InstaDeep is delighted to sponsor this year’s Machine Learning Summer School (MLSS) in London – a twelve-day event where students from the world over, come together to learn about all thing Machine Learning (ML).
Kicking off on 15th July, the students have two jam-packed weeks of intensive courses on a variety of topics in ML, ranging from optimisation and Bayesian inference to Deep Learning, Reinforcement Learning and Gaussian processes.
The objective of the course is to give a broad overview of industry-relevant topics and to help train the next generation of ML researchers.
Supporting tomorrow’s heroes
With InstaDeep’s support, the summer school was able to take on an additional three students this year.
“We are dependent on our sponsors to keep the initiative running and provide global education in Machine Learning. InstaDeep has effectively allowed us to take on three additional students through their sponsorship, which is amazing”, says Dr Marc Deisenroth, Senior Lecturer in Statistical Machine Learning at Imperial College London to InstaDeep.
“We are happy to support such a great educational initiative. At InstaDeep, we are on a mission to accelerate the transition to an AI-first world that benefits everyone, and to achieve that we have to help build the knowledge required”, says CEO of InstaDeep, Karim Beguir.
Record number of 1,200 applications
MLSS is one of the few initiatives of its kind, hence unsurprisingly, an increasingly popular one! With only 145 students offered a space, the selection process is strict and this year even tougher, seeing the organisers received a record-breaking 1,200 applications.
One of the people who made the cut is Research Engineer Intern at InstaDeep, Oluwafemi Azeez.
“I am delighted to be able to attend. It is a great opportunity to keep learning and developing my skills in Machine Learning, and I am especially excited to see how I can utilise my newly acquired skills afterwards!”
Oluwafemi is travelling from Lagos in Nigeria to attend this week, and even with the long travel he never considered not attending. And what inspired him to apply initially? An inspiring talk by Dr Marc Deisenroth himself.
“I once heard Marc give a talk on data-efficient Reinforcement Learning, and I was so impressed as they could get decent results with fewer experiences compared to the standard Deep Q-learning approach I am familiar with. I then got introduced to Gaussian processes, which are the techniques they use. Seeing I have not had much free time to explore those techniques, I was thrilled to see it’s one of the areas the summer school is focusing on”, says Oluwafemi.
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Oluwafemi Azeez (front) enjoying the talks at MLSS London
Global initiative
From its early beginning in 2002, MLSS now takes place around the world, targeting early to mid-stage PhD students. Yasser Salah Eddine Bouchareb is currently completing his third Master’s Degree in Machine Intelligence and is considering a potential PhD path.
“At MLSS 2019 I get the chance to meet the pioneers and the experts in the field of Machine Learning. Moreover, it enables me to talk with them about my work, giving me the chance to improve my algorithms and learn about the different possibilities and opportunities”, says Bouchareb.
In 2019, three MLSS events are taking place, with Stellenbosch already hosted back in January and Moscow to follow at the end of August. Next year, Germany is ready to welcome eager students in June. You can find the full program here.
Yasser Salah Eddine Bouchareb attending a talk on “How to get into a PhD”.
