CS at Princeton

[cabby]

Someone told me that Princeton is not very big into AI research. Is this true?

In which areas of computer science research is Princeton especially active and well-respected?

Thanks!

[frenzydude]

"Theory"

[cabby]

"Theory"

Yes I thought I'd heard that. Thanks!

Any other areas they're known for?

[hiscoba]

Someone told me that Princeton is not very big into AI research. Is this true?

In which areas of computer science research is Princeton especially active and well-respected?

Thanks!

Princeton's machine learning group has Robert Schapire and David Blei.

Schapire: the inventor of boosting algorithm

Blei: the inventor of LDA (he is the student of BOTH Michael Jordan and John Lafferty!)

However, one must say that Princeton's AI research group is small and relatively isolated.

Edited February 26, 2011 by hiscoba

[beanbagchairs]

In which areas of computer science research is Princeton especially active and well-respected?

I think they are quite good in machine learning (applied to the computational biology domain). They have Prof Troyanskaya (winner of this year's overton prize --it is a pretty big deal award in computational biology--) and Prof Singh (Mona). Both belong to the CS dept.

Edited February 26, 2011 by shashakoe

[newms]

Princeton's machine learning group has Robert Schapire and David Blei.

Schapire: the inventor of boosting algorithm

Blei: the inventor of LDA (he is the student of BOTH Michael Jordan and John Lafferty!)

However, one must say that Princeton's AI research group is small and relatively isolated.

Plus they also have Yael Niv in neuroscience/psychology, but you're right, Princeton's CS department overall is relatively small.

[OH YEAH]

Princeton also has strong PL (Andrew Appel, David Walker, David August) and systems/networking (Kai Li, Larry Peterson, Jennifer Rexford, Michael Freedman, Vivek Pai). Many people there are very interested in security. While there is only one official "security" person (Ed Felten), many people do interdisciplinary work in it (such as all of the systems and PL people).

I'm a student at Princeton, so let me give you my take. All of the active faculty there are extremely strong, but there aren't many of them -- if you're interested in what someone there is doing, don't be worried about the "caliber" of it. Of course, due to the size, it may be hard to find someone who is interested in what you're doing! The smallest group is AI, but again, if you're interested in what Robert Schapire is doing, he's one of the most cited CS researchers period (not just in AI).

Edited February 26, 2011 by OH YEAH