About me

Fig: A word cloud shows the keywords capturing my essence

Short version:

To put simply, I am kind of a "thinker" with an interesting soul, seeking the real and principal forces that govern the world.  My main things include both technical stuff ( e.g., computational methods, learned machines, human-computer interaction) and non-technical ones (e.g., arts, music, sports, politics). I am not meant to save the world, but I do have insights into how this seemingly complex world works. You will enjoy the intriguing posts that express my unique point of view.

Long version:

Overall, I regard myself as an organic integration of many different factors, including technical domains (e.g., human-centered computing) and non-tech-related domains such as arts.

Technique-wise, I am a computer science researcher passionate about data analytics and fundamental machine learning models. I work hard to develop novel techniques and frameworks that can advance the state-of-the-art of the field. To be more specific, I mainly focus on two categories of fields — algorithmic models and human-centered computing. The former includes learning-from-crowds models, manifold-learning-based dimension reduction methods, sampling approaches, feature engineering, and pattern matching. As for the latter, I study the interactive process of looping humans into the data analysis pipeline, facilitated by the algorithmic models (e.g., classification and clustering.) More broadly, I am also interested in the evaluation of existing techniques, design study, and theory research on visual analytics. I have completed many projects and published a fair amount of papers on these two topics. I believe the techniques proposed by me can really alleviate some difficult problems if not solve them thoroughly. 

In terms of some engineering skills such as quick-and-dirty prototyping and system building, I have no major differences from peers. The subtle difference that I can conceive is that I am better at writing a paper (or report) and I seem to be more persuasive in a presentation. What also distinguishes me from others is that I prefer simple, elegant and effective algorithms, over the complicated ones. Speaking of other stuff beyond technical fields, for example, philosophical evaluation and critical thinking, I am sure that I am one in a thousand.

In the off hours, I devote myself to non-tech-related fields that I deem important and interesting. To name a few, I love studying international politics affairs (e.g., economical policies), taking photos of landscapes and people, and browsing masterpieces of films, TV shows, and artwork. Though I have such a wide spectrum of interests. I focus on the following things — photography,  reading and politics. For photography, I would like to quote a well-known saying — " A picture is worth a thousand words" — I take photography as an effective approach to telling a story in an artistic way, with your composition skills, color tuning and the parameter setup of a lens and so forth. For reading, I enjoy "talking" to the authors and absorbing their ideas from their texts, which conveys the insights that the authors aim to deliver,  in either an implicit or explicit manner. Politics, a field that most of my peers are less enthusiastic about, is, however, the real power that can steer the world immediately. Oftentimes, I randomly go through political news from different sources, which I believe can lead to a viewpoint with diverse input. In the vast majority of cases, I have my own thoughts on a political affair, and it does not always agree with the mainstream viewpoint. I deem politics an important area that everyone should know at least some fundamental grounds and rules therein. Events that occur in our own lives are universally related to politics, which mainly governs how people deal with people. Lastly, I would like to mention that I am an enormous fan of many fantastic music artists, ranging from pop singers (notably Jay Chou) to classic ones, and along with another dimension from cpop to kpop. 

I am talented in understanding and expressing high vocal pitches. I can also play a bit of guitar and piano~