Tin Kam Ho () is a

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

IBM Research IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American Multinational corporation, multinational information technology company. IBM Research is headquartered at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York ...

with contributions to

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

data mining Data mining is the process of extracting and finding patterns in massive data sets involving methods at the intersection of machine learning, statistics, and database systems. Data mining is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and ...

, and

classification Classification is the activity of assigning objects to some pre-existing classes or categories. This is distinct from the task of establishing the classes themselves (for example through cluster analysis). Examples include diagnostic tests, identif ...

. 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 , the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and ot ...

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 university, public research university in Sha Tin, New Territories, Hong Kong. Established in 1963 as a federation of three university college, collegesChung Chi College, New Asia Coll ...

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 education, public colleges and universities in the New York (state), State of New York. It is one of the List of largest universities and university networks by enrollment, larges ...

at Buffalo in 1992.

Career and research

She led the Statistics and Learning Research Department of

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

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 statistical classification, classification, regression analysis, regression and other tasks that works by creating a multitude of decision tree learning, decision trees ...

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 the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

. She worked on semantic analysis in natural language processing, contributing to machine learning, data mining, and classification methods at IBM Watson and Watson Health. Thereafter she turned to generative AI applications 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, the 2008 Pierre Devijver Award for Statistical Pattern Recognition, and the 2024 K.S. Fu prize from IAPR . 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 Chinese computer scientists American women academics American women computer scientists Chinese women computer scientists Alumni of the Chinese University of Hong Kong Fellows of the IEEE