MSc Data Analytics students published in pattern recognition journal

Congratulations to MSc Data Analytics Students Peizhen Bai and Fangling Liu who have published a full research paper "Joint Interaction with Context Operation for Collaborative Filtering" in Pattern Recognition Journal (IF 3.96).

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The paper itself was a collaborative effort between Peizhen, Yan Ge (a current PhD student and former MSc Advanced Software Engineering student), and Fangling, under the supervision of Dr Haiping Lu (a Lecturer in Machine Learning).

The paper builds on work done by Peizhen in his dissertation project with the same title. Peizhen graduated in 2017 and was also awarded the Fretwell-Downing Prize for his dissertation project, which proposed a new method called Joint Interaction with Context Operation (JICO) and demonstrated that JICO consistently outperformed competing methods for collaborative filtering in recommender systems. Fangling graduated in 2018 and she further developed JICO in her dissertation project to incorporate tag information.

Whilst working on the project Peizhen commented he “learned a lot of cutting-edge knowledge about machine learning during this period, which has had a positive impact on my career. Now I’m working at Apple Siri and the academic thinking mode always benefits me." This is a great example of our academic and research staff working alongside our students and exposing them to new research which will give them the skills to succeed in their future career paths.

We asked the Peizhen and Fangling what they thought about the MSc Data Analytics degree at Sheffield

"Learning Data Analytics in The University of Sheffield is a valuable and unforgettable experience in my study career. It has well-structured course modules and excellent lecturers. Students can not only learn the theoretical knowledge of machine learning and statistics but also put these interesting techniques into practice with the industrial team project module. I really enjoyed the study process in Sheffield."

Peizhan Bai


"MSc Data Analytics is a wonderful degree! Also, it is one of the most related degrees to machine learning and artificial intelligence in the Department of Computer Science. It includes reasonable and well-structured machine learning modules with moderate difficulty. The academic level and pressure of the degree have shaped my progress and helped all the students be prepared for their career. It is an unforgettable year for everyone."

Fangling Liu


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