From France to India: A Cybersecurity Student’s Three Months at Parul University on Exchange from ISEN

Antoine Conteo, a cybersecurity engineering student from ISEN Yncrea Ouest in France, spent three months at Parul University as part of an inbound semester exchange, the long-standing ISEN-Parul University partnership coordinated by the Center for International Relations and Research (CIRR). While many of his ISEN classmates headed to Vietnam, Thailand, South America, or elsewhere in Europe, Antoine Conteo chose a country he had never seen.

At ISEN, students are required to spend part of their engineering journey outside France, and when Antoine Conteo heard about the option through the international office, India stood out precisely because it was unfamiliar. He arrived not with fear but with curiosity and one honest question: how would he adapt to working and studying in an entirely different academic and cultural setting? His field, cybersecurity, was itself a considered choice. An early interest in biological engineering gave way to cybersecurity once he weighed the career opportunities, drawn to technical work with applications across every industry.

One of the most important things Antoine learned was a first-hand look at two educational systems. His engineering degree at ISEN combines cybersecurity, management, business, and team building. It is a wide-ranging program designed to help engineers gain insight into the way organisations really operate. His exchange at Parul University was much more focused on the topic of cybersecurity itself. He appreciated the concentrated exposure, he said, because it enabled him to increase his technical knowledge in depth, rather than in breadth. None of these models is superior; each has its advantages over the other, and having both is precisely what an international exchange is all about. Gain industry-relevant knowledge in ethical hacking, cybersecurity, and digital forensics through Parul University’s B.Tech in Cyber Security, B.Sc. IT in Cyber Security and Forensics, and M.Sc. IT in Cyber Security and Digital Forensics to work globally!

The standout academic outcome of Antoine Conteo’s stay was not a class but a collaboration. Working with a Parul University faculty mentor and an Indian student, he began co-authoring a book: an introductory, beginner-friendly guide to penetration testing, aimed at making the fundamentals of the field accessible to newcomers. The work was divided among the three of them, and, crucially, it did not end when his exchange did. Rather than stopping at his departure, the team planned to continue through online meetings after his return to France, working toward completing the book and publishing it online. For Antoine Conteo, it created an academic connection to Parul University that continues across continents, which is internationalization working exactly as intended: not a three-month visit, but a lasting collaboration.

His time at Parul also broadened how he thinks about cybersecurity itself. He came to see that its role depends heavily on the nature and scale of an organisation: a small company, a bank, and an institution handling critical information all face very different security needs. Cybersecurity, in his view, is not only a technical discipline but one shaped by the environment it operates in. His conversations on campus even reached beyond technology, including an introduction to aspects of the Indian legal process through a fellow student, the kind of unexpected, cross-disciplinary learning that happens when you study somewhere new.

Antoine Conteo’s memories of Parul University are not only academic. What struck him first was the everyday warmth, people greeting one another with a smile. He made the most of campus life too, trying facilities for volleyball, football, the gym, and even horse riding, and was charmed by the on-campus film-viewing facility as well. Beyond the campus, he explored India with Paul, a fellow ISEN student who travelled with him. Mumbai left the strongest impression, a city of a scale far beyond his hometown in western France, where they took in the Gateway of India, Colaba, and Santa Cruz. They even took him to visit the grandeur of the Statue of Unity and temple architecture he admired for its design, feeding a genuine love of historical places that has him already planning a future return to see Delhi and Jaipur.

He lived his three months at a time of the rich life of Indians. He saw Independence Day in Mumbai and Ganesh Chaturthi at a teacher’s home and saw the entire preparations and prayers in person, which can’t be done in a classroom. As with everything else during his time there, Indian food was much spicier than he was accustomed to in France, and vegetarian dishes were available much more often than he was used to, but after a couple of weeks, they were not a mystery to him and were really enjoyable. In miniature, it was the way of his communication in the whole exchange, from foreign to familiar.

When asked who he would thank for turning a foreign campus into a welcoming one, Antoine mentioned Monty Dsouza, manager at CIRR, and the team at the university who helped him settle in; Dr. Bela Shah for learning cyber security; and Abhinav Sharma for expanding his knowledge base and for introducing him to the Indian legal process, among others. Belonging to an international community, you are a newcomer in a new environment, and you said that the people around you are the true link between the academic program and everyday life.

Antoine Conteo returned to France to complete his engineering degree and begin his career in cybersecurity, but he does not leave Parul University entirely behind. The book project continues online, and he departs, already planning a future trip to India as a traveller. He arrived with no fixed picture of the country and only curiosity to guide him; he left with a deeper understanding of his field, a lasting academic collaboration, and friendships across two continents. For a student weighing where to spend an exchange, his three months make a quiet but compelling case for choosing the unfamiliar.