Scholar in the News
Ahmad Ali Lewis isn't a typical Stanford undergrad - nor is he a typical rapper
Myle Ott
"For years, I've heard promises about how robots are going to do our laundry, cook our meals and perform other daily tasks but those aspirations have mostly remained unrealized. I hope to help change that and contribute to making those predictions into modern-day reality by doing research in the field of artificial intelligence and, more specifically, machine learning."
- Program: 2006 Graduate Scholarship Recipient
- Hometown: San Francisco, CA
- Four-year College or University: California State University-Los Angeles
- Graduate School: Cornell University
- Academic/Career Pursuits: Computing / IT, Engineering, Mathematics
- Other Interests: Philosophy
Biography
Myle Ott skipped five grades to enter Cal State at age 12, through the university's early entrance program. He remembers one professor asking if he needed help finding his mother. But being so much younger than his classmates did not worry him. He needed to fill in some gaps in history, English and math but he excelled in computers and, on occasion tutored, his older classmates.
Then he took a course on artificial intelligence and another on machine learning. He struggled, but ultimately did well. "This made me love it even more, since it was the first thing in computers to ever really challenge me."
After getting an M.S., Myle wants to work in industry and then pursue a doctorate. He wants to be part of a project that can "build a fully autonomous robot," that simplifies many of the trials of daily life through the use of machine learning algorithms designed for adaptive robots. He also hopes that these same techniques will improve security by identifying new threats and helping to find new cures for diseases.
Myle says chess helped him learn self-motivation, which made him a better programmer. "Many of the things I know, I've learned on my own, not for any particular reason other than because I wanted to know more, to be better." At 16, he was a member of the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute and his leadership skills were rewarded with election to head the campus chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery.
Other Scholars Like Myle
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Ben Bingham
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Miquell Miller
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Vesta Grubb
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