Season 1 (2019) Episode 04: Dr. Ting Qian. Patterns in Data

For Academic Years 2018-2020, I am teaching PhD-level regression and machine learning courses in the Department of Psychology at Princeton University. My academic webpage: https://psych.princeton.edu/person/ting-qian I am a method-oriented “Data Scientist”​ who focuses on designing the optimal statistical / machine learning models in order to discover hidden patterns in data. I am NOT a software engineer by trade. I am not interested in positions where the primary responsibility is to create software that implements or uses off-the-shelf machine learning algorithms. I am interested in positions where I, together with coworkers, solve difficult data inference problems. My specialty is in conducting probabilistic inferences on generative models using Bayesian methods. Specifically, I am specialized in clustering and segmenting seemingly unstructured data.Dr. Ting Qian wordcloud I also develop statistics software for Bayesian inference utilizing GPU in my free time. Progress is slow, but I’d like to focus on this a bit more. I believe GPU-based Bayesian inference will change how we process streaming data. I was formally trained as a computational cognitive scientist (my PhD is in Brain and Cognitive Sciences). My research tries to uncover how humans and animals understand “the order of things”​. For example, how come we understand the concept of “seasons”​? What does it mean for Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter to rotate in such an order? Is the perception of orderly weather patterns the reason why we understand the concept “seasons”​? I still find these questions fascinating.Dr. ZPreview Video