From the Director’s Desk: Northwestern University’s Deep Learning Lab – A New Beginning

The Deep Learning Lab

The Deep Learning Lab (DLL) initiative began almost a year ago as a collaboration between the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science’s Computer Science department and the Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences department, supported by alumni and corporate partners. DLL’s mission is bringing leading-edge, practice-oriented innovations from the machine learning community to the corporate community, potentially benefiting a diverse range of businesses, from startups to legacy companies.

The lab’s contributions to supporters include:

  • sharing research and technical knowledge and expertise
  • building talent pipelines in machine learning
  • executing on individual projects contributed by supporters
  • active engagement towards building a robust solution for an end-to-end deep learning training and maintenance architecture including but not limited to model design configuration, hyper-parameter tuning, explainability, and continuous model monitoring.

Months of brainstorming resulted in a kickoff session on September 24th, which included numerous industry representatives and potential partners, as well as a variety of Northwestern University (NU) faculty involved in various aspects of machine learning research and teaching. Goals for the lab discussed at the meeting included building out the Deep Learning ecosystem at NU, solidifying relationships with industry partners, and providing a nexus for the machine learning communities of Chicago and the Midwest, here at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.

We are much indebted to dedicated MEM alumni, such as Iqbal Arshad (MEM ‘97) and the Office of Corporate Engagement (Tim Angell and Sheila Kessler) for their energy and dedication in getting the DLL up and running.  The DLL is looking for additional founding corporate partners and sponsors – those interested should contact Tim Angell at timothy.angell@northwestern.edu.

McCormick News Article