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Hongyang Ryan Zhang Address: 177 Huntington Ave FL 22nd, Room #2211 Email: ho.zhang@northeastern.edu |
Hi! I am an Assistant Professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University in Boston. My research interests lie at the intersection of machine learning, statistical learning theory, algorithms, and optimization, with connections and applications in data mining and natural language processing. Some of the questions and topics I have been working on include:
Efficient methods for multitask learning and fine-tuning of pretrained/foundation models; In-context learning.
Sample complexity for learning graph neural networks, and geometric data more broadly; Time series graph data.
Nonconvex optimization; matrix factorization.
Math reasoning in LLMs, evaluation of AI (e.g., through graph-structured data).
I received my Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford and my B.Eng. in computer science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. I spent about a year as a postdoc within the statistics and data science department at University of Pennsylvania.
I enjoy working on technically challenging problems, while striving for broader impacts by creating new knowledge that will benefit the society, as well as fostering the next generation of engineers and researchers. I support accessible and reproducible research.
Recent updates
An updated paper on transfer learning random matrices accepted at JMLR! We analyze a (classical) hard parameter sharing estimator and find that simply rebalancing the data leads to minimax optimal rates.
New manucript on an ensemble method for fine-tuning LLMs, built on top of LoRA!
If you are an undergraduate or master's student at Northeastern interested in my research, please feel free to email me.
A list of older logs.
Research
Teaching
CS 4100, Artificial Intelligence, Fall 2025. Course page still under construction.
CS 7140, Advanced Machine Learning, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2025.
DS 5220, Supervised Machine Learning and Learning Theory, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2024.
Lab
Students (lab page)
Minxuan Duan, PhD
Dongyue Li, PhD
Michael Zhang, PhD
Zhenshuo Zhang, PhD
Xin Wang, MS student
Youran Ye, MS student
Alumni
Haotian Ju, MS RA; now working as a quantitative researcher
Allen Ye, Undergrad; now working as an SDE
Abhinav Nippani, MS RA; now working on a stealth startup
Kailai Chen, Undergrad visitor; will be a PhD student at Northwestern
Prospective students: I am always looking for talented and motivated students to join the lab. Please take a look at our lab page at labpage and our recent projects at github first before contacting me. Students with a strong background in mathematics or programming are generally a good fit for conducting the projects in our lab. If you are interested, please feel free to email me at hongyang90@gmail.com to express your interests.
Students who wish to visit me at 177: Note that this building has access control. If you plan to visit me in-person, you should confirm the scheduled time with me before arrival so that I could give you permission to enter the building at the security.
Professional Services
Area Chair/Senior Program Committee: ICML (2024-2025), AISTATS (2023-2025), ALT (2024), AAAI (2025), Journal of Data-Centric Machine Learning Research (2024-).
Recently Refereed Venues (in addition to the above): COLT, ARR, FOCS, JMLR, TMLR, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.
Conference Organization: INFORMS session chair (2023-2025).
Education/Experience
October 2019 to July 2020: Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Pennsylvania
September 2013 to September 2019: Ph.D., Stanford University
July 2012 to July 2013: Research Assistant, Nanyang Technological University
September 2008 to September 2012: B.Eng., Shanghai Jiao Tong University
For more information about me, please look at my cv. My research has been funded by NSF and by private industry through gift funds.
Personal: My Chinese name is written as 张泓洋. I grew up in Tianmen, which is a small town near Wuhan in Hubei province.