In this episode we talk with current MS and PhD students and find out why they decided to choose to pursue their studies at the Center for Data Science.
April 2, 2020 | 15:03
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SPEAKER:
Welcome to the NYU Center for Data Science admissions podcast. Today, we’ll be talking with our current MS and PhD students about why they decided to choose CDS.
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CHRIS: Hi, everyone, this is Chris. I’m a second year master’s student at the Center for Data Science. And I’d say there are two main attractions that drew me to CDS. The first one was undoubtedly the research and the reputation that the artificial intelligence community has for CDS, because as I told, in my bachelor’s thesis, I was working on a deep learning project and I had to do a lot of self learning and read papers. And most of the papers I read were from CDS like and I knew that Yann LeCun was like one of the greatest in the field and he was at CDS and he founded CDS. And so I obviously knew this was like a place to look forward to and so that drew me a lot like the research that is being done here and the reputation that CDS has.
The second factor was location, New York. So, I think this is actually like a factor that some people don’t consider while applying for colleges. And but I think it should change. Location matters a lot, especially from what I’ve seen. California is obviously a great location because of Silicon Valley. And I would say New York is the next best location. So, because location makes interviewing easier, makes the amount of opportunities available to you easier. Companies will give you callbacks if you’re located very close to them.
So, that is and moreover New York is the most happening place on earth. It’s like the biggest city on earth. So, there’s no dearth of entertainment. If anything happens in the world, it happens in New York. So, you have a great life. And from a social life perspective, there’s so many people traveling to New York every day that you meet. I meet more friends in the US than I met in Chennai. So, that’s the amount of people traveling to New York. So, yeah, all that. So, I think location and research are like two key highlights of CDS.
GUY DAVIDSON: My name is Guy Davidson. I am a first year PhD student here at the Center for Data Science and I started this past September. So, with where my research interests are, I applied to a wide variety of programs. I applied to some psychology programs and some neuroscience programs and some data science and computer science programs. And I felt that at CDS, the fact that every faculty member is appointed both at CDS and at another department encouraged us to sort of interdisciplinary work and encourages going to different fields and bringing inspiration from one field into how we do machine learning and data science and then vice versa taking that and applying it to problems in that field. I think you see both of these things very clearly. I was also excited about working with Brendan.
TIM BAKER: Yeah.
GUY DAVIDSON: Who’s one of the reasons I came here is because our research interests align very well and I feel that I can do the sort of research work I was hoping to do under his advisement and learn a lot from him as I do it.
KATRINA: Hi, everyone. I’m Katrina. I’m a second year PhD student at the Center for Data Science and also an alumnus from the master’s program. I started the PhD in 2018 and graduated from the masters in 2017. So, I mean, back in the day when I was applying for the master’s program, like I was really like impressed with the whole philosophy behind the master’s program, the way it was designed. I thought, I mean, first, it’s like really cool that it was the first data science program ever. And second, like it had some like, really, like prominent researchers who were involved with the program like Yann LeCun being the founding director of the program, and also like the Center for Data Science received a support of the Moore-Sloan Foundation, which I thought was like very positive sign.
TIM BAKER: Yeah.
KATRINA: And the fact that it’s in New York, it’s…
TIM BAKER: Everything.
KATRINA: Everything. Yeah, exactly.
TIM BAKER: Cool.
AKASH: Hi, my name is Akash and I’m currently in the CDS PhD program and I started in fall 2019. So, I had applied to, like, five or six programs when I was in my second year masters. Out that I got accepted in CDS Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering program, PhD, and then University of Wisconsin.
TIM BAKER: OK.
AKASH: So, I thought the CDS was the best place where I could get like, since my research is so multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, so CDS is the best place where you can get that interdisciplinary work because you can easily collaborate with doctors from NYU Langone which is also best medical school in US.
TIM BAKER: Yeah.
