TA Spotlight: Sourish Dhekane
Sourish Dhekane is a TA for CS 6601: Artificial Intelligence. Keep reading to learn more about Sourish!
What do you do professionally?
I am a graduate student in the MSCS program (Machine Learning specialization) at Georgia Tech. Before that, I received my bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Guwahati.
Why do you TA for OMSCS?
I have worked as a TA for the graduate course CS 6601: Artificial Intelligence for the last three semesters. During this short period, I have had the privilege of interacting with many hardworking and talented students with diverse educational backgrounds, professional experiences, and research interests. TAing for the OMSCS program with such students gives me a unique opportunity to learn from them while having extremely fruitful and intriguing discussions about AI, the topic that I love the most.
What is your advice for future OMSCS students?
The OMSCS program at Georgia Tech offers a plethora of courses under several specializations. These courses often dive very deep into the subject materials, where one can learn a great deal of knowledge and skills to apply in the real world. To make the most out of these courses, I believe it is essential to consider them as "open-ended learning opportunities" rather than a "set of assessments to finish". In many of the courses, the instructors, who are the leading experts in that domain, share additional resources like relevant manuscripts, guest lectures, extended classroom scribes, etc. Although these resources might not directly help one in getting through the assessments, they are curated in a way that students can learn about the state-of-the-art works in that domain as quickly as possible. In my opinion, having access to such resources is exactly what differentiates Georgia Tech's OMSCS program from any other MOOC platform. So, my advice to the incoming students would be to leverage such opportunities as much as possible with a healthy learning attitude!
What's your best study hack?
Throughout my academic years, I have been fortunate to receive guidance from my elder brother about learning new concepts. One of those recommendations is to study any new result/theorem/formula in a bottom-up foundational manner, where one starts with fundamental assumptions and works their way up to reach the intended learning goal in a logical sequence of intermediate lemmas. Many students blindly follow the prescribed results/theorems/formulae without paying attention to their underlying assumptions. In cases where those assumptions are no longer true, these results/theorems/formulae become invalid, which gives rise to a risk of their wrongful application. The foundational manner of study helps in understanding these key details, which are useful in developing an in-depth understanding of the subject.
Find Sourish on...
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sourish-dhekane-116ab1142
Personal Website: https://sourishdhekane.github.io/