Certificate of Graduate Studies in Machine Learning

Machine learning has been one of the fastest growing fields in all sciences and engineering. Not a day goes by that we hear another story that talks about how machine learning has become part of our lives. The number of applications where machine learning systems make automated decisions in place of humans have grown exponentially. There is a significant demand in this area for qualified professionals, and these professionals have some of the highest starting salary of any profession. Students graduating with a graduate degree in a machine learning related field typically receive salary offers that can reach $150,000 or higher.

The ECE Department has significant expertise in machine learning and has been regularly teaching related courses since 2001. This certificate program puts the existing expertise and the courses together in one package allowing students to gain meaningful background that will prepare them for a career in machine learning and/or graduate programs. A unique aspect of this program is the practical project based experience that it provides: the program feature four classes, three of which are lecture based classes, each with its own project component. The fourth class can be a stand-alone project / research credit, where students will work on projects addressing real-world unsolved problems, many of which are externally funded. Hence, through this four-class sequence, the Machine Learning certificate program will provide breadth and depth in theoretical foundations of machine learning, as well as a year-long practical real-world project experience.

The completion of this certificate program will provide students with the necessary tools to start a career in machine learning as it applied to engineering, and/or continue their education through graduate programs. Due to rapid growth of machine learning as a well-established field of science and engineering, we expect the graduates of this program to find high-paying jobs and/or admission to further graduate programs.

This 12 credit graduate certificate program consists of the following courses:

Required Courses (2)

• ECE 09.555 Advanced Topics in Pattern Recognition 
  
  and one of the following two
  
  
• ECE 09.558 Reinforcement Learning 
• ECE 09.595 Adv. Emerging Topics in Comp. Intelligence, Machine Learning and Data Mining 

• ECE 09.560 Artificial Neural Networks 
• ECE 09.566 Systems, Devices and Algorithms in Bioinformatics
• ECE 09.558 Reinforcement Learning 
• ECE 09.655 Advanced Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning
• ENGR 01.511 Engineering Optimization
• ECE 09.595 Advanced Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence, Machine Learning and Data Mining* or ECE 09.558 Reinforcement Learning*
• ENGR 01.599 Master’s Thesis Research** or ENGR 01.799 Doctoral Research / Dissertation**  

*   Can be taken as an elective if not already taken as one of the required courses
** Permission of instructor is needed for students who are not in College of Engineering

Students applying to this COGS must have completed the following (or their equivalents) with a minimum GPA of 3.0, or must have relevant career experience that includes background in these courses.

• A Bachelor of Science (or equivalent) degree in engineering, or a relevant area of science.
• CS 04103 Computer Science and Programming or CS 04113 Introduction to Object Oriented Programming
• MATH 01.235 Math for Engineering Analysis or (MATH 01.210 Linear Algebra and MATH 01.230 Calculus III)
• STAT 02.290 Probability and Statistical Inference for Computing Systems or STAT 02360: Probability and Random Variables or STAT 02.286 Probability & Statistics for Electrical & Computer Engineering or equivalent background in probability and statistics.
• Any prerequisites of the courses that make up this program.

(and undergraduate version of this program, Certificate of Undergraduate Studies (CUGS) in Applied Machine Learning in Engineering is also available)