Posted by Welcome back to our ongoing series, Better Know a Department! Today, we feature Dr. Magdalini Eirinaki, professor of Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering at San José State. She is also the Director of the Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence program.
Dr. Eirinaki has been with SJSU for over 15 years. She has recently taught courses such as CMPE 256: Advanced Data Mining, and supervised CMPE 298-02: Special Problems, an independent study option for graduate students. She has also taught various undergraduate and graduate courses such as CMPE 50: Object-Oriented Concepts and Methodologies, CMPE 104: Fundamentals of Software Engineering, CMPE 188: Machine Learning for Big Data, CMPE 226: Database Systems, CMPE 237: Design of E-commerce Systems, CMPE 239: Web and Data Mining, CMPE 274: Business Intelligent Technologies, and CMPE 296M: Web Search and Data Mining.
Professor Eirinaki received her Ph.D. in Computer Science (Informatics) from Athens University of Economics and Business, an MSc in Computer Science from Imperial College London, and her BSc in Computer Science from the University of Piraeus. You can find her on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Read on to learn more about Dr. Eirinaki’s research interests and how writing in engineering is just as important as any other discipline!
The Write Attitude: Why is writing/communication important to you as an active academic in your field? How do you find yourself using writing in your work for your discipline?
Dr. Magdalini Eirinaki: There are many types of writing we do as academics, from emails to students and colleagues, to committee reports, technical reports, and research papers. As instructors, we need to communicate with the students via email and announcements, but also by articulating assignment requirements and offering feedback. As active faculty members, we communicate with our peers via email and have to author reports, memos, etc. As computer scientists and engineers we need to write technical reports to communicate our designs with various audiences. Finally, as researchers, we have to communicate our work with our peers and general audience, via paper publications. Most of these tasks require skills that go beyond good grammar and syntax, as it is important that the text is well organized, clearly written, and conveys the main takeaways in a concise yet accurate manner.
WA: What are your fields of research interest?
ME: My research area is in machine learning (ML) and AI, with a specialization in recommender systems and personalization. Over the years, I have worked on several projects that span a very broad range of topics, but I would say that the recurring theme is “AI for good”–i.e. using AI and machine learning to develop algorithms and applications that help the society and people.
WA: What are popular research topics in your discipline?
ML/AI have become very popular and the research topic span such a big range: predictive analytics, robotics, intelligent agents, image/voice recognition, smart assistants, bioinformatics, etc. In my specialization domain, which is recommender systems, there’s still a lot of work done to optimize and scale the underlying algorithms that help predict the user’s preferences, then rank and serve content in many applications we use everyday: our video and music streaming applications, e-retailers, our social media accounts, and many more. Currently the research community is looking into making these recommendations more fair, diverse, and explainable.
WA: What are some of the expectations your discipline has for professionals and/or academics in your field? (For example: Should students be better at oral or written communication, or are both equally important?)
ME: Both oral and written communication skills are necessary and important. Our graduates who find an industry job become part of teams that have to work together, communicate via technical reports and emails, but also present to their peers, management, and customers.
WA: What types of writing assignments can students expect to see most often in your discipline? (Think about the genres, word/page count of projects, scope of assignments, etc.)
ME: Mostly technical reports that accompany their software/hardware deliverables. Students who also work on a thesis or research-oriented project will also have to conduct literature search and write state-of-the-art surveys. Finally, almost all students will be required to do one or more presentations. Creating a good presentation that abides by tight time limits and is concise yet engaging requires a good amount of skills.
WA: What might students expect to research in your classes?
ME: Anything related to recommender systems, graph mining, and social network analysis, which are topics that we cover in my CMPE 256: Advanced Data Mining class. I give them the opportunity to research a topic of their liking twice: once by picking a recent research paper and presenting it to their peers, and then by working on a longer term project within a team.
WA: What journals or organizations are important in your field? (If you can provide links to their websites, that would be useful as well.)
ME: The Association of Computer Machinery (ACM) and IEEE are the two major organizations that are important in our field. The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is another organization that is more focused on ML/AI. Journals and conferences that are sponsored by these organizations are usually deemed important. However there are other publishers (e.g. Elsevier, Springer, Frontiers) that are also well-esteemed in my field.
CA: How can students get involved in your field? (For example: Does your department sponsor a club? Is there a popular student conference sponsored by a major journal in your field?)
ME: You may join the ML club at SJSU. This year they plan on expanding their scope into AI. There are many meetups from local ACM and IEEE chapters as well as industry partners, and there are also webinars and meetups organized by Women in Data Science (WIDS). These are a great way to meet others with the same interests and network.
This National Women’s History Month, we’re honored to feature women who are making a difference in their fields. Thank you so much for sharing all of your fascinating research interests and insights with us, Dr. Eirinaki!
This interview has been edited for length.
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