Purpose 

The main purpose of this mentored on-campus learning and research program is to provide our PhD-oriented current MA students with research experience. It allows our students to gain experience and skills to grow as researchers while providing faculty from other departments RAs with rigorous preparation in Statistics and Machine Learning. 

Program Setup 

Proposed projects, from Columbia Faculty, will be considered and approved by MA in Statistics Program’s Faculty Directors, Professors Demissie Alemayehu, and Banu Baydil, in consultation with the MA advisory committee, before being selected and shared with interested students. 

  • Proposed Timeline

    • Project Applications Window December 2020 – January 7, 2021
      • Call for project proposals [December]
        • Proposals should be submitted via this application form. 
      • Project reviews [Early January]
      • Student applications [Mid January]
        • Student selection [Late January]
        • Mentors will review and announce their selection. 
        • Students will be registered for Mentored Research GR5398 (1 credit letter-graded) in Spring 2021. 
        • . Program to run Spring(January)-Summer 2021
    • Continuation as Fall 2021 capstone projects is possible.

  • Research Mentor Commitments

    • One hour of weekly mentoring
    • Mentor a team of 3 – 5 students throughout the project’s duration. 
  • Capstone Project Eligibility Criteria (Fall 2021)

    • Students should discuss with their research advisor the possibility of having their project evolve into a final capstone project. 
    • All Fall 2021 capstone projects must be approved by Demissie Alemayehu using the same approval process currently used for GR5291 Advanced Data Analysis or by faculty instructors for GR5242 Advanced Machine Learning. 
    • Capstone project proposals and requests are due the first week in September 2021 to the ADA and AML course instructors. 
    • Students receive mentoring from both their research advisor and the course instructor(s) on their projects. 
    • A final paper and presentation are due November – December 2021 and will be graded by a) the course instructor and the research advisor.