Abdelrahman, E-PiCo Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree, Class of 2022

What’s your name and where do you come from?

My name is Abdelrahman and I come from Cairo, Egypt.

Before E-PiCo, what and where did you study?

I had a bachelor degree in Mechatronics engineering before joining E-PiCo. I used to study in the German University in Cairo (GUC), then I moved to Berlin on my last semester to study pre-master's courses at the German campus of the GUC.

What options were you considering after your Bachelor degree? Why did you choose E-PiCo?

During my bachelor studies, I went through several electromechanical systems which turned out to be my passion. However, my studies allowed me only to tackle the problems of these systems from a generic perspective and didn’t give me the chance to satisfy my desire to dig deep into a specific mechatronic application as robots or Electric Vehicles. So, I chose E-PiCo as it’s a good opportunity for me to apply the mechatronics fundamentals, I learnt previously, on EVs and build up on my bachelor studies.

What was your Master Thesis topic?

It was about scheduling the charging of electric vehicles with focus on bidding in the electricity market to minimize the cost of EVs charging and increase the revenue of assisting the grid balancing.

I succeeded to write my thesis in a company called “Envision Digital" in Paris.

What do you find the most challenging in E-PiCo?

I had 2 main challenges. The first one is concerned with adapting to a relatively new education system to me especially the second semester I had in Kiel (Germany) as it is totally different from the Egyptian system and it took me some time to get used to it.

The second challenge is that every six months I had to move from one city to another. That was too exhausting. Moving frequently takes a lot of time and effort especially with the paper work (like getting accommodation contract, visa, insurance,...). Sometimes the language is a barrier to finish the paper work easily.

How long did you look for a job?

I started looking for a job in April 2022 and it took me around four months to get an offer.