Yandex Research ML Residency in 2024

In collaboration with HSE University, Yandex Research announces the 2024 enrollment for our Machine Learning Residency program. This initiative represents an opportunity for ML enthusiasts at various stages of their academic and professional careers to engage in advanced research in computer sciences.

The program focuses on key areas such as computer vision, speech and dialogue systems, and natural language processing. Residents can work on real-world projects and contribute to scientific papers potentially presented at major conferences, including NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, and CVPR.

Open to a diverse range of candidates, from students to seasoned mathematicians and physicists, the program seeks individuals with a profound interest in machine learning, a habit of keeping up-to-date with scientific literature, and a vision of themselves as future ML researchers.

For further information and application details, please visit this page.

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We asked researchers who participated in the ML Residency Program to share their insights. In 2022, we published other residency alum stories in our blog post.

Anton Baryshnikov

Research Engineer at Google DeepMind

When writing my thesis at HSE University, I chose Max Ryabinin, a senior researcher from Yandex Research, as my academic advisor. He invited me to the ML Residency, where I learned the essentials of designing research, rapidly prototyping and iterating ideas, developing high-quality research code from the ground up, and crafting a scholarly paper.

As a result, Maxim and I prepared a preprint about evaluating text-to-image models. It was a great experience because I had to solve many problems that were usually scattered among experts. I wholeheartedly recommend this residency program for anyone who is eager to embark on a career in ML science but is still determining where to start.

Alexander Borzunov

Researcher at OpenAI

After graduating from a joint master's program at Yandex School of Data Analysis and HSE University, I applied to the ML Residency program. At that time, I was pondering the feasibility of working on large language models without access to an expensive GPU cluster. To my delight, I discovered that Yandex Research had initiated a similar project, which I eagerly joined. My involvement soon led to co-authoring a paper published at NeurIPS.

Before joining the ML Residency, I had zero experience writing scientific papers. However, the program provided me with comprehensive training in the entire process, from identifying promising ideas and setting up initial experiments to drafting the manuscript and presenting at conferences. It was gratifying to interact with researchers from prestigious scientific groups and to learn that they were familiar with our work.

The ML Residency stands out as one of the rare programs where individuals with no prior scientific background can learn to conduct machine learning research at an international level. Initially, the benefits may seem modest compared to those of full-time employees, but the long-term value and expertise gained make one a significantly more competent specialist.

Ultimately, developing models and inventing algorithms is the dream of anyone pursuing a machine learning career.

The opinions expressed by the ML Residency participants are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of their respective employers.