Every other week we spotlight an OMSCS TA, so you can get to know who's behind the screen. Here are four questions for Arnesh Sahay who TAs CS 6603: AI, Ethics, and Society.
What do you do professionally?
I work as a machine learning engineer at a startup, where I’m focused on using natural language processing (NLP) to solve text classification and key-phrase extraction problems. This entails building and training models for various types of documents in the banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) industries, along with improving existing models to meet more stringent benchmarks for precision and recall.
Why do you TA for OMSCS?
The first course I took as a student was CS 6603: AI, Ethics, and Society. It was a great introduction to the program, and I learned a lot about how biases can creep into ML models, as well as techniques to make models more fair. My experience was so positive — mainly due to the teaching staff and course structure — that I decided I would TA for this course in the future. When that opportunity arose two semesters later, I jumped at it!
What's your advice for future students in OMSCS?
Immerse yourself into the program as best as your schedule allows. Attend a hackathon if you can, join a club that interests you, or TA for a class where you learned something new. If you can devote the time, this program has so much to offer.
What's your best study hack?
This might seem self-explanatory, but my best study hack is to stay focused. By setting realistic goals for what I want to accomplish in a day, I find that I’m able to make much more efficient use of my time.
