Amazon recently conducted its ML Summer School, a three-day program that was held July 9 to July 11. The program gave engineering students in India an opportunity to learn machine learning techniques from tenured scientists at Amazon. While the first edition of the ML Summer School has passed, the program will be held annually.
Students enrolled in the program learn the fundamentals of machine learning as well as how to link those concepts to practical techniques such as supervised learning, deep neural networks, probabilistic graphical models, dimensionality reduction, unsupervised learning, and sequential models.
“I have always been a firm believer in the power of science to better the lives of people around the world,” said Rajeev Rastogi, vice president, machine learning, India. “Initiatives such as the ML Summer School will help equip students with practical skills, and reduce the gap between the growing demand for ML roles across companies and the talent pool with applied ML skills.”
Engineering students in the final years of their bachelors, masters, and PhD programs at select academic institutions are eligible for the ML Summer School. The virtual classroom sessions are followed by an interactive Q&A session with experienced Amazon scientists.
Summer school students are also able to attend to the Amazon Research Days (ARD) conference, where they can hear presentations from renowned ML leaders around the world.
Programs such as the ML summer school are designed to further accelerate the rate of scientific innovation in India. Amazon is partnering with academic institutions such as the Indian Institute of Technology (at various locations), National Institute of Technology (NIT) Tiruchirappalli, NIT Surathkal, NIT Warangal, Anna University, and Delhi Technological University (DTU).
Machine-learning models developed by Amazon scientists in India have had a profound impact not only on shoppers in India, but also on the company’s customers around the world. For example, models developed by Amazon’s scientists in India have been used globally to improve the quality of Amazon’s catalog by ensuring matches between product images and accompanying titles. In addition, including delivery speed as a feature in search ranking was first launched in Amazon India.
The ML Summer School will ... help [students] better prepare for solving practical problems within industry.
Amazon’s scientists in India are also helping the company achieve net zero carbon by 2040, one decade ahead of the Paris Agreement. At the 2020 European Conference on Machine Learning, members of the machine learning team in India presented a new model that will help Amazon reduce shipment damage by 24% while cutting shipping costs by 5%.
“While designing our curriculum, our main objective was to provide a deeper understanding of a few key topics within machine learning, augmented with a practical industry perspective,” said Vineet Chaoji, senior applied science manager, machine learning. “The modules developed for the ML Summer School will supplement the course work that students have taken at their institutes and help them better prepare for solving practical problems within industry."
For more information, visit the Amazon ML Summer School India website.
