H O M E

About me: I completed my PhD in machine learning in the department of computer science at the University of Toronto in 2008 working under Rich Zemel. I completed my master's degree in machine learning, also under Rich Zemel, in 2004. I received my undergraduate degree from McGill University in mathematics and computer science in 2002. I will be starting a postdoctoral fellowship in machine learning working with Kevin Murphy in the department of computer science at the University of British Columbia in fall 2008.

PhD Thesis: My PhD thesis is titled Missing Data Problems in Machine Learning. It deals with the problem of unsupervised learning in the presence of non-random missing data, as well as the problem of supervised classification in the presence of missing features. The work on non-random missing data is motivated by the problem of rating prediction in collaborative filtering, and uses a new data set collected at Yahoo! Research with Malcolm Slaney. The work on classification with missing features focuses on medical decision making using standard data sets, as well as higher dimensional tasks like digit classification with missing pixels.

Recent Publications and Presentations:

[Apr 30, 2008] PhD Thesis: Missing Data Problems in Machine Learning [Abstract] [PDF]
[Apr 08, 2008] PhD defense introduction sides. [PDF]
[Apr 08, 2008] PhD defense complete slides. [PDF]
[Mar 05, 2008] CSC2535 Guest Lecture: Missing Data Problems and Collaborative Filtering. [PDF]
[Jun 26, 2007] Collaborative Filtering and the Missing at Random Assumption. UAI 2007. [PDF]

Email: marlin[at]cs[dot]toronto[dot]edu