AKASH: And then you can also get the expertise if you require from Courant from math department or from the Courant computer science department. So, it’s a very interdisciplinary program where you can work from the topics range from medical to politics to, let’s say, data security and privacy like law.
TIM BAKER: Yeah.
AKASH: Like you can have diverse topics. So, I think CDS gives us that option and I think it’s very important as a researcher to work in this intersection.
AMBER TANG: I’m Amber Tang. I’m a first year student at CDS. My current track is NLP. And before coming to CDS, I used to work in risk and finance but I majored in economics and archaeology. I think for me like when I was looking at grad schools and just when I was like thinking about this next phase in my life, you know, I come from like a non-traditional background in many ways like academically, culturally. It’s just like I think CDS provides like such a unique mix of both like academic and industry expertise and just like a community of people who I feel like really care about you. There’s literally no other like university I would rather do my master’s in aside from like here at NYU CDS.
TIM BAKER: OK.
AMBER TANG: I really love reading the work of the professor’s here especially Professor Spirling who I’m so lucky ‘cause he’s like my advisor, like, you know, jackpot, like reading his work. I was following him on Twitter way before I came to CDS.
TIM BAKER: Oh, wow!
AMBER TANG: Yeah. And also just, you know, CDS as like one of the very first like data science programs like ever.
TIM BAKER: Yeah.
AMBER TANG: And being pioneered by like Yann LeCun and having our professors who work in industry I’d companies that make an impact like a global impact on different like parts of society is really cool. And just like being able to hear from experts in the field who really want you to grow as well and who really care about you and who just like really want to broaden the field. And I think, you know, like CDS’s commitment to like diversity in many senses like not just like diversity in terms of like your background, but diversity in what you want to contribute to the field is.
TIM BAKER: Yeah.
AMBER TANG: I really kind of like empathize with it and that really inspires me and motivates me and makes me want to be a better data scientist.
TIM BAKER: Oh.
ERIC: So, my name is Eric. I was, I’m currently a student part time in the Center for Data Science. I was accepted just this current semester of fall 2019. I expect to graduate in about three years.
TIM BAKER: OK.
ERIC: I chose CDS because like, frankly, there’s one reason and it’s a very powerful reason for me. It’s because I get to work full time and attend CDS part time. I think that the CDS program at NYU is really unique that you can actually be able to get away with this that we’re in New York City where it’s pretty like much more easy to find jobs and in my case even like internships and a full time job while doing this program that you’re not going to find anywhere else. Like even Colombia would be much harder since they’re very far uptown and most of the work is midtown, downtown, that kind of area.
EDINA: So, my name is Edina and I’m a CDS PhD student, currently my second year. So, I applied to PhDs in different fields, not only in data science or computer science, and one of the things is because I liked interdisciplinarity and CDS is a very interdisciplinary center more than most interdisciplinary that I could find when I was looking for places to do the PhD.
TIM BAKER: OK.
EDINA: Another one was because so during my previous research before a PhD, which was in physics or mathematics, at the end I was I ended up asking myself questions that are really more related with data science than they are with physics or math. So, in order to solve questions in physics or in math or maybe in another discipline, I needed to solve important technical questions in data science. The other the other factor is that it’s in New York.
TIM BAKER: OK.
EDINA: And you may not have like a plan of what do you want to do in New York or an internship or collaborating with other people, but you always have options.
TIM BAKER: Yeah.
EDINA: All of the options in whatever internship you want to do in whatever field, you’re going to find somebody that live here.
JASON PANG: I’m Jason Pang. I’m a, I guess, first year PhD student at the Center for Data Science. Prior to that, I was actually also in the master’s program at the Center for Data Science also for two years and then I just started my PhD program. I guess it’s a function of, well, I was already in New York, OK?
TIM BAKER: Yeah.
JASON PANG: You know, I like being in New York. I have a lot of friends here and it’s just everything sort of, here, like, anything that you could possibly think of like eat the food or events, everything, everything’s here. So, certainly I had a preference of staying in the city. But also like to what I was mentioning before, like there’s a certain energy to the Center for Data Science.
