Today I would be writing about something exciting that’s coming up, and that’s Machine Learning Summer School (MLSS) holding from Aug. 27 to Sept. 7, 2018 at Autonomous University of Madrid. The Summer School is aimed at graduate students, researchers and professionals working in the field of data science and promises to drill into the fundamentals and state of the art in modern statistical machine learning and inference. The programme comprises about 60 hours of lectures, out of which 3 hours focuses on ML in the industry. Wow! That’s almost like taking two Masters courses in one semester. There will also be 3 social events – a walking tour through downtown Madrid on the 29th August, a full day visit to the city of Segovia on 1st September, and finally a dinner on 5th September.
How it came about
I was actively surfing the web for a summer school to attend to boost my understanding of Data Science and to help my research as was suggested by my supervisor. There’s an MLSS website that has a listing of past and upcoming summer schools where this particular event was listed. The course content and program structure looked suitable so I decided to proceed with the application. Some of the information requested in the application form were a poster title, abstract, and details of a referee to contact for a letter of reference demonstrating my background and potential in Machine Learning, academic standing measured against other students, and potential benefit of the summer school to me. In addition, I was asked to state if I needed financial support, but that didn’t apply to me since I was receiving full sponsorship from my university. I submitted the application on the 7th April, 2018
Hurrah! Go for it scholar!
Three weeks later I received an acceptance email stating that I was among the 150 people selected out of the 500 applicants. I’m not sure what their selection criteria were but I inferred from the statement on their website that the poster would have played a huge role even though they declared that section optional in the application form. On the website it reads “although a poster presentation is not mandatory, this information will be used to evaluate the applications to the MLSS.”.
How I wish all applications come back with this kind of positive response at such a record time. Apparently this was the only summer school I applied to as it was the most suitable at the time and it turned out as all eggs in one fertile basket!
My poster title and abstract
Even though the poster title and abstract I submitted during the application was a bit broad, I streamlined it so it doesn’t look like a lesson plan, and such that it could distinguish me from other candidates’ work and improve my chances of being selected. As at the time I made the submission I was just less than a month into my PhD and had not even submitted my first PhD form (the research proposal). Luckily I was asked to make another submission few weeks to the event, allowing me to update and override the previous submission. The poster event holds on 30/08/2018, 18:30h – 20:30h. I will surely update the blog with pictures and details of the event.
Anticipation level 110%
I have great expectations for this summer school particularly because the goal was to accelerate my research work given that I have reached that point where I need to strengthen my foundation in data science. It’s a case of having a lot to learn and not knowing where to begin and what to focus on. It would be amazing to feel like a student again where I learn in a classroom, see the bigger picture, design my next strategies, and then go back to my lab to apply all the new ideas. I have scribbled down some of the areas I’m specially interested in and I trust that my expectations would not only be met but also exceeded.
- Learning how deep learning models are designed
- Online learning algorithm design techniques
- How to optimise a machine learning algorithm – making it more efficient for resource constrained devices i.e. miniaturised ML [speed, accuracy]
- How to fine-tune model parameters to achieve best performance
- Computational resources for my experiments
I’m hoping to have loads of fun exploring the city of Madrid – the dishes, historic places and beautiful scenery. I am eager to make amazing connections with fellow participants that would transcend the MLSS environment into meaningful collaborations and partnerships in the future.be
I would like you to expect to see some really exciting posts from me in the coming weeks with loads of pictures (yes, I bought a digital camera for this purpose so I’m prepared for this).
Congratulations girl, God got your back