NMEP Spring 2026
Welcome everyone! In the New Member Education Program (NMEP), we’ll be paving a sturdy ML foundation for you - from basic ML definitions to LLMs, generative models, and reinforcement learning. Come hungry to learn and get to know the rest of your class!
Your instructor this semester is Surya Krishnapillai!
Schedule
| Week | Date | Lecture | Assignments | Lecturer(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Feb 9 | Introduction + Math Review (slides) | Lecture Exercise Rockfall Homework 1 (due Feb 23) Math NumPy PyTorch | Surya |
| 2 | Feb 16 | Classical Machine Learning (slides) (notes) | Surya | |
| 3 | Feb 23 | Deep Learning (slides) (notes) | Reading How to read a paper Homework 2 (due March 2) Word Embeddings Micrograd | Surya |
| 4 | March 2 | Computer Vision (slides) (notes) | Lecture Exercise YOLO Homework 3 (due March 16) Model Zhu | Tim, Andrew |
| 5 | March 9 | NLP + Transformers (slides) (notes) | NMEP Midterm (March 15) | Surya, Saathvik |
| 6 | March 16 | Large Language Models (slides) | Homework 4 (due April 6) Transformers | Tejas |
| 7 | March 30 | SSL + Generative Models (slides) (slides part 2) | Final Project Kickoff | Surya, Aakarsh |
| 8 | Apr 6 | Reinforcement Learning (slides) | Final Project Proposal Due Homework 5 (due April 13) Diffusion OR RL (Credit: CS 185) | Kavish, Tanmayi |
| 9 | Apr 13 | 3D Computer Vision + World Models (slides) | Tim, Andrew, Rishi | |
| 10 | Apr 20 | AI Safety + Conclusion (slides) | Final Project Checkpoint Due | Prakrat |
| 11 | May 1 | Final Project Showcase | Final Project Due |