Abstract: 

Automated machine learning is the science of building machine learning models in a data-driven, efficient, and objective way. It replaces manual trial-and-error with automated, guided processes. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the current state of the art in hyperparameter optimization, pipeline construction, and neural architecture search. We will discuss model-free blackbox optimization methods, Bayesian optimization, as well as evolutionary and other techniques. We will also pay attention to meta-learning, i.e. learning how to build machine learning models based on prior experience. Moreover, we will give practical guidance on how to do meta-learning with OpenML, an online platform for sharing and reusing machine learning experiments, and how to perform automated pipeline construction with GAMA, a novel, research-oriented AutoML tool in Python.

Bio: 

Pieter Gijsbers is a PhD student at the Eindhoven University of Technology. His areas of interest are automated machine learning and meta-learning. He is the main author of GAMA, a research-focused open source AutoML tool. While GAMA is easy to use for end-users, it also allows researchers to try different search techniques and visualize the optimization process. He is a co-author of the Open Source AutoML Benchmark. He is also part of the team working on the openml-python package, providing an easy to use Python interface to OpenML.