supervision

Graduate-level HQP

Ongoing

Graduated
2021 Varun Ranganathan (MSc); Founder-in-Residence at Entrepreneur First
Shruthi Ravishankar (MSc); Software Engineer at Neurotrack
Ali Hejazizo (MSc, co-supervised with Lili Mou); Machine Learning Engineer at AltaML
2020 Tobias Renwick (MSc); PhD student at U. Alberta
2019 Daniel Caminhas (MSc); software engineer at Amazon
Erin Macdonald (MSc); NLP engineer at Intuit
Weite Ni (MSc); NLP engineer at YITU
Candy Pang (PhD, co-supervised with Abram Hindle); Assistant Professor at Grant McEwan
2018 Peng Xu (MSc); Research Engineer at Borealis AI
Matteo Cannaviccio (PhD, co-supervised with Paolo Merialdo); Machine Learning Engineer at Diffbot
Zhaochen Guo (PhD); Machine Learning Engineer at Diffbot
2016 Hoda Sepheri Rad (PhD); Machine Learning Researcher at Granify
2015 Filipe Mesquita (PhD); Research Manager at Diffbot
2014 Yoones Shekavat (post-doc); Assistant Professor, Tabriz Art University
2013 Ivanilton Polato (Visiting PhD); Associate Professor, Federal Technological University of Parana, Brazil
2012 Ajay Anandan (MSc); Product Manager at Facebook
2011 Gregory Leighton (PhD); Director of R&D at Pharm3r
Stephanie Husby (MSc); Curriculum Lead, Amii
Mirko Bronzi (Visiting PhD); Senior NLP Research Engineer at Nuance Communications
Mauricio Moraes (Visiting PhD); Software engineer at HP
Maryam Hasan (MSc, co-supervised with Eleni Stroulia)
Diego Serrano (MSc, co-supervised with Eleni Stroulia)
Hua He (MSc, co-supervised with Greg Kondrak)
2009 Paolo Cappellari (post-doc, 2009)
Jagoda Walny (MSc)

For grad school applicants

Admission decisions are made by a committee that compares applicants based on GPA, breadth and depth of knowledge in Computing Science, letters of recommendation, and proficiency in English.

I do not decide if you will be admitted or not. All I can do is to provide supportive comments about application to the admission committee, and I only do that if I believe you have a realistic chance of being accepted. To help me assess your chances, I ask you to do the following:

  1. Send me your CV and unofficial transcript so I can assess your background knowledge in Computing Science.
  2. Describe, in detail, a project that you completed that uses one of machine learning, information retrieval, or natural language processing. In your response, please answer the following questions:
    • Which methods did you use and how did you choose them?
    • Which data did you use? How large is it? Where did you find it?
    • What were the results and what do they mean? What was your conclusion from analyzing the results?
    • What did you learn from completing the project?
  3. Read one of my papers following the how to read a paper technique and send me the result of your second pass. If you are not familiar with the method, here is a convenient flowchart. Your report should contain separate sections with the following information:
    • The "5Cc";
    • The summary of the paper;
    • Questions for the authors;
    • Terms you did not understand.
  4. If you are applying for the PhD program, please send me your best paper so far and your statement of purpose describing what you want to do and why.

If you read this before emailing me, copy/paste this note on your email: I am seeking your support for my graduate program application.

Here are instructions on how to apply with deadlines (set by the university).

Openings for visitors, undergraduates, and high-school interns

I occasionally supervise international visiting students, both at the undergraduate and at the graduate level, as well as local high school students, on specific projects that are related to the research of my current graduate students.

If you are not in Canada, please consult UAlberta International for details on the programs offered by the University of Alberta. I can only supervise you through such programs.

If you are a local high-school student with a strong passion for CS, please consult the Ross and Verna Tate High School Internship Program.