Tin Kam Ho () is a

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

IBM Research IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM Research is the largest industrial research org ...

with contributions to

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

, data mining, and

classification Classification is a process related to categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated and understood. Classification is the grouping of related facts into classes. It may also refer to: Business, organizat ...

. Ho is noted for introducing random decision forests in 1995, and for her pioneering work in ensemble learning and data complexity analysis. She is an

IEEE fellow As of 2019, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has 5,082 members designated Fellow, each of whom is associated with one of the 41 societies under the IEEE. The Fellow grade of membership is the highest level of membershi ...

and IAPR fellow.

Education

Ho completed her undergraduate education at the

Chinese University of Hong Kong The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) is a public research university in Ma Liu Shui, Hong Kong, formally established in 1963 by a charter granted by the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. It is the territory's second-oldest university an ...

in 1984. She received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from

State University of New York The State University of New York (SUNY, , ) is a system of public colleges and universities in the State of New York. It is one of the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the United States. Led by c ...

at Buffalo in 1992.

Career and research

She led the Statistics and Learning Research Department of

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

at Murray Hill, NJ. In 1995, she published the article ''Random decision forests'', which became the foundation of the

random forest Random forests or random decision forests is an ensemble learning method for classification, regression and other tasks that operates by constructing a multitude of decision trees at training time. For classification tasks, the output of th ...

method commonly used by later data scientists. Ho also pioneered research in multiple classifier systems, ensemble learning, and data complexity analysis, and pursued applications of automatic learning in reading systems and many areas of science and engineering. She also led major efforts on modeling and monitoring large-scale optical transmission systems. Later she worked on wireless geo-location, video surveillance, smart grid data mining, user profiling, customer experience modeling, and analysis of diagnostic processes. Since 2014, Ho has been a research scientist in

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

at IBM. She worked on semantic analysis in natural language processing, contributing to machine learning, data mining, and classification methods at IBM Watson and Watson Health, and has recently joined the Accelerated Discovery team at IBM Research.

Awards and recognition

Her contributions were recognized by a Bell Labs President's Gold Award and two Bell Labs Teamwork Awards, a Young Scientist Award from ICDAR in 1999, and the 2008 Pierre Devijver Award for Statistical Pattern Recognition. She served as Editor-in-chief of the journal Pattern Recognition Letters in 2004-2010, and in earlier years as Associate Editor for PAMI, Pattern Recognition, Editor for Int. J. on Document Analysis and Recognition, as well as guest editors for other publications. Ho was elected an IEEE fellow in 2006, and is also an IAPR fellow.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ho, Tin Kam Year of birth missing (living people) Hong Kong emigrants to the United States Living people Computer scientists Women in optics