[kingcai]

My best advice is to find people who do what you want to do and try to learn as much as possible from them. If you're interested in doing ML/DL research I think the best way to get into the field is to reach out to professors. I studied ML/DL (books, projects, classes, reimplementing papers) for several years in undergrad, but discussing and debating ideas is the one thing that took my understanding to a much deeper level. A good professor will also point out gaps in your knowledge that you might be missing.

A second bit of advice: Programming (and execution) skills are IMO heavily undervalued by people looking to get into ML. The faster you can write code, debug, and implement new things, the easier it is to produce good research.

Some books I liked: PR & ML (Bishop), Deep Learning Book (Goodfellow), AI: A Modern Approach (Norving), Elements of Statistical Learning (Friedman)