How DID YOU GET INTO MAchine LEARNING?
I was doing my PhD in Bioinformatics but I had to complete qualifier exams in other areas of computer science. I had always enjoyed algorithms and my work in Bioinformatics used a lot a lot of pattern recognition algorithms (clustering, classifying) and so Machine Learning was a natural fit. I began taking courses in ML and got really hooked. By the second year of graduate school, I had left Bioinformatics and was working on the use of ML in Games and Auctions. After this, I never looked back; I am still working on problems that use ML but have a large Social Science aspect to them.
WhAT WILL YOU Be teaching?
I will be working with Willie on Introduction to Machine learning. The talk will be a preparatory course for the rest of the week and it will cover some of the fundamental theories in machine learning.
What TOPICs Excite you most at the moment?
I absolutely love the work that is being undertaken in making sure that Machine Learning is more representative i.e. remedying some of the embedded bias in ML algorithms. We are all coming to terms with the power of these algorithms and they getting embedded into systems such as policing, banking, medicine etc. and we need to make sure that the bias they display is removed or handled appropriately.