Cheng Zhang

Assistant Professor
School of Mathematical Sciences
Peking University
Office: Building No.20, 315
Email: chengzhang@math.pku.edu.cn
Github: @zcrabbit

About me

I am a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the School of Mathematical Sciences at Peking University. Previously, I was a Postdoctoral research fellow in Matsen Group at Fred Hutchinson cancer research center. I finished my PhD in 2016 in the Mathematics Department at University of California, Irvine, working with Prof. Hongkai Zhao and Prof. Babak Shahbaba on scalable Bayesian inference methods. I received my Bachelor degree (2008) in applied mathematics and Master degree (2011) in computational mathematics from Peking University.

Research interest

My Research area is Bayesian statistics and machine learning, with interests including graphical models, efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo methods and variational inference methods for Bayesian models, deep Bayesian learning/Bayesian deep learning, and various applications using probabilistic modeling.

Examples of subjects of interest including:

• Scalable MCMC and variational approaches for large-scale Bayesian inference.
• Graphical modeling of discrete and structured objects.
• Efficient Bayesian phylogenetic inference algorithms, including both variational and Monte Carlo methods.