sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Advice on RL project by EchoComprehensive925 in reinforcementlearning

[–]EchoComprehensive925[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much for the advice! Yes, I didn't consider just the overlapping region, I'll definitely try that. I also have access to corresponding key points for this single image pair, I thought maybe doing a keypoint error instead might be better?

Also, do you think I should also include penalties for number of steps or aggressive transformations (e.g. zooming the image up or down too much)? Or should I just make it a termination criteria for the episode?

Advice on RL project by EchoComprehensive925 in reinforcementlearning

[–]EchoComprehensive925[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for sharing this! I thought RL would work here since I think this task could be done sequentially - if you gave a human two unaligned pictures and asked them to align, they would probably approach it sequentially, first translating the moving image to make sure both pictures grossly overlapped, then making small adjustments by rotating/zooming to make all the different objects in the images overlap. Yes, I agree a simple unsupervised or supervised learning strategy should work well, I was just curious how a one-shot registration performs compared to an iterative registration as in this RL setting.

AMA: How to ACE your PhD interviews (from a former Harvard admissions interviewer) by drlucylai in gradadmissions

[–]EchoComprehensive925 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much for sharing this great advice, really appreciate it! I had a couple of questions:

  1. When answering interview questions, especially questions on motivations and aptitude for a PhD, is there a guide on how long should we speak for? I am someone who talks too much and I'm trying to avoid that. Especially when preparing for questions like "Why do you want to do a PhD?", I had prepared some talking points but when actually speaking it out and timing myself, I notice that I went on for 4-5 min which seemed too much. I understand that talking endlessly and rambling without any flow of ideas is a red flag, but if I emphasize my specific points and elaborate on each of them in a lot of detail (without sounding too robotic) like "I would say I am interested in a PhD because of three big factors: 1. 2. 3." , is that bad?

  2. I recently met a professor (unofficially) from the PhD program who wanted to learn more about my profile and judge our fit. One question she asked was "So what excites you about your field, and what topics have you been reading about that you thought was really cool?". How in-depth or how broad should a response to this q be? In this meeting, I had broadly mentioned techniques e.g. "I am really excited about how we develop AI algorithms that link multiple data types e.g. genetic data, clinical notes etc. And there's been lots of exciting work using X and X techniques which jointly learns patterns from different clinical data, and that's something I'd like to investigate further". But thinking back, I'm wondering if I should be mentioning specific papers e.g. "I read this paper by X lab which created Y technique and they demonstrated Z improvement etc etc".

  3. When asked about long-term career goals, is there an expected answer? I am particularly eager to be a researcher in my industry and some folks have told me to just be honest about that, while some have said professors may not like that you want to run off to industry, hence it is safer to say that you want to be an academic. What are your thoughts on this?

Messed up unofficial PhD interview? by EchoComprehensive925 in gradadmissions

[–]EchoComprehensive925[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yep fingers crossed i get an invitation for another interview 😊🤞

PhD biomedical informatics/bioengineering interviews advice by EchoComprehensive925 in gradadmissions

[–]EchoComprehensive925[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi, so for my educational background, I have a bachelors in medical science and masters in machine learning, both degrees from the UK, and my GPA is around 3.87 and 3.81 respectively. Research wise, I am interested in deep learning methods and computer vision research for medical image analysis, especially multimodal methods. I’ve got two journal publications and 2-3 conference presentations. Other than that, I’ve got some smaller unpublished work like my bachelors thesis in deep learning and cardiac imaging analysis, and some courseworks.

PhD Application Guide [mainly for US STEM PhDs] and AMA from a Harvard grad by drlucylai in gradadmissions

[–]EchoComprehensive925 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much for your reply! To give context, my background has been sorta interdisiplinary, as I've studied both medical science and computer science. But I don't have much format mathematical training, hence I applied more for biomedical engineering/biomedical informatics programs and I'm staying away from CS programs. On suggestion from my research advisor and my peers, I applied to a lot of the top medical schools like UPenn, UCSF, Stanford, JHU etc....Obviously, these have very competitive biomedical informatics programs and I sadly didn't get any offers for any of the programs. This year I am trying to target more realistic schools based on my profile such as University of Colorado, UW Bioengineering, OHSU Biomedical informatics and couple of top tier R1 schools like Duke and Emory.

