Postdoc Year at the University of California, Berkeley

1
Post-doc Year at the University of California,
Berkeley

• Konsta Koppinen, Ph.D.
• Tampere University of Technology
• konsta.koppinen_at_tut.fi

2
Overview

• Personal experiences of a post-doc year at the
  University of California, Berkeley
• Chronological order

3
Personal Background

• Born 1971
• M.Sc. University of Tampere, mathematics 1997
• Worked at the Institute of Signal Processing,
  Tampere University of Technology since 1995
• Accepted to TISE graduate school in 1997
• Work on
• Managing various signal processing and speech
  processing projects (TEKES, Nokia, EU)
• Lecturing of speech processing/coding/recognition
• Research on polynomial predictive filtering
  (Ph.D. topic)
• Dont do this kicked out of TISE in 2001
• Time spent on projects/teaching
• Funding from projects

4
More Background

• Wrote Ph.D. manuscript (monograph) in 2002
• Dont do this 2 no journal paper in Ph.D.
  manuscript
• 2nd reviewer needs improvement
• Spring/summer 2003
• Regathering of motivation for writing the Ph.D.
  thesis
• Organization of a big speech processing TEKES-
  project (PUMS) after the end of another one
  (USIX)
• TEKES National Technology agency of Finland, a
  big funding agency for technological research
• Writing of a journal paper
• Big revision of Ph.D. manuscript

5
Actually Relevant Background

• 7.3.2003 video conference presentation of speech
  research at TUT for prof. Nelson Morgan of ICSI
• Previous collaboration TUT/ICSI
• Asked around TUT for interested people
• hmm, I could go myself
• Digression to the year 2000...
• TEKES is looking for a university partner
• Several international universities are considered
• Berkeley/ICSI is chosen
• silicon valley close by
• looots of venture capital
• high-quality research
• 4 places reserved at ICSI for Finnish researchers
• Projects are encouraged by TEKES
• Project on noise robust multilingual speech
  recognition with TUT started

6
Internal debate

• No projects,no teaching, just research for a
  year
• California
• Good opportunity
• I could try to include it in the PUMS-project
• I have to write my Ph.D. first
• If I dont go now, Ill never go
• OK, Im going!

7
Planning, spring/summer 2003

• Discussions with TEKES
• Need
• Research plan
• Funding
• A go-ahead from UCB
• Making a research plan
• I had a clear research goal in mind
• Training of neural networks for speech
  recognition using evolutionary algorithms
• Discussion with prof. Morgan during a visit
• Discussions with the speech project consortium
• Funding as a part of the project OK
• Lots of work on finishing Ph.D.
• Arranging for a visa through ICSI
• Approval from UCB -gt embassy
• J-1 researcher visa, no salary from USA
• Employed by TUT the whole time
• 2 year rule cannot apply for a work visa in the
  USA for 2 years
• Housing arranged through ICSI
• 2000/month

8
Final steps

• Ph.D. thesis defense 4.10.2003
• Put stuff in storage
• Flight to San Francisco on 16.10.2003
• Housing arranged beforehand
• Office already set up at ICSI (computer phone)

9
What is ICSI?

• Non-profit research organization affiliated with
  (but not part of) the University of California
  Berkeley (UCB)
• Several international visitors
• Headed by prof. Nelson Morgan
• Staff about 90 people
• 4 research groups
• Speech research (mostly recognition, prof. Nelson
  Morgan)
• Networking (Internet-related, prof. Scott
  Shenker)
• AI (mostly natural language, prof. Srini
  Narayanan)
• Algorithms (computational complexity, prof.
  Richard Karp)
• TEKES has 4 paid positions for visiting Finnish
  researchers at ICSI

10
At ICSI

• Talk with prof. Morgan and researchers
• About 28 people on the speech team
• Got to know the relevant background work
• Training of neural networks for speech
  recognition
• Novel feature vectors used in speech recognition
• Speech databases
• Lots of neural networks used at ICSI for speech
  recognition
• My topic training of neural networks for speech
  recognition using evolutionary algorithms
• Even so there was quite little overlap with ICSI
• I was offered to be involved with ICSIs projects
• Preferred to work on my own topic
• Was somewhat isolated
• Which I didnt mind
• Speech lunch every week
• Lunch a presentation
• Also videoconferencing with collaborators

11
(Personal) Observations on Work

• Very useful to see how another research institute
  works
• Organization, people, projects, funding,
  infrastructure
• Actual research is similar
• Reading, coding, feedback, writing papers
• Researchers seemed to interact more than in
  Finland
• People talk a lot more
• Discussion seemed very open
• Perhaps a little less independent
• Often B.Sc. and M.Sc. are done at different
  universities
• The research depends on good individuals
• Research seemed very directed by the funding
• In particular, to meet specific improvements for
  speech recognition
• This discouraged novel ideas
• Resulting contacts are useful
• Plus obviously the technical knowledge

12
Non-work stuff

• It helps a lot to have some friends right away
• A couple from Finland came over at the same time
• Also an active group of local Finns
• Good for practical stuff where to buy things,
  how to get around, borrow a car/tools/etc.
• Also good for loneliness
• Easy to talk to people
• But hard to get close to them
• Good idea to have some things beside work
• Can be hard on relationships
• Culture shock was worse than I expected
• Took about 6 months to feel at home
• Even after that IQ feels 20 points less than
  usual
• Diffusing/getting used to another culture is a
  slow process
• Everything has a definite end-date
• Ill call you I wont
• A different set of behind-the-scenes expectations
  and habits
• Useful things TV, phone (landline), computer,
  DSL, car
• Stay more than a year car is tax-free
• Big pastime of visiting researchers discussion
  of what car to buy

13

• Slkfdj

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(No Transcript)
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California is a beautiful place...
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Summary

• Very useful year!

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Links

• TEKES http//www.tekes.fi
• TEKES/Berkeley http//www.tekes.fi/berkeley
• ICSI http//www.icsi.berkeley.edu
• Embassy http//www.usembassy.fi/
• SF Bay area housing/stuff http//www.craigslist.o
  rg