Who could have predicted that two inspiring engineers from the same middle school—located thousands of miles away from Baltimore—would reunite years later while studying computer science at the same university? This remarkable coincidence is exactly what happened to 2019 Gerald Masson Fellows Michelle Shu and Xiang “Lisa” Li.
“It was our mutual friends who connected us on campus; we didn’t even know that we were both at Hopkins!” Shu says.
Excited to venture out of familiar territory, Shu moved to Baltimore from Vancouver, Canada to explore her initial interest in biophysics. But it was her exposure to a few introductory computer science classes that caused her to change course.
“During the spring of my junior year I took a computer vision course with Professor Alan Yuille that compelled me to change my research focus,” Shu says.
This past summer, Shu interned at the University of Michigan as a research assistant. Advised by Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Computational Cognitive Science Alan Yuille, Shu is double majoring in computer science and applied mathematics and statistics. She is interested in research on computer vision and machine learning.
“The Masson Fellowship helps to alleviate some of my financial stresses and helps me focus more on my research,” she says.
For Li, the fellowship provides financial assistance to further her academics and research. During the summer, Li interned with Harvard NLP, a research group at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, where she worked with Alexander M. Rush, an assistant professor of computer science.
“My project was about using discrete latent variable models to improve the interpretability and controllability of an autoregressive neural network for a data-to-text task,” Li says.
Also double majoring in computer science and applied mathematics and statistics, Li is focused on research in natural language processing and is advised by Jason Eisner, a professor of computer science. She expects to graduate in May 2020.
Established last year in memoriam of the department’s inaugural chair and the founding director of the Information Security Institute, Gerald M. Masson, the Gerald Masson Fellowship enables undergraduates to apply for and begin taking courses towards a master’s in computer science before completing their bachelor’s degree. The fellowship provides a 25% tuition waiver for the semester in which an awardee is conducting their graduate research, provided they are enrolled full-time.
Learn more about the combined bachelor’s/master’s program here.