Howdy! I’m a Ph.D. candidate in Statistics at Boston University, co-advised by Prof. Debarghya Mukherjee and Prof. Luis Carvalho, and I also collaborate with Prof. Nabarun Deb. Before BU, I earned my M.A. in Statistics from Columbia University and my B.S. in Mathematics from Shandong University, including a year of joint training at the Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science(AMSS), Chinese Academy of Sciences. My research sits at the intersection of statistics and machine learning, where I develop theoretically grounded transfer-learning and representation-learning methods—spanning optimal transport, graph mining, multimodal learning for structured, heterogeneous data in low-sample, high-dimensional, and non-IID settings.
The question that keeps me up (in a good way):
How can we reuse past knowledge when the world—and the data—won’t sit still?
In statistical learning, this is about transferring geometry or smoothness from a well-understood source distribution to a smaller, noisier target under shift. In reinforcement learning, the source might be prior trajectories, simulators, or related tasks, while the target is the evolving environment, so we need principled rules for what to keep, what to adapt, and what to forget. And yes! LLMs/VLMs make this even more exciting (and tricky): they already contain a lot of cross-domain knowledge, but the real challenge is extracting and specializing it safely for downstream tasks without overfitting, hallucination, or misalignment.
What I build
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Minimax rates · oracle inequalities · regret bounds · safe-transfer criteria under covariate or structural shift. |
Aligning and transporting information across graphs and manifolds — robust transfer when correspondence is messy or unknown. |
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Warm-started policies with uncertainty-aware adaptation for reliable sequential decision-making in changing environments. |
Controlled adaptation · domain grounding · structure-preserving fine-tuning — so models adapt without getting sloppy. |
Curious about my research? View my slide deck on transfer learning.
Along my academic journey, I have been deeply fortunate to study and conduct research under the guidance of inspiring scholars, including Prof. Zhanxing Zhu, whose influential work includes Spatio-Temporal Graph Convolutional Networks (STGCN) for traffic forecasting, and Prof. Yongshun Gong. Their perspectives on deep learning, representation learning, and structured spatio-temporal systems have profoundly shaped how I think about evolving, heterogeneous data, and have guided my pursuit of principled transfer learning methods.
Beyond theory and modeling, I am drawn to building AI applications that reflect how I see people and the world. I have always felt that human beings are more than their outward forms, that something of the spirit, memory, and inner life exceeds the body that temporarily carries it. That is why I am especially fascinated by cinema, atmosphere, and emotionally resonant digital experiences ✨
🔥 News
- 2025.09: 🎉 My first-author paper “Transfer Learning on Edge Connecting Probability Estimation Under Graphon Model” is accepted by (NeurIPS 2025)!
- 2025.08: 🎉 My co-authored paper “Cross-Domain Hyperspectral Image Classification via Mamba-CNN and Knowledge Distillation” is accepted by (IEEE TGRS 2025)!
📝 Publications
Leading Author
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Co-author
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🤖 LLM Engineering Projects
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Isolation Forest · GBM · LLM fingerprint scorer · CSIC 2010 |
DoWhy · Double ML · Causal Forest · Claude API · Streamlit |
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dense + entity graph + CLIP · FastAPI · ChromaDB |
query routing · iterative retrieval · self-check · FastAPI |
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BM25+FAISS · NLI · SelfCheckGPT · sem. entropy · Mistral-7B |
instruction · dialogue · LoRA / QLoRA · domain transfer |
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DPO · IPO · KTO · QLoRA · Mistral-7B · HH-RLHF |
GPT-2 · GAE · clipped PPO · adaptive KL · W&B |
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10.7M GPT · PyTorch · PPL 65 → 4.7 @ 5k iters |
1–8 bit · proximal opt · W1G64: 12.7× · >4× speedup |
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draft + verifier · latency · throughput · acceptance |
AIPW · LightGBM · DRLearner CATE · OR-Tools · FastAPI |
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TWFE · CS-DiD · Synth DiD · Double ML · 12M+ NYC TLC |
Seasonal Naive · LightGBM · TFT · M5 · 28-day · store-SKU |
📖 Educations
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2021.09 – Now: Ph.D. in Statistics, Boston University
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2019.09 – 2020.05: M.A. in Statistics (Data Science Track), Columbia University
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2018.05 – 2019.06: B.S. in Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Jointly Supervised Talent Program)
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2015.09 – 2019.06: B.S. in Mathematics, Shandong University
💻 Internships

Data Scientist Intern · Plymouth Rock Insurance
📍 Boston, MA · 🗓️ May 2025 – Aug 2025
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Architected an end-to-end AWS SageMaker pipeline for property-level loss prediction using an XGBoost Tweedie model on multi-million-policy data, lifting Gini by +4.3% over the production baseline and directly improving underwriting risk segmentation.
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Pioneered an LLM-powered visual risk scoring system combining GPT-4o multimodal reasoning with Google Street View imagery to capture previously unobservable property features (roof condition, surroundings, hazards); integrated outputs into downstream actuarial pricing models as a novel signal layer.
✨ My Apps
🎖 Honors
- 2025: Student Travel Grant, Boston University
- 2025: Ralph B. D’Agostino Endowed Fellowship, Boston University
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2025: Outstanding Teaching Fellow Award, Boston University
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2019: Outstanding Graduate, Shandong University
- 2018: Hua Loo-Keng Scholarship, Chinese Academy of Sciences
- 2018: National Gold Award, Internet+ Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition
- 2018: First-Class Scholarship, Shandong University
- 2018: Outstanding Student Leader, Shandong University
📂 DS Projects
📝 Service & Teaching
Presentations · CIKM 2024, NeurIPS 2025
Reviewer · CIKM 2025, ICME 2026, ICML 2026, KDD 2026
Instructor @ Boston University · MA 582 Mathematical Statistics, MA 113 Elementary Statistics
TA @ Boston University · MA 575 Generalized Linear Models, MA 582, MA 415 Data Science in R, MA 214 Applied Stats
🎨 Interests
🎵 Mandarin R&B loyalist — Leehom Wang, David Tao, Khalil Fong🦋, Dean Ting
🎹 Trained in piano, calligraphy, and ink painting
🏞️ National park lover · 🫧 lake admirer · 🌅 opacarophile — welcome to my Gallery