Change of fields within computer science, plus advice on where to apply for vision Phd

[zelta]

Hi all,

I am a 5th year graduate student. I am a part of a dual-degree course, from one of the reputed colleges in India. It's a B.Tech plus MS by Research in Computer Science. But in computer science itself, my thesis topic is in the field of geospatial technologies.

I have one first author paper publication in an international IEEE conference(IGARSS)(oral) and will probably have a couple more before I apply for phd. Also my CGPA is really poor, 2.9/4 (but have a drastic U curve). I have good letter of recommendation from my professor, who is well known in his field. I also have internship experience in good funded startups, and have contributed to open source projects via Google Summer of code program.

BUT I want to do a Phd in vision and ML(have grown interest from some papers), but I am not sure how bad my lack of experience in vision will effect by application (other than my poor cgpa, and few publications). I want to apply to one to the top schools for vision research like CMU, MIT, UCB, Stanford, Columbia, etc. (probably difficult to get into them, given my profile). Also I’ll have a few months of working experience in a software company, before I apply to the grad schools. And I still have to give the GRE(assuming I get the required cutoff).

 

Can you guys suggest some schools where I can apply for phd in computer vision, given my profile and the change in field that I will be doing. And can you give some pointers on how I can make my application strong, given my poor CGPA? Is there a chance that I might get admitted to these top grad-schools?

Thanks,
 

[dat_nerd]

Have you looked into UIUC's program? They have a strong focus on ML + computer vision.