Rebecca Hutchinson
Postdoctoral Scholar
2069 Kelley Engineering Center 
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331
rah AT eecs DOT oregonstate DOT edu

CV in pdf format


Research Interests
My research is in machine learning.  I am currently doing a post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Thomas G. Dietterich in Computational Sustainability, applying machine learning to ecological problems.  Our main project has merged two popular species distribution models: boosted regression trees and site-occupancy models (probabilistic graphical models usually parameterized and fit similarly to logistic regression).  This allows ecologists to build more flexible models of the relationships between environmental variables and species occurrence records while still accounting for bias resulting from imperfect detection of the species.  It also represents the first application of functional gradient descent to a probabilistic graphical model that includes latent variables.  (See our AAAI 2011 paper below for more details.)

My Ph.D. thesis work developed a new probabilistic time series model inspired by the functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) domain called Hidden Process Models. 

Education
Ph.D., Computer Science Department, 2009
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
Advised by Dr. Tom M. Mitchell

B.S., Computer Science & Engineering, 2002
Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA

Refereed Publications
"Project and Analysis Design for Broad-Scale Citizen Science," W. Hochachka, D. Fink, R.A. Hutchinson, D. Sheldon, W-K. Wong, S. Kelling, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 2011.  (in press)

"Incorporating Boosted Regression Trees into Ecological Latent Variable Models," R.A. Hutchinson, L-P. Liu, T.G. Dietterich, Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2011.  

"Modeling Experts and Novices in Citizen Science data for Species Distribution Modeling," J. Yu, W-K. Wong, R.A. Hutchinson, International Conference on Data Mining, 2010. 

"Modeling fMRI data generated by overlapping cognitive processes with unknown onsets using Hidden Process Models," R.A. Hutchinson, R.S. Niculescu, T.A. Keller, I. Rustandi, and T.M. Mitchell, Neuroimage (2009), doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.01.025.  (preprint version)

"Hidden Process Models," R.A. Hutchinson, T.M. Mitchell, I. Rustandi, International Conference on Machine Learning 2006.  June 2006.

"Learning to Decode Cognitive States from Brain Images," T.M. Mitchell, R.A. Hutchinson, R.S. Niculescu, F.Pereira, X. Wang, M. Just, and S. Newman, Machine Learning, Vol. 57, Issue 1-2, pp. 145-175.  October 2004.

"Training fMRI Classifiers to Detect Cognitive States across Multiple Human Subjects ," X. Wang, R.A. Hutchinson, and T.M. Mitchell, Neural Information Processing Systems 2003.  December 2003.

"Classifying Instantaneous Cognitive States from fMRI Data," T.M. Mitchell, R.A. Hutchinson, M. Just, R.S. Niculescu, F. Pereira, X. Wang, American Medical Informatics Association Symposium, October 2003. (received Best Foundational Paper Award)

"Reducing Boundary Friction Using Translation-Fragment Overlap," R. Brown, R.A. Hutchinson, P. Bennett, J. G. Carbonell, and P. Jansen. Machine Translation Summit IX.  2003.

Other Papers
"Machine Learning for Computational Sustainability," T.G. Dietterich, E. Dereszynski, R.A. Hutchinson, D. Sheldon, International Conference on Green Computing (IGCC), 2012. 

"Modeling Experts and Novices in Citizen Science data for Species Distribution Modeling," J. Yu, W-K. Wong, R.A. Hutchinson, OSU EECS Technical Reports, October 7, 2010.

"Hidden Process Models," R. Hutchinson, Ph.D. Thesis, CMU Technical Report CMU-CS-09-179.  December 18, 2009.

"Hidden Process Models," R. Hutchinson, Thesis Proposal, May 26, 2006.

"Hidden Process Models," T.M. Mitchell, R. Hutchinson, & I. Rustandi.  CMU Technical Report CS-CALD-05-116. February 17, 2006.

