webb@webb.applicon.UUCP (10/21/88)
I recently posted a request for information about graduate schools which have
good programs in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. This is a
summary of the information which I recieved. To all those who responded,
thank you very much. I invite further comments on the opinions expressed
below, and further input from those at these or other schools.
******Eastern Schools:
Rutgers:
- Strong learning program.
University of North Carolina:
- No AI program.
Yale:
- Dominated by Roger Schank, who is reputedly very hard on his
students. Strong recommendations against going here.
- Dana Angluin doing excellent theoretical work.
Harvard:
- Small program (5-6 students/year), correspondingly close contact
with faculty.
- Les Valiant is doing theoretical machine learning work.
- William Woods is willing to support machine learning work, though
his usual field is natural language.
Carniege-Mellon University:
- Very difficult to get in.
- Rated consistiently as one of the top AI and Machine Learning
schools in the world.
- Diverse program
- Allen Newell; SOAR project
- Tom Mitchell, Jamie Carbonell, John Anderson in Machine Learning,
many others in other fields of AI and connectionism. Berliner,
Kenade, Reddy, Hinton, etc.
- Focus on research rather than classwork.
University of Pennsylvania:
- Well-known for their natural language work, not so much so for
machine learning.
- One complaint about terrible student/administration relationships.
MIT:
- Very difficult to get in.
- Famous for requiring 8-9 years of work for PhD.
- Rumored: (from Stanford student)
- Unfriendly
- One dimensional Department.
- Many professors were MIT undergrads.
University of Mass. @ Amherst:
- Strong AI and learning programs.
Georgia Tech:
- Dr. Janet Kolodner; Case Based Reasoning, Experiential learning,
PhD from Yale under Roger Schank.
- Connection with DARPA through Col. Bob Simpson who recieve MS in
Machine Learning from Georgia Tech under Kolodner. He is head of
DARPA Machine Learning research.
University of Pittsburgh:
- Bruce Buchanan has come here from Stanford to set up a big-time
AI lab. If he stays, excitement will follow.
- Focus on Expert Systems.
******Central Schools:
University of Illinois @ Champaign-Urbana:
- 6 AI faculty whose primary interest is learning, 4 have it as a
secondary interest. Fields include:
- EBL (Jerry DeJong)
- Theory of Learning (Lenny Pitt)
- Probabalistic learning, applied and theoretical
(Sylvian Ray, Larry Rendell)
- Conceptual Clustering (Bob Stepp)
- KBS Learning, automated programming (David Wilkins)
- Interdiscplinary approach, esp. re. the psychology dept.
- Doug Medin, Dedre Genter, William Brewer, William Greenough
- Work also being done in Lingusitics, Statistics, Electrical
Engineering and Physics Depts.
- Beckman Institute on campus
- Brand new $50M facility for study of intelligence and
complex systems.
University of Michigan:
- Holland; Classifiers and Genetic Algorithms
- Host of last year's (1987) Machine Learning conference.
******Western Schools:
University of Texas @ Austin:
- Machine Learning group headed by Bruce Porter.
- Many well-known and respected scientists working and visiting there.
(eg. Silberschatz, Boyer and Moore, Dijkstra)
- Relationship with MCC and Doug Lenat.
Stanford:
- Very difficult to get in.
- Famous for requiring 8-9 years of work for PhD.
- Bruce Buchanan, their best learning professor, has relocated to
U. Pittsburgh.
- AI department is dominated by those who believe that rigorous
logic is the representation best suited to solving problems.
- Rich Keller; explaination based learning. Their only specialist.
- David Rumelhart, connectionist, works in psych. dept.
- Most professors will support machine learning research however.
- Terrific connections with industry:
- Schlumberger
- NASA Ames
- Xerox PARC
- Lockheed AI Center
- Do not have an active learning group.
University of California @ San Diego:
- Most, if not all, of their machine learning work is centered
around connectionism.
University of California @ Berkeley:
- AI is not the focus of their CS department.
- Main AI professor is Wilensky, a clone of Roger Schank.
- Stuart Russell, Stanford graduate.
University of California @ Irvine:
- Strong psychological orientation.
- Good funding, good equipment.
- CS dept. is up and coming.
- Pat Langely main Learning professor.
- 4 faculty doing learning work
- 2 doing explaination-based learning
- 1 doing empirical work
- 45min to 1hr from LA.
University of California @ Los Angeles:
- Not recommended for machine learning
******Foreign schools:
University of Edinburgh, Scotland:
Peter Webb.
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