TIM BAKER: Yeah.
JASON PANG: And the faculty as well they’re all like young and very, very excited about the projects they’re working on. And that’s certainly something that I really liked about the place.
JOAQUIN MEHTA: Right, so my name is Joaquin Mehta. I’m an undergrad student from the University of Mumbai in India. And I worked at CERN for a bit before joining the PhD program at the Center for Data Science this year. So, it was a very simple answer, right? I said I had three schools that I wanted to get into. Kyle was one of the people I really wanted to work with and Rajesh was like following up on. So, originally, like I said, I wasn’t aware of Rajesh’s body of work.
TIM BAKER: Yeah.
JOAQUIN MEHTA: Once Kyle pointed me, I looked up everything he wrote and the students he had and like what he was doing before. So, getting a better idea of what I was going into, right? So, and then I realized, “Wow, this is really a cool area that I should explore more.” So, I didn’t know about this area. I knew a bit about physics, a bit about machine learning and then this was just a direction that I really liked. And then I spoke to Rajesh and that sort of happened.
TIM BAKER: OK.
JOAQUIN MEHTA: So, because I found this amazing fit with two people that I really wanted to work with, I sort of figured out that, “Yeah, this is a great school for me.” And it was New York. That was a very important part of my decision because when you choose a PhD program, you’re going to be there for a few years. So, it was a city that I really wanted to go to. So, in hindsight, I would say that, given my background growing up in Mumbai, I probably wouldn’t have made the transition if it was from Mumbai to New York to Geneva. It was nice it was from Mumbai to Geneva to New York.
TIM BAKER: Yeah.
JOAQUIN MEHTA: So yeah, it matters, like where you’re living really matters.
TIM BAKER: Awesome.
JOAQUIN MEHTA: And this was a perfect fit for me.
WILLIAM FALCON: So, my name is William Falcon, a PhD student at the Center for Data Science and I’m a second year. I came from undergrad and so I just I was just looking at the PhD programs. There were basically four broad reasons. The main kind of primary reason was because I wanted to work specifically with Kim, Antonio McCarran and Aerosmith Celli as well. And so I actually have had the pleasure of working all three of them. And when I applied to it, and this was the place where they were, right?
TIM BAKER: Yeah.
WILLIAM FALCON: So, like…
TIM BAKER: Keeping you located.
WILLIAM FALCON: Exactly. And second, it was also nice, but you know, had they been in, I don’t know, Antarctica I would have come there.
TIM BAKER: Yeah.
WILLIAM FALCON: So, it doesn’t matter. But it was also nice that I don’t have to really move because I was already here. And third, I also beyond that the I think CDS is a newer program for PhDs and to me it just felt more like the ability to have an impact as a student is greater than these other established programs. So, I came from Columbia and like those are more silos, right?
TIM BAKER: Yeah.
WILLIAM FALCON: They’ve been there for a long time so they’re very hard to change and kind of slow to move, whereas CDS I felt like it was very dynamic, very young and things were like the staff is really making an effort to make it an amazing program. And it just felt more of my style of like kind of rapid startup type of feel.
YOSH: Hey, I’m Yosh. I’m a second year master’s student. I started in 2018 and I am doing the masters in data science. When it comes to the course structure at the MSDS itself, I really liked how flexible it was and the choice of electives that you had and I liked that it was a two-year program as opposed to a lot of DS analytics programs that are one year, which is a big hurdle for international students. Plus, if it’s just one year, you don’t get to learn as much as what I feel.
TIM BAKER: OK.
YOSH: And the second thing was that because it’s New York and I’ve always wanted to come here.
TIM BAKER: OK.
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TIM BAKER (HOST): Thank you for listening to the Center for Data Science admissions podcast. Today’s episode was hosted by Tim Baker, mixed by Catharina Mora, and music was provided by Cryptic One. You can find his music at crypticone.bandcamp.com.
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