Three Hours That Changed Amna's Life

Morning has only just broken over Katowice, in southern Poland. In a modest apartment, Amnaduny Akhara Nurhasan opens his laptop, and before long the screen fills with the lines of code he owes as a software engineer at Rockwell Automation, the American firm that provides industrial automation and digital transformation services.

When work is done and night comes on, Amna, as everyone calls him, turns to his doctoral research on analyzing eye movement to detect neurological disorders. It is a routine that sits worlds away from the life he had a decade ago.

The Electrical Engineering graduate of Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta (UMS) was, by his own account, a kid who loved his PlayStation, online games, and taking computers apart. 

It never once crossed his mind that he would one day live thousands of kilometers from Kartasura, work for a global company, and pursue a doctorate on a full scholarship.

"When I think about it now, I really never could have pictured this," he said in early August, laughing as he looked back on the long road that led him to Poland.

Amna's career found its rhythm when a short message from a friend arrived and changed the course of his life: an invitation to apply for a master's scholarship from the Polish government. 

"I applied three hours before the deadline. My documents were really thrown together," he recalled.

He didn't even have an IELTS certificate at the time. He had to use a letter from UMS confirming that his International Electrical Engineering Program had been taught in English. With just that, he went ahead and submitted the whole application.

The announcement came a few weeks later. Of some 300 to 400 applicants from Indonesia, only 14 were accepted, Amna among them.

Poland opened a new chapter. He took a Master of Science in Data Science at the Silesian University of Technology, and the interest in computer vision he had picked up during his undergraduate thesis at UMS deepened as he worked through machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data analysis.

Partway through the master's, he was selected for the Erasmus+ exchange at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in Spain. 

"While I was doing my master's I was also looking for internships. I ended up getting into Rockwell Automation," he said. What started as an internship for the experience turned into a job offer, and Rockwell Automation Poland took him on as a full-time software engineer. The momentum held right through to the end of his degree.

Amnaduny Akhara Nurhasan (left) with colleagues at Rockwell Automation, Poland. 

In October 2024, he returned to his campus as a doctoral student in Applied Informatics.

"Students accepted into the doctoral program automatically get full funding from the Polish government. I receive around 3,500 zloty a month, roughly Rp20 million, to help with living costs and the research I'm doing," Amna explained.

He still works full-time at Rockwell, developing software that supports technical training for employees and client companies in different countries, among them major corporations that run Rockwell Automation technology. 

"Alhamdulillah, I earn somewhere between 10,000 and 12,500 zloty a month," he beamed.

Who would have thought that everything Amna has today started with a string of small, bold decisions. In 2015, he chose to enroll in the international class of the Electrical Engineering Program at UMS.

"I just jumped into the international class without a second thought. My English back then was honestly a mess," he joked.

Rather than shrink from it, Amna set about closing the gap. He moved into the UMS Student Dormitory (Pesma) to be around foreign students more often, and bit by bit his confidence grew.

His schedule during those years was almost never empty. Amna led AEROBO, UMS' aerial robotics community, competed in the Indonesian Flying Robot Contest, took an active part in the Muhammadiyah University English Course (MUEC) student organization, and taught the Programming and Electronics Lab Practicum as a laboratory assistant.

His interest in drones drew him into research on landing systems for unmanned aircraft using GPS and computer vision, work later published in an international journal.

Still craving for more experiences, Amna set on studying abroad himself. The "international class" label felt hollow to him without it.

"For me the whole international class thing felt incomplete if I'd never actually studied overseas," he said.

His first shot did not go smoothly. In his fifth semester he had all but left for Wuxi Institute of Technology in China, everything in place, when the trip fell through over administrative problems.

Amna kept digging for other openings, stopping by the UMS International Office and asking around among friends. As luck would have it, one came through: a place on a student exchange to Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia in his seventh semester.

Back from Malaysia, he completed an internship at PT PLN (Persero), the state electricity company, as an assistant supervisor at a substation, then another at Formulatrix Indonesia in its research and development production division.

"At that robotics company, Formulatrix, I helped develop an automatic CNC-machine PCB inspection system based on image processing. It was my first real taste of computer vision applied in industry," Amna explained.

When asked what the key to his whole journey had been, Amna's answer turned out to be simple. "First, intention. After that, get your language and your mindset ready. Basically, don't be afraid to try things," he said.

He may be right. Had he talked himself out of applying for the scholarship just because only three hours were left on the clock, the life he now keeps in Katowice might never have been his at all.

Writer: Genis Dwi Gustati

Translator: Farizal Luqman Majid

Editor: Al Habiib Josy Asheva