My name is Osaze Shears and I am a
junior Computer Engineering major conducting research in the fields of machine
learning and computer hardware acceleration. Since high school I have always
had a passion for conceptualizing the various applications of general
artificial intelligence. It amazed me to see the research being conducted in
the field, and applied to robotics and data analytics. Early in my junior year
I started to learn more about various machine-learning algorithms as a means to
predict dynamic real world information.
My research career in machine learning
began when I met with my faculty advisor in the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, Houman Homayoun, and he gave me the opportunity to
conduct research with his graduate student, Maryam Heidari. We realized that
the real estate market has heavy implications for investors and prospective
home-owners when it comes to making decisions regarding buying and renting
properties. The price value of the house is among the most important features
considered in these decisions, and so it is useful to gain accurate
approximations of a house’s value in order to determine where it ranks in
comparison to similar properties.
Because I was interested in learning
about the different ways in which machine learning could be applied, this
research project has allowed me to explore how to create and filter
multivariate data sets in order to improve the prediction capabilities of
machine learning algorithms. By going through this process I have gained insight
on what house features carry the most weight when the value of a house is
determined, and furthermore how to decide which modeling algorithms are best to
implement when dealing with various data sets. This research will definitely
assist me in my future career goals when I am creating computer hardware
devices that are used to accelerate the rate at which these computations can be
trained and applied.
