EDUCATION University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign May 2016 – Aug. 2018 Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering Advisor: Yihong Wu Dissertation: “Polynomial methods in statistical inference: theory and practice.” University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Aug. 2013 – May 2016 M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering Advisor: Yihong Wu Thesis: “Optimal entropy estimation on large alphabet: fundamental limits and fast algorithms” Tsinghua University Sept. 2009 – June 2013 B.E. in Electronic Engineering Advisor: Zhisheng Niu WORK EXPERIENCE Tsinghua University From Mar. 2021 Assistant Professor, Center for Statistical Science Princeton University Oct. 2018 – Oct. 2020 Postdoc Research Associate, Department of Electrical Engineering AWARDS AND HONORS Thomas M. Cover Dissertation Award, 2020 IEEE Information Theory Society Shun Lien Chuang Memorial Award for Excellence in Graduate Education, 2018 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Jack Keil Wolf ISIT Student Paper Award, 2015 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT) Star of Tomorrow Internship Award of Excellence, 2013 Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) Tsinghua-Tung OOCL Scholarship for Comprehensive Excellence, 2012 Tsinghua University, China Tsinghua-Changhong Scholarship for Comprehensive Excellence, 2011 Tsinghua University, China

At the intersection of statistics, machine learning, optimization, and information theory, my research focuses on machine learning problems from the perspective of high-dimensional statistics, and sublinear algorithms for property testing and estimation

Monographs Polynomial methods in statistical inference: theory and practice, with Yihong Wu, Foundations and Trends® in Communications and Information Theory, now publisher, 2020. Selected publications Optimal estimation of Gaussian mixtures via denoised method of moments. with Yihong Wu, Annals of Statistics, Vol. 48, No. 4, pp. 1981-2007, 2020. [code] On Learning Over-parameterized Neural Networks: A Functional Approximation Perspective, with Lili Su, NeurIPS 2019. Chebyshev polynomials, moment matching, and optimal estimation of the unseen, with Yihong Wu, Annals of Statistics, Vol. 47, No. 2, pp. 857-883, 2019. [code] Minimax Rates of Entropy Estimation on Large Alphabets via Best Polynomial Approximation, with Yihong Wu, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Vol. 62, Issue, 6, pp. 3702-3720, 2016. [code] Optimal entropy estimation on large alphabets via best polynomial approximation, with Yihong Wu, ISIT 2015. Best Student Paper Award