AI Emerges as Crucial Component of BU Research and Teaching
Brian Kulis joined BU in the fall of 2015, bringing his expertise in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to key research and teaching thrusts of the university. An assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and the inaugural Levine Career Development Professor, Kulis leverages AI and machine learning to advance the rapidly expanding field of data science.
The intersection of theory and action is where Kulis focuses his research. “There is a nice combination between the mathematics and the theoretical aspects of machine learning. It’s a very applied field, trying to solve real problems,” he says. “That balance is pretty rare.”
Specifically, he is working in scalable nonparametric machine learning, which develops models that allow the collected data to determine how it is clustered and analyzed. While traditional models set defined parameters for how many topics data should be split into for analysis, nonparametric models analyze each data set to determine the most effective process for determining topics and grouping patterns. As Kulis explains, “You want the data itself to guide the discovery process, and so if there is a lot to say, then you want your algorithm to reveal that structure. It’s a more flexible way to do analysis.”
A key focus of Kulis’ work, and of BU’s new AI Research Initiative (AIR), is to develop innovative approaches that allow researchers from a variety of fields — such as biology, business, and medicine — to use AI and machine learning to develop more effective techniques for data analysis. “Machine learning brings together a lot of fields that for a long time have been fairly disjoined. When it comes to teaching, a lot of my excitement is in trying to bridge these different disciplines and to teach courses that bring together people from different areas.”
This outlook echoes the University’s focus on catalyzing integrative research that joins perspectives, theories, and applications from diverse fields for innovative solutions. As a new entity of the Hariri Institute for Computing, the AI Research Initiative is bringing together researchers focused on AI and opening doors for novel applications of these new technologies across the University’s numerous disciplines.