Call for Machine Learning projects

This spring, we are teaching a course on Machine Learning at UCU for more than 30 students from the Data Science MSc program. In this course, students will learn to apply relevant machine learning methods for extracting useful insights and rules from the data. During the course, the students will form groups (of two to three) to work on a project. As we strive to provide our students with as practical experience as possible, we are looking to create a diverse set of projects which represent challenging real-life problems. As much as for students this could be an opportunity to tackle an interesting problem, for the project owner it could be a great way to verify an initial hypothesis or try out something they had no time, on a new dataset. Also, we as instructors will offer our guidance to the students. Hence, we decided to open a call for project ideas and datasets.

What projects are we looking for?

We don’t have an explicit list of “must” or “mustn’t”, however, it is highly desirable that the idea you have in mind is:

1. Important to you and society.
2. Challenging (e.g. there are no ready-made solutions online.)
3. Doable (we do not want students to get depressed and suffer purposelessly.)
4. Accompanied by a relevant dataset or data that can be collected online with little effort.

How much time should you dedicate?

Of course, it would be ideal if you can dedicate some time to get in touch with students to explain the idea and your initial hypothesis about the dataset. However, it is not necessary nor expected that you spend a lot of time supervising the students (of course, otherwise, very much appreciated). You will be more than welcome to attend the final project presentation (also, will be streamed online) that will be organized in May.

What about results ownership?

The project owner and students may sign a non-disclosure agreement in case the students agree to transfer the intellectual property rights generated during the project to the project owner.

What is the timetable?

We accept the project proposals until February 24th. The project work will start in March and will finish at the mid of May, i.e. two and a half months altogether. On May 14th (tentative), we will have project presentations.

How to connect with us?

Please, describe your project idea by filling in this online form. Or by contacting the course’s teacher Dmytro Fishman via fishman@ucu.edu.ua. Thank you! We highly appreciate your time.