Hi all, we have a new DFL guide, and we are especially proud of this one. James Allingham and his group made an especially superb curriculum for understanding WGAN. We highly recommend earnestly studying with this at hand. Check it out at http://www.depthfirstlearning.com/2019/WassersteinGAN.
This is in some respects what element.ai is aiming to supplement. And having spent a lot of time in the ML community, there's a strong urge from a proportion of the students to start their own companies after finishing their studies as well.
GB (and Google more broadly) are very interested in this intersection. So yes, there are opportunities to do awesome work here, albeit actually working in a wet-lab is more difficult.
It's like any other (research) endeavor with lots of people involved. Some of us share research interests and so we coalesce around efforts towards accomplishing those goals. Out of the resident pool, I am currently working with Ryan and have had some discussions about collaborations with Denny and Justin.
Take a look at the published papers though and you can see some pairs that have flourished by working in the same vicinity.
This is a wonderful part of the program though, and it doesn't stop with the Residents. Brain is such a great place for ideas to meld and for people to come together to collaborate; it's designed to encourage that.
Given what you wrote to Hardmaru, I think you should just apply. The description you gave is a competitive one. Highlight it and then do well on the interview :).
You should just apply. The people you're trying to impress are researchers and engineers, and they have a long history evaluating folks who have proven their merit outside of academia.
Off the cuff, and probably a lot updated since, you should think of it like the normal Google interview but geared towards figuring out how well you'd do in the research environment. Prepare for the former but understand the latter.
I think that's a great background for the program and matches a bunch of the current residents. You should definitely apply. I suspect it will only make your later PhD experience better.