Charalampos  (Babis)    E.  Tsourakakis  3rd Year  Graduate  Student  

Open House February 26th , 2010

  Carnegie  Mellon  University  is  a  historical  university  with  living  history.  

Alen Newell

Herbert Simon Manuel 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  Test   e.g.,  decoding  human  genome  

Immigration  course:    faculty  gives  talks,    you  choose  advisor  

0   1   2   3   4   5  …    time  

Coursework:  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  students  

 Many  other  seminars:      Theory,  LTI,  Robotics,…  

 MLD  weekly  tea  gathering    TGs  (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 seasons while 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  

Biking  

Canoeing  

Caving  

Climbing  

Hiking  

Kayaking  

Scuba  Diving   Skydiving  

Ski  (Seven  Springs    Resort)  with    

student  prices  ~15$  

Chess  Club  

Dancing  

Gym  

Volleyball,  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