u/AppropriatePainter47

Hi! I'm a non-EU citizen considering relocating to the Netherlands.

My background: B.S and M.S from my country (both with a strong GPA), plus around 4 years of work experience.

I'm trying to figure out which path is currently more realistic:

1. Pursuing a PhD at a Dutch university (AI + Medicine) -> relocating

2. Looking for a job (IT, AI specialist) directly through Linkedin -> relocating -> trying to study in uni later

Honestly, both options feel pretty difficult, and I'm not sure how competitive either one really is right now. I don't have a clear starting point yet, so any advice or personal experience would be appreciated.

Hello. I'm from Russia and I'm planning to pursue funded PhD positions abroad for various reasons. My areas of interest are Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, and my research primarily focuses on machine learning applications in healthcare, including multimodal medical data analysis, clinical decision support systems, and interpretable machine learning models.

I worked as a research assistant for about a year, graduated with a high GPA, published two Scopus papers related to medical ML (1st, 2nd author).

Right now I'm working as a Senior Systems Analyst in fintech (this is like a Solution Architect in EU, I suppose), but I'd like to move back into research and work in ML-field. I'm working in industry because of better financial stability (salaries are at least twice as high).
But my long-term career goal is to continue in academia as a postdoc, although I'm also interested in moving into industry as an MLOps. Globally, I would like to relocate and not return.

Based on my research, the Netherlands, China, and Germany all seem to have strong research groups from my field (+ more job opportunities + relatively simple relocation processes). I like Switherland, but I heard that it's hard to get in uni here.
Are there any problems because I'm a student from Russia? Are there any other countries that I should seriously look into?

Hello. I'm from Russia and I'm planning to pursue funded PhD positions abroad for various reasons. My areas of interest are Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, and my research primarily focuses on machine learning applications in healthcare, including multimodal medical data analysis, clinical decision support systems, and interpretable machine learning models.

I worked as a research assistant for about a year, graduated with a high GPA, published two Scopus papers related to medical ML (1st, 2nd author).

Right now I'm working as a Senior Systems Analyst in fintech (this is like a Solution Architect in EU, I suppose), but I'd like to move back into research and work in ML-field. I'm working in industry because of better financial stability (salaries are at least twice as high).
But my long-term career goal is to continue in academia as a postdoc, although I'm also interested in moving into industry as an MLOps.

Based on my research, the Netherlands, China, and Germany all seem to have strong research groups from my field (+ more job opportunities + relatively simple relocation processes). I like Switherland, but I heard that it's hard to get in uni here.
Are there any problems because I'm a student from Russia? Are there any other countries that I should seriously look into?

Hello. I'm from Russia and I'm planning to pursue funded PhD positions abroad (funded, because I have no money, lol). My concentrations are Applied Mathematics and Computer Science. My research is mainly focused on machine learning for healthcare: multimodal medical data, clinical decision support, interpretable ML. I worked as a research assistant for about a year, graduated with a high GPA, published two Scopus papers related to medical ML.

Right now I'm working as a Senior Systems Analyst in fintech (this is like a Solution Architect in EU, I suppose), but I'd like to move back into research and work in ML-field.
My long-term career goal is to continue in academia as a postdoc, although I'm also interested in moving into industry as an MLOps (for better financial stability).

From my research, Netherlands, China, and Germany all seem to have strong research groups from my field + more job opportunities. Are there any problems because I'm a student from Russia? Are there any other countries that I should seriously look into?