I’m Shaojie Bai. A few facts about me:

Academia

A copy of my CV is here. This may not be the latest version. You should contact me in order to get the most updated version.

Research

Interested in machine learning in general, but especially in (insightful) deep learning, sequence models and optimizations.

My undergraduate senior thesis was advised by Professor Zico Kolter, with the title “The Effect of Pre-ReLU Input Distribution on Deep Neural Net’s Performances”. For more information, you would probably find the research page helpful.

Courses

The advanced math/CS courses I’ve taken at CMU:

Course number Course name Semester Instructor(s)
10-708 Probabilistic Graphical Models S17 Kayhan Batmanghelich
10-720 Statistical Machine Learning S17 Larry Wasserman
15-418 Parallel Computer Architecture and Programming S17 Kayvon Fatahalian, Randy Bryant
10-725 Convex Optimization (PhD) F16 Ryan Tibshirani, Javier Pena
15-451 Algorithm Design and Analysis F15 Avrim Blum, Anupam Gupta
15-440 Distributed Systems F15 Srinivassan Seshan, Yuvraj Agarwal
15-312 Principles of Programming Languages S16 Robert Harper
21-355/356* Principles of Real Analysis I & II F15 & S16 Marco Carrocia

*Note: 21-355 and 21-356 form a two-semester course series that needs to be taken in a row.

Teaching Assistantship

I’ve TA’ed (or TAing, or about to TA) the following courses at CMU School of Computer Science:

Course number Course name Semester Instructor(s) Note
10-701 Machine Learning for PhD S18 Pradeep Ravikumar, Manuela Veloso  
15-440/640 Distributed Systems S16, S17 Mahadev Satyanarayanan, Padamanabhan Pillai Head TA
10-601 Machine Learning for Graduates F16 Roni Rosenfeld  

Less-serious Life

All right.

I care about a lot of things in real life. Besides what I study, movies, sports, history and politics are what I’m mostly into.

A few books that particularly I recommend:

  • The Lessons of History, by Will Durant and Ariel Durant. I do disagree with some viewpoints in it, but the book is very illuminating in terms of historical understanding!
  • A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini. Amazing book on the late 20th century Afghanistan in turmoil.
  • Journey Under the Midnight Sun, by Keigo Higashino. “When you wander in the dark too long, you start to see things that aren’t really there.”
  • Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning, by Christopher M. Bishop. Almost everyone in ML knows about this. But for someone good at Math/CS and want to know more about ML theories, this is a great book!
  • The Master Algorithm, by Pedro Domingos. A cool summary of what AI and ML means in different perspectives, for everyone— not just computer scientists. A great vision on an ultimate learning method that will infiltrate every aspect of our lives.
  • From the Ashes of Sobibor, by Thomas Blatt. An amazing story of the Nazi days with vivid descriptions.
  • The Three-Body Problem and its two follow-ups, The Dark Forest and Death’s End, by Cixin Liu. A fundamental reconsideration of what civilization means.
  • Nikita Khrushchev biography. Great recap of his life stories if you are interested in Soviet histories.
  • Hiroshima: The Autobiography of Barefoot Gen by Nakazawa Keiji. Before and after the atomic bomb was dropped in Japan in 1945.

I especially like movies that induces hard thinking. But overall, here is a non-exhaustive list of pretty good ones:

  • Dark Waters, starred by Mark Ruffalo
  • Ballon, starred by Friedrich Mücke, Karoline Schuch and David Kross
  • Avengers: Endgame
  • 1900, starred by Tim Roth
  • Witness for the Prosecution, starred by Tyrone Power and Charles Laughton
  • La La Land, starred by Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone
  • Snowden, starred by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley
  • Inception, starred by Leonardo Dicaprio
  • Interstellar, starred by Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway
  • V for Vendetta, starred by Hugo Weaving, Natalie Portman
  • Lord of the Rings + The Hobbits
  • The Martian, starred by Matt Damon
  • The Iron Lady, starred by Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent
  • The Truman Show, starred by Jim Carrey
  • The King’s Speech, starred by Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush
  • [Updating…]