DSBA students discussed their life after receiving the Ilya Segalovich Scholarship 2020
The Ilya Segalovich Scholarship awards ceremony will take place on Friday, April 9. While the Faculty of Computer Science is waiting for the 2021 laureates to be announced, we have spoken with Data Science and Business Analytics students who received the scholarship last year.
Why Computer Science?
I have been interested in computer science since high school, although at that time I wanted to focus on natural sciences, elementary particle physics in particular. But after I got acquainted with many employees of CERN and JINR and with their work, I wanted to address the problems of data analysis in natural sciences. And what place is better for studying computer science and methods of data analysis than the FCS?
Why did you decide to do research?
Initially, I had a desire to try to answer the fundamental questions of our universe. Today it is an opportunity to gain professional experience with the opportunity to deepen my knowledge. I believe it does not matter where you do your internship if there is an opportunity to expand your skills. An intern has enough options to do this in the laboratory.
Why do you think you received the scholarship? Tell us about your research and how can its results be applied?
They say that this scholarship is given to students who possess the same personal and professional qualities as Ilya Valentinovich did. For me, there is no higher praise than the Segalovich scholarship.
I am currently focused on developing methods for detecting change-points in time series using generative adversarial networks. We test algorithms on a number of synthetic, 'textbook' samples, such as MNIST, some physics data from the Kepler satellite and medical (ECG) samples.
How did you feel about receiving the scholarship?
To be honest, I didn't expect this. It was great to hear my name among the laureates last year!
How did the scholarships affect your plans for the future?
Everyone had the opportunity to reconsider their goals over the past year. I am considering my career in academics.
At Facel, we develop a device and software for tracking the user's performance throughout the day to help them control devices using facial expressions. Imagine you are eating pizza and have dirty hands, but you want to change the music. You blink three times, and a new track starts playing. Gesture control can be an alternative to voice commands. For example, when a small child is sleeping next to you, you can no longer ask Alice to turn off the light without waking him up.
Another challenge we want to tackle is helping to prevent burnout. Our device allows you to track different health parameters: stress level, concentration, fatigue, and so on.
How do we do it? The device is put on the head. It transmits a signal from two points behind the ears via Bluetooth to a smartphone. Then the neural network recognizes 12 facial gestures with an accuracy of 98%: for example, blinking, frowning, and eye movement. Based on this data, the device assists the user: if your eyes are tired, it will advise you to take a break, and if you are at the peak of concentration, it will turn off notifications.
We participated in the Global Grad Show, one of the largest Dubai Design Week programmes for recent university graduates. I spoke about my startup at AI Journey, an international conference on artificial intelligence and data analysis. We also won a 2 million rubles grant from the Bortnik Foundation.
See the full interview with Denish Shilov and other laureates in this Yandex Academy interview.