Tim Baker:
Welcome to the Center for Data Science admissions Podcast. I’m your host, Tim Baker.
Aishwarya Kamath:
Hi. I’m Aishwarya. I joined CDS last year in September 2019. I’m in the PhD. for data science, so program at CDS.
Tim Baker:
OK. And was that your first time applying to the program?
Aishwarya Kamath:
Yes, it was. It was. OK.
Tim Baker:
How did you find the application process?
Aishwarya Kamath:
It was pretty straightforward. It was pretty standard compared to the rest of the places I was applying to. So, it was. Yeah. OK.
Tim Baker:
And do you have any advice for people who are applying for the PhD. program?
Aishwarya Kamath:
I guess only apply when you really feel confident about your application, because I think waiting the one year between when I wasn’t sure to when I was sure that I wanted to do a Ph.D., really made a difference for me. Because obviously it’s a huge commitment and you don’t want to regret doing it. So, if you’re not sure, I would say take a year and maybe take a job open which lets you explore other things and then when you’re sure you can apply.
Tim Baker:
One of the questions that we get a lot from people is who should write their letters? Do you have any advice on what people should be looking for when they’re searching for people to write their letters of recommendation?
Aishwarya Kamath:
I think it definitely helps to have somebody who you have worked with closely, like research wise. For me, I had my advisor for my master’s write one letter and then someone from work, who I work with during an internship as well because I did my internship and then joined full time at the same place. So, my advisor, there would be my second letter and obviously I had very little research experience starting because I had just started doing this machine learning stuff during my masters. And I wanted to apply right after. During the year which I took the job up and you know trying to figure it out if I want to do a PhD. I did some research on the site. And so the professor who I did research with during my free time, basically in the gap year, is the one who wrote my third letter.
So, it was two research advisor letters and one who was from industry. So I think, OK. That’s kind of cool. But if you’re, if you’re in that kind of situation. OK. And then did you contact any center for data science faculty before applying? Yeah, I did. I actually came and visited the department before the application season, because I had friends who knew other friends at CDS already. So, they introduced me and I came in and I actually had a very quick chat with (unknown) actually, and he encouraged me to definitely apply. And of course you know, it has to go through the application process, but applying you know, just was very encouraging. So, yeah, that was nice. Excellent. And so as, as you, you were accepted to CDS and you were working beforehand, so what was the transition like for you going from working in industry to a full time PhD program? Yeah. I mean it’s a very different work life balance, I would say. I mean, that’s self-imposed.
So, you know, you can have a healthy work life balance, I guess.(laughs) But yeah, definitely you feel a huge difference between when it’s like 5PM or 6PM at your job, you just go home and then you don’t think about it and you’re just done for the day. But that just never happens during PhD because you have like 5,000 things you want to try after the thing that you’re trying to finish today. Yeah, that’s why I said earlier that unless you try out this one year or so of working in industry and checking if that works for you because. You know, I found that kind of not stimulating enough because sure. Like, you know, you do whatever you do and like, you know, you finish that part. But open research is part of it or like just being able to pick your problems and solve them all the time. And like, you know, getting support for that and seeing people around you who are also doing the same. Like because I’ve been at CDS like I don’t know, like 11:00 or 12:00 on weekdays.
And you know, there’s still other people who are always there and it’s just nice to have other people who are also as obsessed with something as you are. Yeah, it’s definitely different. But for me it was a lot of fun and I think that I was looking forward to that transition so much that, you know, I was just happy(LAUGH) when I started my PhD.
Tim Baker:
Excellent. So, were you already living in New York City when you came to CDS? No, I was in Boston. You are so I’m, Boston’s a relatively decent sized city. Like, how is the transition coming to New York City for you? Was it your first time living in New York or? Yeah, I’ve never lived in New York. I mean, I did my Masters at Amherst, which was basically, you know, five square foot space or something.(LAUGH) And then, and then I moved to Boston because I was like, I need to live in the city. But it was just kind of small. It’s definitely incomparable to New York. And, you know, everything closes down at like 9:00. And if you go to get dinner at 10:30, they’re like, oh, no, sorry, we’re closed. And I was just very disturbed by that because in India, the basic stuff is open all the time and you can always find things that you can go to eat at. So, yeah, that was a really nice change when I moved to New York. Definitely it’s a bit overwhelming at first when you move in because there are just so many people, but I’m from India, so it doesn’t bother me very much. (laughs) Right. But yeah, I guess housing and all of this is a bit more complicated in a big city like this. But yeah, it’s fine. New York is really fun. There’s always so much happening, which makes me happy. It’s even if I’m not the one doing these things, there are people (LAUGH) doing fun things around me and that makes me happy enough.
Tim Baker:
OK, so you actually brought up housing and this is normally where I asked people about what the housing search was like? But you had an interesting situation because you were one of our very first students to ever have a PhD housing, so can you speak to a little bit, you know how the, PhD housing is? What living in PhD housing is like?
