Nicholas Roberts PhD Student Department of Computer Sciences
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Advisor: Frederic Sala

Academic Bio:

I am a Ph.D. student in CS at University of Wisconsin–Madison where I am advised by Fred Sala (this means that I am a 22nd grader). Before that, I had the pleasure of working with Ameet Talwalkar and Zack Lipton during my MS in the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University. As an undergraduate, I was extremely fortunate to work with both Sanjoy Dasgupta and Gary Cottrell at the University of California, San Diego. Prior to all of this, I was a community college student at Fresno City College, where I was lucky enough to learn calculus, linear algebra, and C++ from Greg Jamison.

Research Interests:

I am interested in Data-Centric AutoML–i.e., making machine learning more accessible and practically applicable to new domains while reducing human involvement. More specifically, I develop Data-Centric ML and AutoML techniques that lower the barrier to entry for the long tail of emerging ML applications. I have also developed benchmarks and competitions as a means of measuring progress on emerging ML applications that are far afield from well-explored domains in ML such as vision and language.

Email: nick11roberts [at] cs [dot] wisc [dot] edu
Office: CS Dept. 5384, 1210 W Dayton St, Madison, WI 53706

  • AutoML Decathlon: Diverse Tasks, Modern Methods, and Efficiency at Scale
    Nicholas Roberts*, Samuel Guo*, Cong Xu*, Ameet Talwalkar, David Lander, Lvfang Tao, Linhang Cai, Shuaicheng Niu, Jianyu Heng, Hongyang Qin, Minwen Deng, Johannes Hog, Alexander Pfefferle, Sushil Ammanaghatta Shivakumar, Arjun Krishnakumar, Yubo Wang, Rhea Sukthanker, Frank Hutter, Euxhen Hasanaj, Tien-Dung Le, Mikhail Khodak, Yuriy Nevmyvaka, Kashif Rasul, Frederic Sala, Anderson Schneider, Junhong Shen, Evan Sparks
    NeurIPS 2022 Competition.
    [Website] [Submission Site] [Code] [Blog]

  • AutoML for Climate Change: A Call to Action
    Renbo Tu, Nicholas Roberts, Vishak Prasad, Sibasis Nayak, Paarth Jain, Frederic Sala, Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Ameet Talwalkar, Willie Neiswanger, Colin White.
    NeurIPS 2022 Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning Workshop.
    [arXiv]

  • Small Molecule Accurate Recognition Technology (SMART) to Enhance Natural Products Research
    Chen Zhang*, Yerlan Idelbayev*, Nicholas Roberts, Yiwen Tao, Yashwanth Nannapaneni, Brendan M. Duggan, Jie Min, Eugene C. Lin, Erik C. Gerwick, Garrison W. Cottrell, William H. Gerwick.
    Scientific Reports 2017.
    [Paper]

    Poster: Small Molecule Accurate Recognition Technology (SMART): A Digital Frontier to Reshape Natural Product Research
    Chen Zhang*, Yerlan Idelbayev*, Nicholas Roberts (presenter), Yiwen Tao, Yashwanth Nannapaneni, Brendan M. Duggan, Jie Min, Eugene C. Lin, Erik C. Gerwick, Garrison W. Cottrell, William H. Gerwick.
    Best Spotlight Presentation Award: Applied Machine Learning Days 2018.

University of Wisconsin–Madison

Ph.D. Computer Science
August 2021 - Present

Carnegie Mellon University

M.S. Machine Learning
August 2019 - May 2021
  • MSML Student Committee Leader
  • MSML Admissions Committee Member

University of California, San Diego

B.S. Computer Science
Mathematics minor
CSE Honors Program
September 2015 - March 2019
Magna Cum Laude
CSE Highest Distinction

Fresno City College

Computer Science
Leon S. Peters Honors Program
August 2013 - May 2015
  • Tutor for CIT 65 (Android Application Development)
  • Mathematics Tutor
  • Computer Science Tutor
  • President/Founder, Google Developer Group Fresno City College
  • Treasurer, Science and Engineering Club

Microsoft Research

research intern (incoming)
(Redmond, WA)
  • Incoming (Summer 2023)

Amazon

applied scientist intern
(Seattle, WA)
  • AWS Transcribe research group
  • Researched and developed methods for hypothesis rescoring in ASR systems using neural language modeling
  • Identified areas for improvement in many existing ASR systems when recognizing rare or zero shot entities
  • Technologies used: Python, PyTorch, RWTH ASR, Kaldi, AWS

UnifyID

ai fellow
machine learner intern
(Redwood City, CA)
  • Researched various ways in which research from network neuroscience could be applied to deep learning
  • Developed a novel model extraction attack against deep learning models for computer vision using just noise inputs
  • Technologies used: Python, Keras, PyTorch, TensorFlow, MATLAB, AWS

Intuit

software engineering intern
(Mountain View, CA)
  • Intuit Technology Futures research group
  • Researched and implemented a novel deep learning model for controllable text generation as a service within Intuit
  • Developed a system for proposing alternative candidate sentences for Intuit content writers using deep learning
  • Investigated the use of dynamic topic models for customer support tickets to gain actionable insights over time
  • Technologies used: Python, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Gensim, Keras

Altum

applied scientist intern
(La Jolla, CA)
  • Developed language model to extract NLP features from text data regarding cryptocurrency trading
  • Investigated unsupervised learning techniques for extracting sentiment data in real time from online forums
  • Technologies used: Python, PyTorch

Teradata

software engineering intern
(San Diego, CA)
  • Developed open source Spark-Teradata connector forked from Databricks’ connector for AWS Redshift in Scala
  • Designed and implemented Teradata stored procedures in Java to mimic Redshift’s UNLOAD and COPY using S3
  • Improved training methodology and architecture of deep learning time series model used internally
  • Implemented system for updating the time series dataset and fine tuning the deep learning model
  • Technologies used: Scala, Java, Maven, Teradata SQL, AWS, Tensorflow, Flask

The Comeback Community

volunteer full stack developer
(remote/Fresno, CA)
  • Developed site in Go, gohtml, and CSS on Google App Engine
  • Mentored new developers in web development
  • Technologies used: Go, Google App Engine, gohtml, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript

Skqrl

software engineering intern
(La Jolla, CA)
  • Developed web crawler to compile needfinding and product data using Scrapy and Selenium
  • Designed and implemented an extensible product search solution designed to handle future user search needs
  • Technologies used: Python, Scrapy, Selenium, Django, MySQL, JavaScript

ModSpot

software engineering intern
(remote)
  • Implemented new user account, edit profile, and login designs in Objective-C for iOS application
  • Refactored analytics code for gathering statistics on app usage, helping designers make more informed choices
  • Technologies used: Objective-C, Cocoa Touch, Flurry Analytics

Extracurricular interests:

  • Sailing
  • Photography
  • Pottery
  • Guitar
  • Interior design
  • A budding interest in plants
  • Longboard construction and woodworking

Extra-Extracurricular interests:

Photograph of me shredding, circa 2009:

Mixtape:

1Don’t forget to check out Poolsuite FM: the ultra-summer music player for the Macintosh Computer; transporting you to a virtual vacation where the sun never sets.