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- Hi everyone, my name is Brabeeba Wang, I'm from Taiwan.
I'm currently a second year PhD student at MIT.
I study in the EECS program,
Electrical Engineering Computer Science program.
But the exact topic I study is, theoretical neuroscience,
which is pretty different from EECS,
so, I'm kind of, the unconventional EECS student here.
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So, this is the BCS building on campus.
This is where all the neuroscience research is going on.
And mostly experimental group,
so on the sixth floor and seventh floor
there are a lot of, like, mice running around,
and they are very cute.
Yeah, I usually come here to talk
with other neuroscience students,
and also they host a lot of seminars here.
They connects both the theoretical side
and the experimental side.
So, this is probably my favorite place to study on campus.
That's why we're here.
So basically what I study is,
I study how brain works, and specifically,
I study how brain do unsupervised learning.
So there are a lot of tests that current machine learning
cannot do as well as brain and I try to tackle this area.
I think for most students, if you are EECS students,
if you are not in theory group,
let's say you are the machine learning students,
then you go to lab everyday,
and then you work,
until night, and then you go back,
but the schedule is fairly flexible.
But, most of my time I actually work from home,
and I come here probably once a week to my office
to have a individual meetings with my boss.
Also, once a week to my lab meeting to either give, like,
what I have been working on this week and then to a lab.
So what's interesting in the theory group is, kind of, like,
inside one lab, everybody is working on distinct projects.
So, unlike other science area
where, like, people collaborate on one big project.
In theory group, everyone works on distinct projects
and we, kind of like, share how we are doing
at each lab meeting.
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So, this is Stata Center,
this is where the EECS department is and other engineering.
It's all in this building,
so this is the very famous 3D Picasso building.
I think it's fairly ugly, but, yeah,
I guess that's what no enjoys.
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So, this is the lounge of the theory group,
and you can see, people discuss, like,
some theory of common sense up here and
sometimes we'll have a theory lunch here,
where we invite student speaker to give a talk
on what they're working on and also we get free food.
So, it's quite nice.
So, the collaboration here really depends.
We are mostly, I feel like, in theory is mostly individual.
But, if someone have some idea and then you somehow
have a tool to solve it, collaboration usually happens.
So, actually, my last paper is a collaboration
with a Harvard student actually.
Because he came to my talk on some new
science learning algorithm.
And he got interesting on working on it,
so we begin collaborating.
The most recent paper I published was, is about
how to analyze, like,
a very well known
neuroscience learning dynamics called, Oja's rule.
Previously the analysis of Oja's rule
is illusive, until now.
And we solved it optimally.
And the way we solved it is actually by introducing
a math frameworks into computer science,
and then to solve this.
The framework is actually very powerful so it can actually
solve other open problems within the field.
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♪ Aa aah ♪
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So we're at the MIT practice room right now
and music is a very important part
of my life, since undergrad.
Before Harvard, like, I was pianist,
and when I came into Harvard, like,
I mean, I really like concert music in general.
So, first I went to Boston Symphony Orchestra
which is a top 10 orchestra in the world, like, every week.
I think Boston is a amazing city where the student
can listen to a lot of free concerts.
I think, like, I listen to probably
$10,000 worth of free concerts
in Boston through all five, six years that I was been here.
Yeah, so it's amazing.
So, I highly recommend Boston if you want to come here.
In addition to that, like, I realized in college
that piano cannot really play with other people.
It's much harder to find a chamber music and stuff.
So, I picked up violin,
so I begin to learn violin
in the sophomore spring,
so, it's been three to four years now.
I really enjoy both.
So currently, I mean, music is a very huge part of my life.
I practice three hours per day,
and last year I picked up musical competitions.
I realized that I enjoy performing and I really enjoy
to listen to concert a lot.
But, I realize that competition is,
music is about self expression, and competition gave me
the most freedom to do my creative work.
So yeah, like, I think without music
that my graduate life would be very boring,
and I'm glad that I have music to support me.
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So, my overall experience in MIT so far is amazing.
MIT is a very flexible program.
As you can see, I'm in a EECS program,
but, like, I do neuroscience.
And actually, the math that I'm using
is coming from pure math.
So, even my boss doesn't understand, like,
what math I'm using
and then she doesn't understand the neuroscience part.
But, like, we still have a very good
working synergy together.
And you can see
that, like, you also have flexibility in terms of time.
I spend a lot of time on music,
doing the things that I love.
So, yeah, I think that,
MIT you can make it to be what you want,
and I think that's the best part of being a MIT PhD.
Like, the mentality of a private integrated school,
I feel like,
first you need to ask yourself, like,
do you really want to do a PhD?
Because PhD, I feel like, some people do PhD because, like,
they haven't figured out their life.
And then they want to
just, like, be in school again.
But, I think that if you don't have a topics
that you are really passionate about,
it will be very painful to do a PhD.
I think the second advice that I think
also very, very important is to find a topic
that you are passionate at.
And then don't let your boss,
or, like, don't let your peers to pressure you
to do something that you are not interesting at
because, like, we are all pushing to learn
limit of a human understanding
and if you are doing something that you are not
interesting at, then it's can be very painful because
pushing human understanding of knowledge is difficult.
And then if you are pushing something that you are not,
you don't love, then you will hate your life.
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