformatics lab @Helmholtz Munich, and focuses his thesis on multimodal representation learning for single cell immunology. Gabriele is a 3rd year PhD student in Maria Colome-Tatche lab @Helmholtz Munich, and focuses his thesis on graph based methods to study single-cell data. In winter 2025, they both went to Mila, Montréal’s machine learning institute, for a research stay in the group of Guy Wolf (RAFALES Lab), one of the partnering teams of the Helmholtz International Lab - Causal Cell Dynamics.
1. How did your visit impact your PhD project ?
IBP: Working hand-by-hand with my collaborators helped us bring an initial idea to a working model. Being together allowed us to discuss ideas on a daily basis, and integrating their theoretical knowledge with my application perspective, expanding our horizons and enriching the project.
GM: I had the opportunity to discuss my work with machine learning experts from a theoretical point of view, making the project more robust and sound. Their strong knowledge of the models together with my domain expertise speed up the work.
2. What are the things you like the most about your stay at Montréal?
GM: The team creates a fun and healthy environment, they are an example of professionality without renouncing to friendship and amusing moments at and out of worktime. Bonding with new people from different cultures and backgrounds is always a good way to make the research and person grow.
IBP: Getting integrated into a welcoming and fun team, which gave me a better understanding of their interests and how they work. Exploring a new country, which included experiencing the coldest winter of my life, seeing an albino squirrel and welcoming the sun by eating maple syrup in (to me) unknown forms in a cabane à sucre.
3. How will the project you started there continue since you're back ?
GM: The project unfortunately didn’t show the expected results, therefore we moved to another one. The collaboration with Guy Wolf and his team is still productive. Now I am focusing on a shared project with Myriam about multi-modal data integration.
IBP: We are still working together, through weekly co-working sessions, to improve the model and test its robustness. Afterwards, we aim to use it to gain understanding in the process of T cell exhaustion.
4. What would you recommend to other PhD students who want to visit Y?
IBP: It was particularly useful to plan ahead a project with students from the lab, and focus completely on it during my stay.
GM: I totally recommend visiting Guy. He and his team are very welcoming and friendly, it will be for sure an amazing experience from both the scientific and human point of view.
5. Any final words ?
IBP: Don’t hesitate to do it, even if you have a different expertise. It’s mutually enriching to discuss with people with a different point of view, and interested in new problems that their ideas can help solve.
GM: I agree with Irene, just do it!