The other Cambridge

So I have managed to get through three semesters at MIT. Three rather traumatic and difficult semesters. This Spring has been tough. I expected it to have gone more smoothly but it turned out to be very challenging indeed. Let's recap what happened.

On the research front, I was a little disappointed because a paper of mine got rejected. But I guess it's something we have to deal with. We have somehow repackaged it and submitted it elsewhere. I managed, somehow, to pass my RQE though. That was probably the greatest achievement of the Spring, since I was not very confident. The two members in my committee were very nice -- no tricky questions were asked, only questions that helped clarify their understanding of my work.

I signed up for 2 classes (Information Theory and Analaysis) and listened to Statistical Learning Theory. All of them were great classes. I have always wanted to learn Information Theory properly. Unfortunately, even until more than halfway through the semester, I didn't get the big picture. I couldn't tell the difference between source and channel coding (an unforgivably sin given I'm in LIDS! But credit me for being honest) until Mukul Agrawal of LIDS enlightened me. Analysis was taught by an expert teacher, Prof. Sig Helgason. Before taking the class, I was a little apprehensive; I didn't know whether I could take the rigor of math. But I can say that I enjoyed the experience of dealing with simple theorems and proofs. It made me feel bright. I have even decided to do Math as a minor and I'll start with Topology or Differential Geometry next semester. Out of all the classes I have ever taken, Statistical Learning Theory by Prof. Tomaso Poggio is by far the class that covered the most topics. I enjoyed all the lectures by the invited guests and of course the teaching staff. Many of the topics were related to my research, e.g. the lectures on manifold learning given by Prof. Partha Niyogi and regularized least squares by Prof. Ryan Rifkin.

I received a bit of good news lately. My paper on "Estimating Signals with Finite Rate of Innovation from Noisy Samples: A Stochastic Algorithm" with Prof. Vivek Goyal has been accepted to the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing. This work can be found on arXiv but since that version, we have made some rather substantial changes so keep a lookout for it if you're interested in signals with finite rate of innovation. This work was borne out of my class project for 6.342: Wavelets, Approximation and Compression last spring.

I'm now in the other Cambridge, in UK. I am interning at Microsoft Research Cambridge with John Winn and Chris Bishop. More details to come later... Needless to say, I'm so happy to be back at my second home, Cambridge, a place I met my wife and where I spent three wonderful years of my life. There's nothing quite like roaming the quaint streets of Cambridge and seeing the punts along the narrow river Cam. I also attended a formal hall yesterday. Here's a picture.

It's time for a bit of reflection given that I have spent a substantial amount of time at MIT. I have truly enjoyed interacting with the people in LIDS and elsewhere. In particular, Pat Kreidl has given me many words of encouragement, when I often feel that I'm not good enough for MIT, often when I feel stupid. My office mates, including Michael Chen, Jin and Venkat provide me with the avenue to talk about half-cooked ideas and I thank the rest of SSG for putting up with some of my many idiosyncracies, including my heavy footsteps. I have also enjoyed talking with members of Prof. Mitter's group, including Peter Jones and Mukul Agrawal, who gave me the big picture behind Information Theory. On the academic front, I can say that I'm pretty pleased, though there were some disappointments (as mentioned above). I enjoy my research, though it's often like a love-hate relationship. Classes, what can I say? I have endless zest for learning! There are still so many I want to take. For example, how can I leave MIT without knowing what a measure is?

I'll stop here now. I promise to update this blog more frequently.

Vincent