This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: Microsoft MVP Award Program Blog.
The MVP Show is at it again. It’s back with another great episode!
Senior Technical Evangelist Seth Juarez has been traveling the world to meet with members of the MVP community, and learn about the cutting-edge technology that inspires them. This time Seth heads to Cambridge, England to meet with Visual Studio and Development Technologies MVP Evelina Gabasova - she’s a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge MRC Biostatistics Unit. That is, she’s a serious machine learning expert.
Together Seth and Evelina delve into a project Evelina’s be working on with Microsoft Azure Notebooks - it’s a platform that allows users to check results as they code, and mix text with code to easily explain their work. Evelina’s awesome project reveals which programming languages are used for work, and which are more ‘weekend-esque.’ (In case you’re wondering, she’s discovered more people play with F#, Python and Minecraft in their free time).
However this duo didn’t just talk technology; Evelina and Seth hit the town to explore beautiful Cambridge and learn more about the university, which was founded in 1209! To Seth’s amusement, Evelina brought him to try out punting - a popular activity in Cambridge that involves a passenger standing in flat-bottomed boat to propel it along with a stick. They also visited a pub founded in the 17th century, in which Crick and Watson announced their discovery of the double helix.
“I wanted to do machine learning, and Cambridge is one of the best places in Europe to do machine learning. So I just applied for a PhD and I got in. And that was it,” said Evelina in the video. “There are incredible people around Cambridge everywhere, so you can go and speak to anyone.”
In terms of her work, Evelina said she decided to apply herself to biomedical research - in both tuberculosis and cancer - because it’s generally helpful. For example, she’s worked with researchers to find groups of patients with similar characteristics across multiple data sets.
“I would definitely like to stay in machine learning, because that’s where all the cool stuff is happening right now,” she said. “I’m not sure I will stay in biomedical research, because the cool thing with machine learning is that once you know the algorithms you can just apply them to anything.”
“It’s still the same mathematics, you just chose a different domain,” she said.
To learn more about Evelina’s interesting work - and what it’s like studying at Cambridge - check out the video here. And stay tuned for more episodes with inspiring members of the MVP community.