Arish Alreja

TL;DR I am happy to share the unofficial PNC coursework guide. This is a coursework roadmap for students on the Joint Ph.D. track in Neural Computation and Machine Learning at CMU. It is written for students in early stages of coursework. The roadmap aggregates insights from over a dozen PNC students about coursework combinations and sequencing of pre-requisites, all with the goal of minimizing stress and maximizing research productivity. Students who have completed coursework contributed their stories about good coursework choices as well as avoidable and painful mistakes, with the hope that future students can benefit. Click below for more!

Full Story

The Joint Ph.D. track in Neural Computation and Machine Learning requires a non-trivial amount of ML coursework in addition to Neuroscience courses, which must be completed alongside steady progress in research marked by the 1$^{\text{st}}$ year and 2$^{\text{nd}}$ year research milestones. This document captures detailed information about individual courses, pre-req relationships between courses (all pre-reqs are not equal) and other DO’s and DONT’s. The goal of this document is to help students have more informed academic advising conversations and arrive at decisions that reduce stress and improve research productivity.

Although I am the author, this document’s conception and content was shaped by late night conversations among several of students in the program as we ground our way through coursework. Thanks are due to Tara Pirnia, who set up a questionnaire to poll students about their experiences anonymously, that resulted in a more systematic sampling of experiences from students in the program. Thanks are also due to all students who filled out the questionnaire. I believe the diversity of input, from people who found everything easy, to people who found it hard as well as everyone in between makes the document a more robust tool. Lastly, thanks are due to Professor Steve Chase (co-director of the PNC program), who encouraged the idea and helped refine it with feedback over multiple drafts.

Call for help
Going forward, this document needs new owners. Specifically, it needs students who are in the midst of coursework and are willing to review and update the document as needed, a couple of times a year. This is critical because courses change all the time. Without being refreshed with the experiences of current students, this roadmap will lose its utility in a couple of years.

Lastly, this document only covers the Joint Ph.D. track for Neural Computation and Machine Learning right now. Adding roadmaps for the Neural Computation/Statistics and pure Neural Computation track’s will help students who choose to pursue those paths.

If you are interested in helping in any form. Please contact me. Our community will value your contributions.