Do you enjoy solving Using your Head is Permitted riddles?

Here's something for you to think on.

As some of you may know, beside being your humble puzzlemaster for over nine years now, I'm also an Associate Professor of Data Science at Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia, a university ranked 53rd in the world for engineering and technology (1st in Australia), and which, overall, ranks 73rd among all academic institutions in the world. (See here for more details about who I am and what I do.)

Frequent visitors to the Using your Head is Permitted website will already be familiar with my mathematical interests: I like discrete mathematics, especially combinatorics and graph theory, but also designs, optimisation, algorithmics, theory of computation, probability theory and a whole lot more. In parallel to this, I also work on "practical" problems, often informed by this mathematical theory. I've worked on NLP, on speech and audio analytics, on control systems, on machine vision (and was even part of the team that brought you the Kinect sensor), and, of course, on machine learning, Big Data, statistics, and all things Data Science.

In short: if it's interesting, I'm probably interested in it.

And if you're the kind of person who enjoys solving the Using your Head is Permitted riddles, chances are, that you, too, share some of those interests. So, now that I'm looking for PhD students to supervise, I'm thinking of people like you, and if you're after a PhD, ask yourself if the kind of supervisor you're looking for doesn't happen to be, well, very much like me.

So, have a think about it: isn't it time to take a few years away from everything, come "down under" for a spell to live in the city that's been ranked most liveable city in the world for five years running, and choose a worthwhile problem to use your head on (and occasionally some massive computing power, too), and come out of it a doctor?

I'm open for topic suggestions, and am happy to share some of my own topics, as well.

There's a round of scholarships coming up fairly soon, so now would be an excellent time to make this choice.

 

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Michael.
michael.brand@monash.edu