A collective dynamic beyond the team

A former doctoral student with the Wimmics team at the Inria Center at Université Côte d'Azur, Vorakit Vorakitphan is now Lead Data Scientist and Managing Consultant at IBM Consulting France. He works on applied artificial intelligence, the industrialization of large language models, generative AI and, more recently on agentic AI systems. He looks back on the key moments in his doctoral career.

Choosing Inria for his PhD

After gaining initial experience at Accenture in Thailand, Vorakit Vorakitphan wanted to pursue a PhD in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and AI. Although opportunities existed in the United States and other      AI-led countries, he decided to pursue his PhD in France, especially at Inria where PhD student themselves is exposed to      research-led scheme alongside expert supervisions. Moreover, “in Europe, and particularly in France, a PhD is equivalent to a job, not only as a PhD student but also as a researcher, allowing you to become fully involved in scientific research,” explains Vorakit Vorakitphan.

It was in this context that he turned to the Inria–CNRS ecosystem, and more specifically to an Inria team in Sophia Antipolis whose work matched his research interests. “Sophia Antipolis is home to a very rich scientific community and is often referred to as the Silicon Valley of southern France. The close ties between Inria, the CNRS, and Université Côte d'Azur are a major asset for conducting research in a stimulating and recognized environment,” says Vorakit.

A collective dynamic beyond the team

Even though his team was located in another building, on another site, he chose to actively participate in events organized by Inria, convinced of the importance of cross-disciplinary interactions in fueling research. He even insists: “Doctoral seminars, inter-team meetings, and informal exchanges have played an important role in my career.”

A structured doctoral program

“The doctoral supervision is clear, with defined expectations, year by year, with regular milestones, which allows for gradual and consistent progress,” describes Vorakit.

Connections that last beyond the thesis

After the defense, the relationships have been maintained. Former doctoral students from his team stay in touch via LinkedIn and other online communication tools. An international network was built during the thesis and continues beyond. “And the bonds forged during the thesis endure beyond the distances between France, the United States, Italy, Argentina, and countries in Asia,” concludes Vorakit.