2020: My Year in Review

Even though 2020 had its fair share of hardships, I still found some highlights of the year for which I am grateful. I’ve also looked to the future to begin setting goals for the coming year.

Contents

• Pivoting to Applied Machine Learning Research
• Exploring New Directions in My Photography
• Creating This Website
• Reuniting with My Extended Family
• Goals for 2021
  • Deep Learning
  • Blogging
  • Reading
  • Photography
  • Social
• Conclusion

Pivoting to Applied Machine Learning Research

I began 2020 by finishing my master’s thesis, which I defended in late January. From this moment, I became a Ph.D. candidate.

My thesis topic was in the research area of experimental condensed matter physics. More specifically, I studied the optical properties of single-wall carbon nanotubes. In the later months of 2019, I had second thoughts and opted to change my field of study.

I originally became a Ph.D. student because I wanted to become a professor. However, it took a few years in graduate school before I recognized that this wasn’t the best career trajectory for me.

There aren’t many tenure-track faculty positions open these days, meaning that most Ph.D. students won’t be able to attain these coveted opportunities. I also realized that I enjoy problem-solving in general. There are relatively more jobs in the private sector where I can develop innovative solutions.

In late 2019, I visited the career center at Rice University to get some ideas on possible career paths. My counselor suggested some career assessments.

After completing those, the top-recommended profession was that of a computer scientist. I wasn’t surprised. I’ve known that I enjoy computer programming. After all, I started programming in my second year of high school. The results from the assessments also got me thinking about getting involved in computational research once again.

As an undergraduate at Cornell University, I collaborated on a research project involving machine learning. Here, I investigated how to use machine learning algorithms to predict the properties of newly discovered materials.

I remembered how much I enjoyed working on this project. Revisiting this experience convinced me to finish my Ph.D. under a professor interested in applying machine learning to research problems.

I started working under a new Ph.D. advisor in February 2020. Since then, I’ve been applying machine learning models to decode brain activity measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging. In time, I hope to improve my expertise in deep learning. The application of deep learning algorithms to medical data is still relatively new and I’m aiming to blaze new trails in this research area.

Exploring New Directions in My Photography

In 2020, I got into the swing of my photography. Following in the footsteps of two of my favorite photographers, Alan Schaller and Kai Zeihl, I did only black and white photography in the early months of the year. I feel nostalgic as I took some of my best photographs in this period. These photos below are some highlights:

Unfortunately, I started slowing down in March. The coronavirus lockdowns dampened my spirits. Not to mention, I struggled to cope with the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery alongside others.

The death of George Floyd especially hit close to home as his funeral was held here in Houston. As a person of color, I didn’t feel inspired to create new artwork as I reflected on these events. I even thought about quitting photography altogether. But I found the will to resume at the beginning of the fall season.

By this time, I felt that my work was becoming stagnant. Black and white photography felt too limiting so I decided to try color photography instead. I was initially nervous at first as I wasn’t familiar with color theory.

However, this online workshop presented by Joanna Kustra, a fashion photographer, inspired me. I’m grateful for this workshop as it opened up new creative possibilities in my photography. These photos below are some of my favorites since making the switch to color photography:

Creating This Website

I’m happy that I finally created my website back in October. I’ve wanted to do this for quite some time. Because I had no prior experience in developing websites, I took a few online web development courses. The Odin Project and Free Code Camp were my favorites. After learning enough HTML and CSS, I began creating my website.

I initially found it tricky to structure my web pages. It was also cumbersome to create each web page by hand. But I soon discovered the convenience of using static site generators (SSGs) for this purpose. There are so many to choose from!

I selected Eleventy as my SSG as it appeared simple, modern, and flexible enough for my needs. I mainly write code in Python these days so I briefly considered using Pelican. Because I wanted to learn a new programming language, I picked Eleventy because it was written in JavaScript. This experience has taught me a lot about web development and I look forward to adding new features to my website as time goes.

Reuniting with My Extended Family

After so many years, I got in touch with my cousins on my father’s side of the family. Remarkably, it took a pandemic for this to finally happen just a few months ago.

My cousins all reside in Ghana, the land of my birth. It has been at least 15 years since I left Ghana in the middle of my childhood which is partly why I haven’t kept in touch with my relatives over the years. I’m hoping that I will be able to visit them later in 2021 or perhaps early next year.

Goals for 2021

Deep Learning

One of my goals in 2021 is to develop my expertise in machine learning, especially for medical applications. I want to become acquainted with state-of-the-art algorithms.

Given that I am a novice, I plan to first acquire some general knowledge by finishing both parts of the fast.ai course by the end of April. I’ve thought of pivoting to the deep learning course by Dr. Andrew Ng afterwards.

Much of the material here overlaps with that of fast.ai. But Dr. Ng’s course also contains additional topics such as regularization. I expect it will take three months for me to finish this course. Soon after, I will focus on learning the applications of deep learning in the medical field.

I’m looking to take the AI for medicine specialization course to receive an introduction to the subject. This course will also take another 3 months to complete. That means if all goes according to plan, I finish by the end of the year.

I’m also interested in natural language processing. The applications in this area fascinate me. These include building chatbots, performing sentiment analysis on written text, or even doing language translations. At some stage, I may adjust my plans to accommodate this interest.

This year, I’d also like to work on personal projects to solidify my understanding of deep learning. I may end up spending more time on these projects than on taking the courses listed above. That shouldn’t be a problem even if I don’t complete all of the coursework as intended. It would be more valuable for me to apply deep learning wherever my curiosity leads me.

Blogging

I want to post new articles here regularly. I’m aiming to publish at least one new blog post each month. Furthermore, I also intend to publish at least six articles on technical subjects related to machine learning. Most of these articles will concentrate on what I learn from my adventures in deep learning.

Reading

I didn’t spend much time reading books in 2020. I intend to change that in 2021. I’m aspiring to read 12 books this year. I’m also thinking about writing some book reviews to post here along the way.

Photography

Of my weaknesses as a photographer, I feel that portrait photography is chief among those. I don’t often take portraits of people. I want to rectify this even though it will be challenging to do so in light of the pandemic.

In any case, I want to become more familiar with using an off-camera flash for portrait photography. I already have one sitting in my closet that I haven’t used very often. In the worst-case scenario, I can practice by taking self-portraits.

Social

This year, I want to find ways to be more socially active. I frequently receive emails regarding Zoom socials. But I rarely bother to attend them because I sometimes dread having to socialize on Zoom. Yet, I imagine that other people feel the same way. Given that there aren’t any other safer alternatives, I will make an effort to be part of Zoom socials whenever I can.

I’m also considering that Twitter may be a place to forge new connections with others. However, I’m not so active on Twitter as I don’t yet know how to use it to meet my needs. I intend to explore this further.

Conclusion

2020 was a challenging but pivotal year for me in many respects. 2021 has so far gotten off to another difficult start as political tensions are quite high at the moment. Nonetheless, I continue to look forward to what the new year will bring.