About Zhihang (pronounced "Ger-hàng")

I am a Ph.D. student and AI scientist at the “U-Dub” (University of Washington) interested in the broad application of statistical machine learning, natural language processing and social sensing. Most of my research are under supervision of the faculty at the Center For Statistics And The Social Sciences. I am lucky to work under the guidance and advice from  Adrian Dobra and Ross Matsueda.

My research interests focused on Artificial Intelligence and Statistical Machine Learning , specifically online & adaptive learning, reinforcement learning, graphical models, geometric methods (e.g. manifold learning), Natural Language Processing (QA, SA and embedding) as they apply to social questions. Additionally, I am interested in Statistical Methodologies (spatial-temporal models) as they apply to demography.

Something I don’t claim expertise but have great interests (and efforts, you bet) in: – Computer Vision, Game Theory & 19th Century Philosophy – the influential thinkers and great figures and their works, such as Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Mill, and Bergson (I have a B.A. in Philosophy, anyway!) I love poems of Su Shi (苏轼).

I also work with a great mentor, Kyle Crowder, who helped my career beyond being a good researcher but also a good teacher. Beyonds, I also apprenticed through research collaboration with Yen-Chi Chen.  Actively working with peers, I have an interesting research discussions with my friend Castiel Zhuang, a promising young economist. Group work wise, I am a member of the Geometric Data Analysis Research Group starting Winter 2018, and the Working Group on Applied, Bayesian and Computational Statistics since Autumn 2016.

I code. I do statistics. I play drums with my band ‘Random Algorithms’. I shoot arrows with my recurve bow.  I hike, a lot. I reached LEGENDARY level many times in Hearthstone, and I am a three-time Arena 12-win’er. The photo above is outdated. For a more recent photo, please click here.

Something I’d love to do in the future: Make to the HCT (Hearthstone Collegiate Tournament) Championship Game (prefer winning it); Proficient in graph theory;  Visit New Zealand!

Links:

myCV  Github    LinkedIn   Kaggle   Twitter   MySchedule

(BTW: My kaggle username is: @littleprincess LOL…)

This website was last maintained April 18th, 2018, by Z.Dong.