By Judith Weng Zhu
During summer 2022, our lab worked on a self-supervised machine learning algorithm to reconstruct sparse x-ray computed tomography. Our research paper was accepted to NeurIPS 2022 Machine Learning and the Physical Sciences Workshop. Here we document our experiences from the NeurIPS Conference at New Orleans!
Day 1 Highlights:
We first attended the poster session and were surprised at the number of posters present. We walked by hundreds of posters and asked questions to researchers regarding their work. One of our favorite posters was from Robert Meier and Asier Mujika about Open-Ended Reinforcement learning with Neural Reward Functions. This project consisted in developing a method for open-ended, unsupervised skill discovery. I found this particularly interesting because it explored different robotic skills. Minh, Rey, and I are currently taking a robotics course, where we have learned the limitations of robotic movements. The results from this project showed different robotics environments performing a wide range of skills, such as running or doing a back-flip.
For lunch, we met up with Dr. Colin White, the Head of Research and Distinguished Scientist at Abacus.AI. He shared with us his graduate study experience at Carnegie Mellon after attending a liberal arts school, Amherst College, as well as his transition into industry research. This was a very helpful insight since all three of us are about to finish our undergraduate studies. We all had a great time (and great food!) with Dr. White. We would like to thank him for his time and advice.
Next, we explored NeurIPS’ expo, where recruiters and researchers were promoting their company. Recruiters from several companies invited us to their private dinner event. We attended to LightningAI’s event where we were able to connect personally with workers from the company and researchers from all over the world. Priya Shivaku, the VP of Product at LightningAI, kindly welcomed us and started to talk to us. We shared how intimidated we all were at this conference, surrounded by scholars and experts on the field. Priya shared inspiring advice and motivation about self-worth. We all felt extremely loved by her.
Overall, we were amazed at the hundreds of different posters we saw and how friendly all of the presenters were. I was, without a doubt, very intimidated by this large conference but talking to different people at the dinner event made me feel a lot more comfortable and excited for the next few days.
Day 2 Highlights
We continued to attend poster sessions and actively engage with researchers. We learned a better way to navigate posters. Yesterday, we walked all around the conference room reading just the titles and stopped at any posters we found interesting. We found this method to be not very effective because we did not get to look through a lot of posters. We also had to stand in front of a poster for a while trying to read the poster, understand the project, and try to ask questions. We decided to go onto the NeurIPS schedule website, where every poster is listed, and filter posters with the topics we were interested in. I also searched specific professors that I have been interested in working with for grad school. This gave me the opportunity to easily talk with current grad students to learn more about the professor and their work.
We attended an invited talk and the expo, where we were definitely more active. The people we met yesterday really gave us the confidence to reach out and ask questions. We got to explore a lot more about the different research opportunities that tech companies provide. Though I learned that many of them hire only individuals with a Master’s or PhD, I became more motivated to go to grad school knowing all the exciting opportunities that I could consider after grad school.
At the end of the day, I attended the Women in AI event, where female researchers from all over the world got to present their research work and the overall environment was very supportive. Though I am very thankful that this space was offered, this event was noticeably less crowded than all others. It shows that there is still work to be done to create more support towards women in STEM.
Today was an extremely productive day! We were able to explore more effectively since we learned how the conference works and how it is laid out. We are all looking forward to making the most of our last day tomorrow at NeurIPS!
Day 3 Highlights
Our favorite part was talking with a Swarthmore alumnus Alexander Robey, who is currently a PhD student at University of Pennsylvania. Alex shared with us his undergraduate experiences and how different it was from graduate school. He provided great advice on how to make the best of our time at Swarthmore and beyond. Talking with him has made me more excited for grad school and the upcoming opportunities. We are deeply thankful for Alex and his willingness to spend time with us! Check out Alex’s work here.
There were a lot of social events hosted at NeurIPS. Dr. White hosted an open mic event, where attendees would get the chance to showcase any talents. There was also a K-Pop social, where people who enjoy Korean music can get together. I am very happy that these social events were hosted because it shows how this community wants to meet others not just academically but also personally. Attending NeurIPS erased all of my fears within the research community and has taught me how supportive this community is. This is definitely an experience that will impact me as I continue through my journey.
We would like to thank Professor Ganapati for mentoring us in this project, and Cassy Burnett from the Engineering department for organizing this trip for us.