MELISSA K. CARROLL

http://www.princeton.edu/~mkc

EDUCATION

9/04 – Present

Doctoral Student in Computer Science and Neuroscience, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

Master of Arts in Computer Science received September 2006

Anticipated completion date: August, 2009

5/00 – 1/03

Master of Science in Computer Science, Pace University, White Plains, NY

8/96 – 5/99

Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, NY

EXPERIENCE

10/04-Present

Graduate Researcher, Princeton University Computer Science Department, Princeton, NJ
(Advisor: Robert Schapire)

•    Pursue independent and collaborative research into machine learning and computer vision techniques for scientific discovery from Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data

•    Perform theoretical and experimental analyses of prediction from high-dimensional datasets

6/07 – 9/07

Research Intern, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY

(Manager: Charles Peck; Mentors: Guillermo Cecchi, Irina Rish)

·        Evaluated L1-, L2-, and hybrid-regularized (Elastic Net) regression for prediction of brain function from fMRI data with regard to prediction accuracy, interpretation, and robustness

6/08 – 8/08

Research Intern, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY

(Manager: Charles Peck; Mentors: Guillermo Cecchi, Irina Rish)

•       Formulated approaches for discovering underlying activation structure in fMRI data

•       Developed parallel regression software in C and Matlab for distributing datasets with many predictors across nodes on the IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer

9/05 – 5/06

Assistant in Instruction, Princeton University

Fall 2005: COS 402 Artificial Intelligence (Instructor: Robert Schapire)

•       Held office hours and responded to student queries; established and applied grading criteria for written and programming assignments; implemented testing scripts to facilitate grading; presented make-up lectures and review sessions; assisted in course planning

Spring 2006: COS 126 General Computer Science (Instructors: Douglas Clark, Kevin Wayne)

•       Taught twice-weekly precept to 30 students; held office hours and responded to student queries; applied grading criteria for assignments

7/99 – 8/04

Research Data Manager/Analyst, Weill-Cornell Institute of Geriatric Psychiatry, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, White Plains, NY

•    Worked as a full-time team member for a large research center on over 20 studies

•    Database design and administration: designed, developed, and maintained several relational research databases; manipulated data using SQL, VBA, and SAS

•    Statistical analysis and research dissemination: generated analysis strategies with study investigators and statisticians; implemented procedures for inferential statistics, regression, and several other models in SAS and SPSS; prepared findings for presentation and publication

•    Leadership: served as lead data manager for 5 major studies; recruited, trained, and supervised 9 data entry/quality control clerks and 3 junior data manager/analysts

8/01 – 9/03

Graduate Researcher, Pace University Computer Science Department, White Plains, NY
(Advisors: Michael L. Gargano, Ph.D., Sung-Hyuk Cha, Ph.D.)

•    Compared performance of self-implemented kNN, Naοve Bayes, ANN, and Decision Tree algorithms as base models and stacked generalizers for protein function prediction

•    Evaluated the performance of self-implemented Evolutionary Artificial Neural Network algorithms on learning an ambiguous task, derived from a neuropsychological test

HONORS AND AWARDS

2006 – 2008

Fellowship, Princeton Program in Integrative Information, Computer and Application Sciences

2005

National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship Honorable Mention

2004 – 2005

Graduate Fellowship, Princeton University

2003

Computer Science Distinguished Achievement Award for Academic Excellence, Pace University

ORGANIZATIONS AND COMMITTEES

2008

Co-Organizer, NIPS 2008 Workshop on Statistical Learning for fMRI

2004 – Pres.

Computer Science Graduate Committee: Serve as one of two representatives for CS graduate year; organize academic and social functions; liaison between students and faculty/administration

2005 – 2006

Graduate Engineering Council: Served as one of two representatives for Computer Science graduate student body; liaisoned between students and Engineering school administration

2004 – Pres.

Graduate Women in Science and Engineering: Organize academic and social events; served on organizing committee for Princeton Women in Science and Engineering conference

2005 – Pres.

Graduate Engineering Ambassadors (past Secretary, Webmaster): Assist in recruitment of graduate Engineering students to Princeton

2007, 2008

Northeast Student Colloquium on Artificial Intelligence (NESCAI) reviewer

2005, 2006

Mentor, Princeton Summer Programming Experience: Advised two undergraduate students in designing and implementing a web-based MySQL database for a student organization

COMPUTER SKILLS

Matlab, C, MPI, Java, SQL, VBA, SAS BASE/STAT/Macro/Enterprise Miner, SPSS, Perl/CGI/DBI, HTML

SELECTED PRESENTATIONS AND PUBLICATIONS

•         Carroll, M.K., Cecchi, G.A., Rish, I., Garg, R., Rao, A.R. (2008). Prediction and Interpretation of Distributed Neural Activity with Sparse Models. Neuroimage, in press.

•         Carroll, M.K., Dudik, M. (2007). Feature Induction on fMRI Images Using Regularized Logistic Regression. Poster presented at the 13th Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM). Chicago, IL.

•         Carroll, M.K., Dudik, M., Schapire, R.E., Norman, K.A. (2006). Feature Induction Using Boosting and Logistic Regression on fMRI Images. Paper accepted for presentation at the NIPS 2006 Workshop on New Directions on Decoding Mental States from fMRI Data. Whistler, BC.

•         Carroll, M.K., Norman, K.A., Haxby, J.V., Schapire, R.E. (2006). Exploiting Spatial Information to Improve fMRI Pattern Classification. Poster presented at the 12th Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM). Florence, Italy.

•         Carroll, M.K., Cha, S. (2003). Application of Stacked Generalization to a Protein Localization Prediction Task. Proceedings, Atlantic Symposium on Computational Biology and Genome Informatics, 7th Joint Conference on Information Sciences (JCIS 2003), Cary, NC, 923-926. Slides (pps)

•         Carroll, M.K. (2003). The Performance of Evolutionary Artificial Neural Networks in Unambiguous and Ambiguous Learning Situations. Technical Report No. 189, Pace University School of Computer Science and Information Systems.  Also Masters Thesis, Pace University.

•         Meyers, B.S., Sirey, J.A., Bruce, M., Hamilton, M., Raue, P., Friedman, S.J., Rickey, C., Kakuma, T., Carroll, M.K., Kiosses, D., & Alexopoulos, G. (2002). Predictors of Early Recovery from Major Depression Among Persons Admitted to Community-Based Clinics: An Observational Study.  Archives of General Psychiatry, 59(8):729-35.

•         Carroll, M.K., Murphy, C.F., Kiosses, D.N., & Alexopoulos, G.S. (2001). The Modified Card Sorting Test as a Measure of Executive Dysfunction in Geriatric Depression. Poster presented at the 2nd Annual Aging Symposium, Cornell Center for Aging Research and Clinical Care, New York, NY. Slides (pps)

•         Murphy, C.F., Alexopoulos, G.S., Carroll, M.K., & Kakuma, T. (2001). Concurrent prediction of depression and executive dysfunction: A longitudinal analysis. Poster presented at the meeting of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, San Francisco, CA. The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, (9:3,Summer Supplement 1), 83.

Last modified: 9/25/08