New Computer Science Professor Helps Machines Learn

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Michael Gashler

Assistant professor Michael Gashler's work is founded on the idea that machines can automatically improve with experience. Through the science of machine learning, machines are able to approach problems that even the programmer may not have fully anticipated or understood. Addressing such problems keeps Gashler enthusiastic in the area of machine learning, an area he hopes to expand at the University of Arkansas.

He is particularly interested in automated systems that can learn from visual images, sensor arrays, and other forms of high-dimensional data. His work is centered in the proximity of non-linear dimensionality reduction, neural networks, time-series prediction, black-box system identification, and computer vision.

Gashler began building video games at an early age, and then branched out to other areas of computer science. He has worked with several software companies, including Microsoft, where he helped to build the .NET Common Language Runtime, Edumetrics Institute, where he architected educational software for children, Incline Software, the Waterford Institute and others.

Gashler has a Ph.D., an M.S. and a B.S. in computer science from Brigham Young University. He is the primary developer of a comprehensive open source machine learning and data mining toolkit called Waffles. This resource contains a wide range of algorithms for performing operations in machine learning, data mining, and related topics.