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November
29, 2004 Vol. 75, no. 9F
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EECS assistant professor Martin Wainwright received
his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2002. His research
interests include statistical signal and image processing, machine
learning, graphical models and optimization, and information/
coding theory.
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Professor
Minute with new EECS assistant professor Martin Wainwright
If you decided not to
go into engineering, what other career would you have today?
I could see myself as a foreign correspondent or a travel writer. I
enjoy traveling a great deal.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
I enjoy the outdoors a great deal, and so I like activities like hiking
and swimming. Of course, the Bay Area is a wonderful place for
outdoor activity in general. I also enjoy listening to music, and reading
for pleasure (non-technical books, for a change).
What CD are you listening to at the moment?
My musical tastes are somewhat eclectic. At the moment, I am listening
to some classical music: a trio (piano, violin and cello) by Shostakovich.
What was your favorite
movie this year and why?
One film that I particularly enjoyed was a documentary by Errol Morris,
called the The Fog of War. At one level, it is a biography of Robert
McNamara, the former secretary of defense, who was certainlyan interesting
character in his own right. At another level, the film uses McNamara’s
life and decisions as a lens to make broader commentary on key political
events of the past century.
How can a student get through your hardest class?
Keeping up with the material and working hard on homework will go a
long way. Courses that I teach tend to be cumulative in nature, in that
we progressively build on material covered earlier in the course. For
this reason, keeping up is important. Also, I think that one of the
best ways to learn is to wrestle with challenging problems; only then,
do the concepts really start to sink in.
If you would like us to
feature your favorite professor, please e-mail his or her name to engnews@coe.berkeley.edu.
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