Halifax
Harbour fog, research code, and seafood on the waterfront.
"Halifax taught me that you can do serious research and still walk to the ocean at sunset. That balance stayed with me."
— Summer 2022Chess, reinforcement learning, and the Atlantic
The summer of 2022 brought me to Halifax on a MITACS Globalink Fellowship — a highly competitive programme (18% acceptance) that funds international research internships at Canadian universities.
Under Dr. Yannick Marchand at Dalhousie, I built a predictive modelling pipeline on Lichess chess data and trained a PPO-based reinforcement learning agent capable of defeating amateur players below a target FIDE rating. It was my first real encounter with large-scale RL applied to a strategic game.
Outside the lab: the Halifax waterfront, lobster rolls, and more fog than I had anticipated for a summer. Nova Scotia is peculiarly beautiful in the way that cold coastal places tend to be.
A harbour town with unexpected depth
Halifax is compact and walkable in a way that North American cities rarely are. The historic properties on the waterfront, the citadel on the hill, and the university district all exist within comfortable walking distance of one another.
What surprised me most was the food — particularly the seafood. Lobster and scallops pulled from the Atlantic and served the same day. And the people: Haligonians have a warmth that I associated more with South Asia than with Canada.
"I came here to do research. I left with a deep, quiet affection for a city I had never expected to love."