College of Engineering
New machine learning research consulting service available on campus
Tennessee Tech’s College of Engineering is now offering a consulting service for campus departments in need of machine learning research guidance.
Computer science Ph.D. student Katie Brown has taken on the role of machine learning research consultant. She is available Monday through Wednesday from 8-11 a.m. at Bruner Hall 236. Appointment requests may be made here:
https://www.tntech.edu/engineering/programs/csc/mlrc.php
“I’m truly excited about this,” Brown said. “I’m getting to learn what other people are doing across campus with machine learning. I get to mentor and help.”
A seminar with more information will be held Sept. 22 at 11 a.m. at Bruner Hall 228.
William (Bill) Eberle, Ph.D., computer science professor and interim assistant dean of graduate education for the College of Engineering, said the need for the machine learning research consulting service arose from the numerous requests for assistance that came to the computer science department from throughout the university.
“There’s a lot of need out there,” he said. “We’ve been fielding questions for a while from students and faculty who have needed help with machine learning, data mining, AI and high-level umbrella tasks. It was taking a lot of our time working with them – not that we were solving their problems, but we were trying to give them guidance and help direct them toward certain models and tools.”
The machine learning research consulting service is available to all departments on campus.
“Katie is here to help with research efforts going on in the university – that’s the primary focus,” Eberle said. “So, faculty members can come and talk to her, and students who are working with faculty members can come and talk to her.”
Eberle said that through this service, the College of Engineering aims to help the campus community to be successful in machine learning research efforts.
“Every major has data – they just may not know how to make sense of that data or figure out patterns in the data… That’s where this service comes into play,” he said. “Katie can help guide them, offer suggestions and give them tools and resources.”
Brown said, “My hope is that people learn more about this technology and that it opens up new research avenues for them. A lot of people do research that has potential to help others, so this is just another avenue to be able to do that.”
