HN Explorer

Ask HN: Best field for a computer engineering PhD?

2 points by levesque ↗ HN
I am about to begin my active search for a PhD in computer engineering. However before going further, I want to know what is be the best field to attain expertise in (according to HN); i.e. what type of knowledge is the most valuable?

The field of machine learning and data mining is the one that seems to offer the most opportunities today, with the continuing growth of the internet and the ever increasing amount of data available. I would like to study evolutionary and genetic algorithms - is there interest for these techniques as well?

3 comments

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aheilbut
There are many local optima, not one "best field."

Evolutionary and genetic algorithms remain out of vogue in the mainstream machine learning community.

kloncks
The best field for you is whatever you're interested in the most. If you're interested,

That being said, I'm personally highly interested in data mining in terms of natural language search.

patternexon
If you are going to a PhD, do it in something you like to do, even if it does not pay (then or later).