Meet the Speaker – Robert Salomone

We talk to Dr Robert Salomone from QUT Centre for Data Science about what he enjoys about Data Science, asking the right questions and why Winter School is such a valuable opportunity.

1. What drives your interest in this field?

As I am interested in a wide range of things (or perhaps am just easily excited!), what I really enjoy about data science is that there are so many intersections with many parts of other fields such as mathematics, statistics, and computer science. This means that there are many opportunities for interesting ideas that borrow from many areas that combine to make things that are really neat.

2. What are the next interesting “big questions” or challenges you hope to tackle?

There are a lot of very interesting approaches and ideas in the machine learning literature that are making incredible things possible for industry applications. However, I think there is considerable opportunity to employ these ideas to aid in scientific discovery and modelling. This is something I hope to become more involved with in the future.

3. Best piece of advice you’ve received (does not have to be career related)?

While not advice I received directly, something I have picked up from having the privilege of working with many talented scholars in the past is that more often than not, the key to effective and interesting research is simply asking the right questions.

4. Deepening field knowledge and providing a networking platform, why are opportunities such as AMSI Winter School so valuable? What do you hope attendees take from your lectures?

AMSI Winter School and similar opportunities are very valuable in my opinion because they give people a chance to be exposed to new ideas and areas. I hope that, more than anything, attendees can be inspired and feel some of the excitement that I feel about the very fascinating ideas within (and applications of) the content in the course.

Dr Robert Salomone will be co-presenting the topic Neural Networks and Related Models with Dr Susan Wei at the 2021 Winter School at Queensland University of Technology from 12-23 July