Though ML labs may seem to outsiders as rather nerdy isolated groups, it is not our case! We are on the move, visiting and welcoming ML researchers, sometimes near and sometimes further away. Discussing, collaborating, making friends, having fun!
Amina Mollaysa has spent last summer in the Alan Touring Institute exploring with Brooks Paige generative models for molecular design. She's come back with plenty of new ideas and full of renewed research energy. Brooks stopped by in our lab for a couple days in spring this year. We hope he appreciated the discussions at least as much as we did.
Jason Ramapuram has just returned after 3 months from Apple AI research working with Russ Webb on deep nets. Jason is very excited about his work there, but then again, Jason is always very excited when it comes to deep nets. It's already the 2nd time he went to Apple and last time he wrapped it up into a nice BMVC paper. We're all curious to see what's cooking in his head now.
Lionel Blonde has just gone to Apple AI for his 4 months of the Californian weather. Though Lionel is a little more difficult to read, he seemed rather excited as well before leaving. Let's see where his visit will take him.
We also have Sooho Kim, a PhD student at the Seoul National University, visiting our lab for a few months looking into applications of deep learning for mechanical engineering. Rather closely related to our efforts in modelling of physical processes so we hope his stay to be beneficial for him and us as well.
Finally, Magda Gregorova finished her PhD in November last year. The external jury members, Julien Mairal from Inria Grenoble and Lorenzo Rosasco from the University of Genova (and MIT), were both rather positive about her thesis so the defense was a fairly smooth event. Magda is not moving anywhere though, she stays as a postdoc with the group.