kunzhang

New

kunzhang

Professor & Acting Department Chair of Machine Learning, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), UAE Associate Professor, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), USA; on leave

Research Interests

  • Causal discovery and inference: Theory and applications
  • causal representation learning: recovering causal process with automatically learned hidden causal variables
  • practical computational methods for causal discovery (causal representation learning) and inference
  • technically operational causal principles for intelligent systems
  • data analytics from a causal perspective
  • fundamental and testable principles to characterize causality
  • latent variable modeling
  • Representation learning, transfer learning, and reinforcement learning
  • Other machine learning directions
  • learning under data heterogeneity, recommender systems, kernel methods, Gaussian processes, semi-supervised learning, structural learning and feature learning, unsupervised deep learning, mixture models, model selection, independent component analysis, sparse coding
  • General-purpose artificial intelligence: Representation, learning, update, and exploitation of knowledge
  • Neuroscience (especially fMRI and EEG data analysis), climate analysis, healthcare, video understanding
  • Computational finance
  • volatility modeling and risk management, factor models in finance, causality in finance

    Working Experience

  • August 2023 – , Acting Department Chair & Professor of Machine Learning, Director of Center for Integrative AI (CIAI), Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), UAE
  • January 2022 – , Associate Professor of Machine Learning, Director of Center for Integrative AI (CIAI), Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), UAE
  • July 2020 – , Associate Professor in Department of Philosophy & affiliate faculty in Machine Learning Department, Carnegie Mellon University (on leave since January 1, 2022)
  • August 2015 – June 2020, Assistant Professor in Department of Philosophy & affiliate faculty in Machine Learning Department, Carnegie Mellon University
  • December 2014 – June, 2015, Lead Scientist, Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California
  • March 2012 – November 2014, Senior Researcher, Max-Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (Bernhard Schölkopf’s department), Tübingen, Germany
  • January 2010 – February 2012, Research Scientist, Max-Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (formerly known as MPI for Biological Cybernetics), Tübingen, Germany
  • October 2008 – December 2009, Postdoctoral fellow, Dept. of Computer Science & Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, University of Helsinki Education
  • M.phil & Ph.D. in Computer Science, Aug. 2001– Dec. 2005 Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Hong Kong
  • Bachelor of Engineering in Automation: Sept. 1996 – Jul. 2001 Dept of Automation, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Hefei, China (highest GPA).