diff --git a/examples/mnist-pytorch/client/data.py b/examples/mnist-pytorch/client/data.py
index 627f91b64..69aae55a7 100644
--- a/examples/mnist-pytorch/client/data.py
+++ b/examples/mnist-pytorch/client/data.py
@@ -12,16 +12,16 @@ def get_data(out_dir="data"):
     # Generate random int between 1 and 10 for split id, set seed for reproducibility
     split_id = np.random.randint(1, 11)
 
-    if not os.path.exists(f"{out_dir}/clients/{split_id}"):
+    if not os.path.exists(f"{abs_path}/{out_dir}/clients/{split_id}"):
         # create directory for data
-        os.makedirs(f"{out_dir}data/clients/{split_id}")
+        os.makedirs(f"{abs_path}/{out_dir}data/clients/{split_id}")
 
     # use requests to download the data from url
     url = f"https://storage.googleapis.com/public-scaleout/mnist-pytorch/data/clients/{split_id}/mnist.pt"
     # download into out_dir
     r = requests.get(url)
     if r.status_code == 200:
-        with open(f"{out_dir}/clients/{split_id}/mnist.pt", "wb") as f:
+        with open(f"{abs_path}/{out_dir}/clients/{split_id}/mnist.pt", "wb") as f:
             f.write(r.content)
         print(f"Downloaded data from {url}")
     else: