a student’s perspective

Charalampos (Babis) E. Tsourakakis3rd Year Graduate Student

Open House February 26th , 2010

Carnegie Mellon University is a historical university with living history.

Alen Newell

Herbert SimonManuel Blum Avrim Blum

Stephen Fienberg

John Lafferty

Alan Frieze Larry Wasserman

Carlos Guestrin

Admission highly

competitive!

Tom Mitchell, Head of MLD

International Student (Hellene, ECE NTUA)

2007-2009 worked with Christos Faloutsos on Data Mining (Tensors, Graphs and Large Scale Data Mining using Hadoop)

Switched at the end of the second year.

Now,Gary Miller Russell Schwartz

Algorithm Design (TCS)Manifold Learning (ML)

Breast Cancer Evolution (App)

e.g., Miller Primality Teste.g., decoding human genome

Immigration course:

faculty gives talks,

you choose advisor

0 1 2 3 4 5 … timeCoursework: 5 core courses: • Intermediate statistics, ML• Stat ML, Algorithms, Data mining +3 electives (1 from statistics)

TA for 2 classes

Change/add

advisor(if you want)

Start doing research!

(publish 1st paper)

Propose

Conduct research

Finish!

Enjoy dept. tea gathering and TGs

Data analysis project,

speaking skills

( get MS)Summer

internships

Very critical choice for your career. Great faculty to choose from. Make a good choice by:

choosing a project that excites you making sure that you and your advisor

have the same research “mentality” (Ask yourself, do you like more applications, theory, a mixture of them and what proportion from each)

reading papers of your potential advisors

Year 1: Intermediate statistics Intro machine learning Stat. machine learning Algorithms

Year 2: Data mining Advanced Discrete Math:

Additive Number Theory Advanced Discrete Math:

Mixing times and Markov Chains

Computational Methods for Biological Modeling and Simulation

Many ML classes Graduate ML Statistical ML Graphical models Convex optimization Graduate AI Learning theory Bayesian methods Comp bio + learning Computational

Complexity Randomized algorithms Approximation

algorithms Lots of area-specific

machine learning (text, bio, brain, …)(Some of my

electives)

MLD Seminars: MLD/Google seminar Intelligence seminar Machine learning lunch

▪ organized by studentsMany other seminars:

Theory, LTI, Robotics,…MLD weekly tea gatheringTGs (Thank Goodness It’s Friday)

A city which has two main advantages which are typically inversely proportional: Many things to do around, good restaurants,

nice coffee shops, bars, pubs, dancing places etc.

Inexpensive. Easy to travel to other beautiful cities

which are near, e.g., Philadelphia, New York City, Toronto.

You can feel all four seasonswhile in Pittsburgh

Different Health Plans Basic (<~1K for a year) Enhanced +Dental +Vision

CMU Health Services UPMC My personal experience so far has

been more than good.

Most of the students live in Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, Oakland.

Other neighborhoods: Bloomfield, Point Breeze, Regent Square.

If you do not own a car, make sure that you pick a place with many buses coming by from there (e.g., Squirrel Hill, Shadyside)

Great places to live for really good prices.

An excellent environment for conducting research, having pleasant breaks (great coffee on the 3rd floor), interesting research discussions on a whiteboard, Tea Parties.

Swimming

Tennis

BikingCanoeing

CavingClimbingHiking

Kayaking

Scuba Diving Skydiving

Ski (Seven Springs Resort) with

student prices ~15$

Chess Club

Dancing

GymVolleyball, Basketball

Badminton

Publications Travelling. I have visited Belgium, France, Greece,

Italy, Stanford, New York. Meeting Scientists from all over the

world Attend highly interesting talks (some of

them). Communicate your ideas, get people to

learn about your research. See and explore new places.

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,

pray that the road is long,full of adventure, full of knowledge….…Always keep Ithaca in your mind.To arrive there is your ultimate goal.But do not hurry the voyage at all…

Welcome to CMU and Congratulations again!

Joseph Bradley for sharing previous year’s slides.

Jernej Barbic http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~jbarbic/cmu-start.html

Diane Stidle

“Mother” of MLD