A masterclass on MATLAB

MATLAB is an acronym for “Matrix Laboratory”. This is because it was first created as a matrix programming language. It is now used in advanced applications such as machine learning, deep learning, data science, signal processing and communications, image and video processing, control systems, test and measurement, computational finance, and computational biology. To help students get valuable insight on MATLAB, the School of Engineering and Technology, Apeejay Stya University (ASU) organised a five-day workshop on MATLAB starting from November 15, 2021. Dr. Manpreet Singh Sehgal coordinated the workshop under the guidance of Professor Moin Uddin.

In a bid to ascertain the outcome of the workshop, a course in Moodle was created and students were asked to submit assignments based on the contents delivered in the workshop. The expert for all the days was Harsh Bhasin, Assistant Professor at Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi and fellow of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has published many books on Python and Machine learning.

Day 1 of the workshop started with the notion of the terminologies in the domain of machine learning. The example problems of supervised and unsupervised machine learning were picked up and their solutions in MATLAB were discussed. The features of MATLAB that make it a suitable case for applications of Machine learning was talked about extensively in a two-hour session on Day 1.

Day 2 of the session began explaining how MATLAB is different from other open source tools. For a hands-on exercise, students downloaded the student version of MATLAB and practiced the project of classifying flowers using K-Nearest Neighbor Algorithm. On day 3, the students learned more about K-Nearest Neighbor Algorithm and ways to solve the regression problem using MATLAB.

On Day 4 students were told about how the images are stored in the Memory, and how MATLAB functions are used to process the Grayscale and RGB images. The last day of the workshop talked about the signal processing toolbox, Wavelet Toolbox. Starting from the fundamentals of the signals, the workshop discussed the various equations that form the ecosystem of various signals including images. The expert also showcased the latest research involving signals and systems.

At the end of Day 5, students were asked to form groups and apply what they have learnt in the workshop to the projects. Some great ideas were discussed and the possibility of their  implementation was explored.