"Maximal Lattice Overlap in Example-Based Machine Translation,” R. Hutchinson, P.N. Bennett, J. Carbonell, P. Jansen, and R. Brown. Carnegie Mellon University Technical Report CMU-CS-03-138. June 6, 2003.

Invited Talks 
"Machine Learning for Ecological Science and Environmental Policy", with T.G. Dietterich and D. Sheldon, tutorial at the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), June 28, 2011.  (slides)

"Machine Learning Problems in Species Occupancy Modeling," SCHARP Brown Bag Series, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA. March 25, 2010.  (slides)

"Hidden Process Models with Applications to fMRI Data," Biostatistics and Biomathematics Seminar, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA. March 24, 2010.  (slides)

"Hidden Process Models with Applications to fMRI Data," Topic Contributed Session, Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) 2009, Washington, DC.  August 2, 2009.  (slides)

Other Talks and Posters
"Incorporating Boosted Regression Trees into Site Occupancy Models," AVES Seminar, Department of Fish and Wildlife, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR.  November 17, 2011.  (slides)

"Incorporating Boosted Regression Trees into Ecological Latent Variable Models," Twenty-fifth Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).  August 11, 2011.  (slides)

"Combining Boosted Regression Trees and Hierarchical Species Occupancy Models," (talk and poster), International Conference on Computational Sustainability, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA. June 27, 2010.  (poster)

"Parameter Estimation in a Hierarchical Model for Species Occupancy," (poster with T.G. Dietterich), Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) Workshops: The Generative and Discriminative Learning Interface, Whistler, BC.  December 12, 2009.  (abstract)

"Modeling fMRI data generated by overlapping cognitive processes with unknown onsets using Hidden Process Models," (poster with T.M. Mitchell), Statistical Analyses of Neuronal Data Workshop (SAND) 2008, Pittsburgh, PA.  May 30, 2008.  (slides)

"Hidden Process Models for Analyzing fMRI Data," Graduate Student Seminar Series, Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science.  May 11, 2007. (slides)

"Hidden Process Models: Decoding Overlapping Cognitive States with Unknown Timing," Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) Workshops: New Directions on Decoding Mental States from fMRI Data, Whistler, BC.  December 8, 2006. (slides)

"Hidden Process Models," Women in Machine Learning Workshop (WIML), San Diego, CA.  October 4, 2006. (slides)

"Hidden Process Models,"  International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2006, Pittsburgh, PA.  June 28, 2006. (slides)

"Hidden Process Models," Thesis Proposal, Carnegie Mellon Computer Science Department.  May 26, 2006. (slides)

“Learning to Identify Overlapping and Hidden Cognitive Processes from fMRI Data,” (poster with T.M. Mitchell and I. Rustandi), Human Brain Mapping (HBM) 2005, Toronto, ON.  June 2005. (slides)

“Using Hidden Process Models to Decode Cognitive States from fMRI Data,” Brain Science Seminar, Carnegie Mellon University.  April 2005.

 “Hidden Process Models for Body Monitoring Data,” BodyMedia, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA.  March 2005. (slides)

Teaching
Co-advisor (with Tom Mitchell) for an undergraduate senior honors thesis, 2006-2007 academic year
TA for Artificial Intelligence (undergraduate level), Spring 2007
TA for Machine Learning (undergraduate/master’s level), Fall 2006

Service
Program Committee Member for the 1st annual NorthEast Student Colloquium on Artificial Intelligence (NESCAI) 2006.
Contributed reviews for the following journals: NeuroImage, Computational Neuroscience, Ecology, Ecosphere.
Contributed reviews for the following conferences and workshops: International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), NorthEast Student Colloquium on Artificial Intelligence (NESCAI), Women in Machine Learning Workshop (WIML).

Honors
National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship (2002-2005)
Bucknell Computer Science Department Most Outstanding Senior Award (2002)
Barry M. Goldwater Scholar (2001)
National Merit Scholar (1998)

Personal
I enjoy ultimate frisbee, racquetball, knitting, and cooking.  My husband and I have two dogs, Luna and Sola, who never fail to turn our hiking/camping trips into adventures.