Undergraduate and Graduate Summer Research Experiences in Artificial
Intelligence and Machine Learning at Bryn Mawr College
Apply by *March 1, 2013* for full consideration. We will continue to
accept applications after this date until all positions are filled.
Spend ten weeks of your summer working on exciting projects in artificial
intelligence and machine learning at Bryn Mawr College! We have openings
for several undergraduate or graduate research assistants to work on two
grant-sponsored research projects this summer. Student participants will
join a research team with other students, Prof. Eric Eaton, and one
postdoctoral researcher to carry out a detailed program of research toward
scholarly publications. Students will present the results of their
research during the final week of the program at Bryn Mawr College, and
(if appropriate) at their home institutions and/or other academic venues,
such as research conferences.
All students who are beginning their junior or senior undergraduate year
in Fall 2013 or who will graduate during the Spring 2013 semester, and
all graduate students are eligible to apply. To be considered, you should
have a background in either computer science, mathematics, physics, or
statistics and have strong grades in your major. Although it is not
required, it would be beneficial if you have taken and done well in at
least one course related to artificial intelligence, machine learning,
robotics, statistics, or topology.
Brief descriptions of the two sponsored research projects are listed
below:
LIFELONG MACHINE LEARNING -- Most current machine learning methods learn a
model for a single data set, and then forget that model completely when
they are applied to another data set. In contrast, human learning retains
information between learning tasks, developing skills over a lifetime of
experience. This project will focus on developing methods for computers
to learn continually from and transfer knowledge between multiple learning
tasks, enabling the continual development of skills
through lifelong machine learning. The development of lifelong machine
learning has the potential to enable a new class of learning systems
capable of learning a diverse set of skills over time and then adapting
those skills as needed to changes in the environment. Within this
project, we are also developing methods for users to instruct learning
systems, enabling the users to teach and shape behaviors over time. We
are applying these lifelong learning methods to a variety of domains,
including robotic control and coordination in a multi-agent simulator, and
facial expression recognition from images.
SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS -- Networks occur in many different applications,
including social networks, corporate organizations, chemical interactions,
and biological regulatory networks. Relational networks represent the
connections between entities as a graph, providing an intuitive and
structured representation of this knowledge. Often, these networks
contain natural communities of entities, such as groups of friends or
project teams, that is useful for analyzing the structure of the network.
This project focuses on automatically identifying these natural community
structures in heterogeneous networks that contain more than one type of
entity (e.g., a graph of connections between individuals, corporations,
and locations). We will then apply these natural community structures to
learning and dimensionality reduction (i.e., compression) in the graph.
This project builds on concepts from topology and statistical physics.
On-campus housing and meals are available for student participants, along
with a variety of professional development workshops and summer
activities.
Application instructions and further details are available online at
http://cs.brynmawr.edu/~eeaton/openpositions.html
Bryn Mawr College is an affirmative action/equal-opportunity employer.
Minority candidates and women are especially encouraged to apply. Hiring
is contingent upon eligibility to work in the United States. Bryn Mawr
College is located in the suburbs of Philadelphia and is convenient to
major air and train transportation hubs.