Alona Fyshe
Machine Learning PhD Student
Carnegie Mellon University
About
I am a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University in the Machine Learning Department. I began my degree in 2009 and joined the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC) in 2011.
My advisor is Tom Mitchell and I am a member of the Brain Imaging Group. We develop Machine Learning techniques to better understand the inner workings of the human brain.
I have a BSc and MSc in Computing Science from the University of Alberta and completed a research internship with University of Alberta bioinformatics lab.
After I completed my MSc, I joined Google as a Software Engineer. Though I loved working at Google (and learned a great deal while there!), I missed research, and so returned to grad school.
That's a funny looking name....
Though my name looks complicated, it's really quite simple. Fyshe is just
pronounced fish, and here's a limerick to help you remember the
rest:
There once was a girl named Alona,
Whose parents gave her an iguana.
But the iguana grew mold,
The clime was too cold!
The reptile desires a hot sauna.
Interesting factoid: though my mom swears she made up the name, Alona means oak tree in Hebrew.
Publications
- Alona Fyshe, Emily Fox, David Dunson and Tom Mitchell. Hierarchical Latent Dictionaries for Models of Brain Activation AIStats, 2012 pdf Supplementary Material
- Alona Fyshe, Yifeng Liu, Duane Szafron, Russ Greiner, and Paul Lu. Improving Subcellular Localization Prediction using Text Classification and the Gene Ontology Bioinformatics, 24(21):2512-2517 2008 pdf
- Alona Fyshe and Duane Szafron. Term Generalization and Synonym Resolution for Biological Abstracts: Using the Gene Ontology for Subcellular Localization Prediction BioNLP Workshop (HLT-NAACL), 2006 pdf
- Brett Poulin, Roman Eisner, Duane Szafron, Paul Lu, Russ Greiner, D.S. Wishart, Alona Fyshe, Brandon Pearcy, Cam MacDonell and John Anvik. Visual Explanation of Evidence in Additive Classifiers Eighteenth Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI), July 2006 pdf
- Paul Lu, Duane Szafron, Russell Greiner, David S. Wishart, Alona Fyshe, Brandon Pearcy, Brett Poulin, Roman Eisner, Danny Ngo and Nicholas Lamb. PA-GOSUB: a searchable database of model organism protein sequences with their predicted Gene Ontology molecular function and subcellular localization Nucleic Acids Research, 33:D147-D153, 2005 pdf
- Duane Szafron, Paul Lu, Russell Greiner, David S. Wishart, Brett Poulin, Roman Eisner, Zhiyong Lu, John Anvik, Cam Macdonell, Alona Fyshe, and David Meeuwis. Proteome Analyst: Custom Predictions with Explanations in a Web-based Tool for High-throughput Proteome Annotations Nucleic Acids Research, 32:W365-W371 2005 pdf
- Nicholas Lamb, Paul Lu, and Alona Fyshe. Trellis Driver: Distributing a Java Workflow Across a Network of Workstations, International Workshop on High Performance Scientific and Engineering Computing (HPSEC), 2004 pdf
Courses
Completed:
- Intermediate Statistics (10-705)
- Machine Learning (10-701)
- Statistical Machine Learning (10-702)
- Probabilistic Graphical Models (10-708)
- Algorithms in the Real World (15-853)
- Systems Neuroscience (PITT MSNBIO/NROSCI 2012)
- Statistical Models of the Brain (36-759)
- Cognitive Neuroscience (85-765)
- Multimedia Databases and Data Mining (15-826)
Teaching Assistant Positions
CMU
- Spring 2012, Machine Learning with Large Datasets 10-605
- Fall 2011, Machine Learning with Large Datasets 10-605 (Prepatory work)
- Fall 2007, Internet Search Technologies 15-505
University of Alberta
- Fall 2006, Introduction to Computing Science
- Fall 2005, Introduction to Computing Science