Aishwarya Kamath:
Yeah, that was a huge relief, when I emailed you and you were like, oh, we have this house. I’m like, oh my God, this (laughs) was pretty hard to find a place not being in New York. I think if you’re already in the area, it’s easy because you can go see and you can kind of avoid the scams and stuff like that, but you’re unaware of like what. Like, likes to look out for it. Yeah, pretty hard. So, yeah. I mean, start out is amazing and like it was me and Paulina and like with other people who are also like an item, like I think everybody enjoyed living here and there’s all of this green areas. So, like we hang out in the oval and like work outside sometimes and it’s really close to the lab, I would say. Like I’ve always walked. I mean, there’s also a bus, which takes you directly to a union or whatever. But yeah, I enjoyed the 25 minutes of peaceful walking after work or to clear my head out.
So, yeah, it’s, it’s very clean and. I don’t know. No. Would you call the surrounding areas things really safe and the East River park is really close too. That really helped during the confinement because there was at least somewhere we could just walk with which was not really crowded. So, I would let go every evening and yeah. So, overall I think it was super useful that CDS provides this especially for me.
Tim Baker:
Yeah. OK. And then so, so once you got here. How long did it take you to get set up with all the equipment you needed? Was there anything that was provided to you as a student to help you get set up?
Aishwarya Kamath:
Well, I think as part of our package, we got some amount of money for buying technical equipment. And that was more than sufficient to like, you know, get a laptop and everything else. I love my office and I miss it very much.(LAUGH) It’s been too long. But yeah, I mean, the space is really nice and it’s not too crowded.
Like, I’ve seen a lot of other labs like the MIT Lab, for example, there are a million desks set up in this tiny space. But like we have two or three people in an office and all the tables and like, you know, everything is so new and. Yeah, it’s, it’s amazing. I really like the office space.
Tim Baker:
Excellent. So, I had a couple of questions about CDS culture, but you’ve already answered a couple of them, sort of like the work life balance question and what living in New York City is like. But how would you describe like a day in the life of a CDS, PhD student? What is your day look like?
Aishwarya Kamath:
I’m not a very early person, so I usually get there by 10:00 or 10:30. And you know, I pick up my meal on the way sometimes, which is a really convenient thing if you’re new to New York. And it’s this meal subscription plan where you pay in advance for a fixed number of meals and then you just go pick it up. You pick in advance in the morning which meal you want to have and it is ready so you don’t have to wait.
And it’s always affordable. It’s like $6 to $7 per meal. So, it really works out and I hate cooking every day.(LAUGH) So, this is amazing. I just pick it up on my way to the lab and then, you know, have lunch with other people there. Usually there’s people having lunch or they like text on, you know, some Slack channel like, they’re having lunch or so. Or if that doesn’t happen, people from my lab are doing stuff, be like go out and have lunch or two people. You have lunch and then have a bunch of hours free to work. And then there’s usually classes in the evening because in my class they’re in the evening. So, invariably around five days are classes. And then I pick up dinner, come back to the lab work for a while and then go home. On Fridays and stuff, there’s usually. I mean, there’s also a lot of talks and stuff (INAUDIBLE)at CDS, which is nice, but I feel with New York being so central and because it’s so nice, a lot of speakers are happy to come and that’s been really nice as well.
In the first semester I got to meet a lot of researchers and so that’s also usually part of the day, I guess.
Tim Baker:
OK, so if you don’t mind me asking, can you maybe tell the listeners a little bit about the research that you’re doing?
Aishwarya Kamath:
Sure. I’m working with Yen and Joe. Last year I was working on providing more grounding to NLP tasks where I was trying to see if you have additional context in the form of images. It would help resolve some ambiguities while answering text-only NLP tasks. And also with yeah, and I’m working on building better text like language models which have little variables in them. So, that you can explicitly model like the uncertainty and kind of have more control over the generation.
Tim Baker:
OK, excellent, great. So, I just have like three final questions that I ask everybody. The first one is, what’s the one thing that you recommend everybody do when they come to live in New York City?
Aishwarya Kamath:
Explore the East Village. I love it.(LAUGH) OK.
Tim Baker:
And then why did you end up ultimately deciding to choose CDS for your PhD program?
Aishwarya Kamath:
It was obvious. And you know, that was like an ideal combination for me, for PhD. And also I wanted to live in New York and just like, yeah, my top choice, hands down. Yeah. I’m always amazed when I talk to people how much of an attraction that is. Yeah. Especially when you spend like, you know, do a little over two years and hours. Do you really like (LAUGH) You see that? It’s like I guess it’s the same reason we all come to New York. Right? Yeah. Just to get away from these little towns or wherever, cool. And then just if you have any final advice for people who are looking to apply for the fall 2020 class. Yeah, I mean, I guess there’s still some time to kind of try and do some work before you apply. So, I think this was kind of the time around which I was sure I wanted to apply a PhD and I reached out to a bunch of people who are more severe than me. And asked them, you know, if they would like to collaborate on something or like, you know, work on something, maybe scope and, you know, which can be finished in like in a couple of months.
Which shows that you have tried to get some research experience. This is assuming you don’t if you already have your undergrad or master’s, of course, like it’s fine. But yeah, I think that makes a huge difference because it makes you also more confident in your application and you can speak more clearly about what you’re interested in. And if you tried out a bunch of different things, you can talk about them better in your statement. So, yeah. Yes, it would take the next couple of months to kind of make the monster of the month and try to do some research.
Tim Baker:
Excellent. Well, thank you so much for your time, I appreciate it. Thank you for listening to the CDS admissions podcast. The music for the podcast was composed by the instrumental artist, Cryptic one. You can find his work at crypticone.bandcamp.com.