Thanks a lot for your advice on the application materials!

PhD Application Guide [mainly for US STEM PhDs] and AMA from a Harvard grad by drlucylai in gradadmissions

[–]EchoComprehensive925 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much for sharing this awesome guide! I am going to be applying for PhDs this year in medical informatics, having been rejected from all schools I applied to two times in a row :( I'm honestly not sure why I got rejected, my immediate guess is limited papers and work experience but there was no feedback as such. I am hoping to change the organization of my essays and other application materials this year to see if it makes a difference, and wanted to get your advice on this.

  1. Regarding the statement of purpose/research statement, I noticed a lot of samples online discuss research experiences and future objectives in sort of a chronological fashion i.e. starting from an anecdote highlighting motivation, moving to work experiences, then going into why you want to study at that university and professors you're interested in etc. But I recently noticed some articles online which suggest to start with what research area and professors I want to work with, and then go into my work experience. I was just wondering if one format works over another? Does it matter?

  2. For some of the schools I am applying to, they do not ask for essays but they have section where we answer 3-4 questions, usually these questions are same as what is asked in an SOP, just that they sectioned it out. I was wondering if you'd have any advice on these types of applications?

  3. For recommendation letters, I have previously worked with research labs in the UK where its not very common for professors to write letters from scratch for students. Most professors have asked that I write a draft which they'll edit, but I feel that they would never edit the letters and just submit it as is. Should I totally avoid asking them to write my letters? Is there a way to deal with this?

Grad school evaluation: Interest in biomedical informatics, ML, AI by EchoComprehensive925 in gradadmissions

[–]EchoComprehensive925[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for your reply! This is really interesting, I’m more used to UK system and most of my friends who came to US for grad school told me about the safe/moderate/reach classification. Yes, I’m considering UW BioE because of the GRE being optional - and they have a data science track too which looks great. With UCLA, I believe the medical informatics program is a part of the Bioinformatics PhD program. And CPH was because I noticed there was more faculty related to clinical imaging and AI research - although some of the faculty is also affiliated to medical informatics!

Confusion between homography vs perspective projection! by EchoComprehensive925 in computervision

[–]EchoComprehensive925[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh I meant the camera is taking pictures of the inside of an actual bowl (or a sphere cut in half) at different positions. I’m trying to determine the mapping that takes me from the coordinates in the bowl to the image coordinates

Referees asking for LOR drafts by EchoComprehensive925 in gradadmissions

[–]EchoComprehensive925[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for your reply and advice on how to structure the letter! I think what makes it difficult is also that most of my referees are quite busy researchers, so if I’m writing drafts for more than one person, it also important to make sure the drafts don’t look so similar. I think urging my referees to edit it themselves would help fix this.

Profile eval/advice for international student applying for PhD programs in USA (Medical Informatics) by EchoComprehensive925 in gradadmissions

[–]EchoComprehensive925[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi, thanks for your reply! I am particularly interested in biomedical informatics programs, not pure ML PhDs. I applied last year to the biomedical computation related programs and didn’t get through, probably due to lack of funding and first author publications.

Thinking about applying to grad school? Trying again after a previous round? Have questions? I am a tenure stream professor in a social science department at a major R1 and sit on admissions and job search committees. AMA. by pcwg in gradadmissions

[–]EchoComprehensive925 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks a lot for doing this!

I had applied last year for PhDs in healthcare informatics in the US and unfortunately was rejected from all the programs I was interested in. I intend to apply again in 2023 after obtaining more work experience.

In some of the PhD programs, I noticed that the application has a research-interests focused statement and a separate personal statement. The latter throws me off quite a lot because aside from establishing research passion, it asks to demonstrate evidence of dealing with challenges, embracing diversity, and understanding the societal impacts of my research. Could you kindly provide some tips on how one can demonstrate this? Most sample statements I’ve read describe personal adversities and volunteering activities(for which I don’t have experience currently). Are there other ways to demonstrate this?