Student Stories: Panagiotis Pentaliotis - My Journey from Undergraduate straight to PhD
The Distributed Algorithms CDT (DA CDT) at the University of Liverpool engages its students in impactful, cutting-edge and diverse research, allowing them to collaborate and develop their skills within the university’s data science community. Read Panagiotis's journey with the DA CDT so far…
My Journey
One of the most important questions you are asked in the University is what would you like to do after graduating. I was called to answer this in 2020 when I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Computer Science. During summer time in 2019 I was hired as an intern by the University of Liverpool in a research role focused on artificial intelligence, specifically Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). This provided me with some insight in the job of a researcher and how important it is. That was when I decided to follow a path of either a Master’s degree or PhD. During a postgraduate fare I was scouted by Kelli, our CDT’s manager, and everything fell into place - the transition from undergradute to PhD was not as difficult as I imagined. I was given training on the technical aspects of my PhD project, that I wasn't so familiar with. It has been a great few years and I'm thankful that I have a great support network in the CDT community.
My Project
I am co-funded by the UK’s National Crime Agency and supervised by Professor Simon Maskell and Professor Paul Spirakis. The title of my PhD project is Data-driven Intelligence for Countering Crime. I am focused on Machine Learning and Bayesian algorithmic improvements with regards to scalability, accuracy and transparency. The results will help the NCA in more informed decision making and more efficient utilisation of their resources.
My Experience at the CDT
Being part of the Distributed Algorithms CDT, and also being part of a cohort, creates a research-friendly environment. Both colleagues and supervisors of various backgrounds collaborate and help each other to solve real-world problems. The challenging issues of the world are presented by the CDT’s industrial partners of world-leading companies. The life of a PhD student is usually secluded but the CDT counters that problem by creating a network of students, supervisors and industrial partners.
Mini-Project
My interests are, as mentioned above, circulating around Machine Learning and Bayesian statistics. One of the main issues my colleague Efthyvoulos Drousiotis and Dr Lei Shi along-side Professor Alexandra I Cristea from Durham University noticed, were the use of Machine Learning models without much thought on the form of the data. Thus we researched the difference arising from different forms of the data. We worked on a collaborative paper entitled 'Balancing Fined-Tuned Machine Learning Models Between Continuous and Discrete Variables - A Comprehensive Analysis Using Educational Data'. Find our work published here.
Distributed Algorithms CDT
The Distributed Algorithms CDT is an Innovative Data Science, AI and Machine Learning Research Centre, aligning PhD students, academics and industrialists to work together to generate novel solutions to tough data science challenges. If you would like to find out more about our programme and would like to talk about becoming an active member of our CDT community, please visit our website or email kelli.cassidy@liverpool.ac.uk.
I'm thankful that I have a great support network in the CDT community.