Ramin Moghaddas, assistant professor of in the Department of Industrial Engineering, has received the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Machine Learning Research Award (MLRA). He is working with Cynthia Rudin, associate professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University. The research project is titled, “Utilizing Key Past Experiences from Large Datasets to Make Better Prediction in Multi-Class Settings.”
“This grant will assist with furthering our innovative research into real-time data-driven decision-making to solve real-world issues,” said Moghaddas. The project aims to establish a new statistical framework, which helps decision-makers leverage large data sources to make better conclusions. The novelty of the project is in designing a new set of statistical techniques to address the classic field of case-based reasoning. The method is designed to yield predictive accuracy, computational efficiency and insight into large datasets. This is a major contribution to the field of machine learning through bridging predictive models and human decision-making.
The MLRA program funds eligible universities, faculty, doctoral students and postdocs that are conducting novel research in machine learning. Its goal is to enable research that accelerates the development of innovative algorithms, publications, and source code across a wide variety of machine learning applications and focus areas. Award recipients also can receive an invitation to attend an annual research seminar and may receive live one-on-one training sessions with Amazon scientists and engineers. The proposals are judged based on clarity of purpose, impact to the field of machine learning, and likelihood of leading to a published paper.
The program also allocates credits to use AWS. These credits grant researchers and their students access to Amazon’s distributed cloud offerings, where resources like large-scale storage and computation capabilities that will scale-on-demand are available.
