Chong Zhang

**** ****** ****

Morrisville, NC ***60, USA

Website: www.unc.edu/ chongz

Telephone: 1-919-***-****

Email: accsme@r.postjobfree.com

Experience

Research Assistant, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (5/2010 - current)

• Statistical machine learning and data mining

– Developed several multicategory large-margin classifiers. Work published in top

machine learning and statistics journals.

– Studied the statistical inference for large-margin classification problems with high

dimensional data.

– Studied non-linear quantile regression problems.

• Nonparametric statistics

– Proposed a new constraint to alleviate overfitting in reproducing kernel Hilbert space

learning. Work to be published in a top machine learning journal.

• Bioinformatics

– Studied the relationship between DNA hypermethylation and mutations in isocitrate

dehydrogenase 1 and 2. Work published in a top biochemistry and molecular biology

journal.

– Studied cancer subtypes prediction problems with next generation sequencing data.

Statistical Consulting, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (8/2010 - 5/2011)

• Built logistic regression models for lectin data sets, and helped to identify the causal

attributes.

• Tested hypotheses that the outcome assessments of peer educators differ according to

various grouping factors.

Intern, Biostatistics Department, Boehringer Ingelheim, Danbury, CT (5/2013 - 8/2013)

• Compared the power between using the baseline measurement as a response and using the

baseline measurement as a predictor, for clinical applications using mixed model repeated

measures.

• Studied the impact of missing values on parameter estimation under various settings.

Sole Instructor, Department of Statistics and Operations Research, University of North

Carolina at Chapel Hill (1/2013 - 5/2013)

• Introduction to Statistics (STOR 155-009). Held full course responsibilities including

designing lectures, exams, assignments and assigning final grades.

Teaching Assistant, Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, Mar-

quette University (8/2007 - 5/2009)

• Calculus (Math 71); Advanced Calculus (Math 81). Responsible for grading homework

assignments, leading tutorial sessions and quiz sections, designing and grading quizzes.

Referee, Journal of Machine Learning Research and Statistics and Its Interface.

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Education

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

• Ph.D. candidate in Statistics (8/2009 - present, anticipated 5/2014)

• Dissertation: Flexible Statistical Learning Techniques with Biomedical Applications

• Advisor: Professor Yufeng Liu

Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, USA

• Master of Science in Mathematics (8/2007 - 8/2009)

Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

• Bachelor of Science in Mathematics (8/2003 - 6/2007)

Awards

• Best Student Paper Award, Section on Statistical Learning and Data Mining, American

Statistician Association (ASA), 2013.

• San-Chang Student Scholarship, Tsinghua University, 2004.

Computer Skills

R: Extensively used in research. Developed two R packages for classification problems.

• R CRAN contributed package: probsvm.

– Provides class conditional probability estimation for multicategory classification

problems without strong distributional assumptions.

• R contributed package: smac. To be submitted.

– A new large-margin classifier for multicategory classification problems.

– Provides variable selection for high dimensional data.

– Extremely fast computational speed for big data classification problems.

C: Extensively used in research. Help to boost the computational speed of R code.

SAS: Used for statistical consulting projects and summer internship.

Publications and Manuscripts

• Wang, P., Dong, Q., Zhang, C., Kuan, PF., Liu, Y., Jeck, WR., Andersen, JB., Jiang,

W., Savich, GL., Tan, TX., Auman, JT., Hoskins, JM., Misher, AD., Yourstone, YM.,

Kim, JW., Cibulskis, K., Getz, G., Hunt, HV., Thorgeirsson, SS., Roberts, LR., Ye,

D., Guan, KL., Xiong, Y., Qin, LX., Chiang, DY. (2013). Mutations in isocitrate de-

hydrogenase 1 and 2 occur frequently in intrahepatic cholangiocarcinomas and share

hypermethylation targets with glioblastomas. Oncogene, 32(25), 3091-3100.

• Zhang, C., Liu, Y. (2013). Multicategory Large-margin Unified Machines. Journal of

Machine Learning Research 14, 1349-1386.

• Zhang, C., Liu, Y., Wu, Z. (2013). On the effect and remedies of shrinkage on classifi-

cation probability estimation. The American Statistician, 67(3), 134-142.

• Zhang, C., Liu, Y. (2013). Multicategory Angle-based Large Margin Classification.

Biometrika, revision under review.

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• Zhang, C., Liu, Y., Wu, Y. (2013). On Quantile Regression in Reproducing Kernel

Hilbert Spaces with Data Sparsity Constraint. Journal of Machine Learning Research,

revision invited.

• Zhang, C., Shin, S. J., Wang, J., Wu, Y., Zhang, H. H., Liu, Y. (2013). R/probsvm:

Conditional Class Probability Estimation for Support Vector Machines. Preprint.

• Zhang, C., Liu, Y.(2013). Reinforced Angle-based Multicategory Support Vector Ma-

chines. Preprint.

• Zhang, C., Zhao, Y., Kosorok, M. R., Liu, Y. (2014). Multicategory Outcome Weighted

Learning for Estimating Individualized Treatment Rules using Large-margin Unified Ma-

chines. In preparation.

• Zhang, C., Hu, Y., Singh, D., Jones, C., Liu, J., Prins, J., Liu, Y. (2014). Fast Re-

gression Based Multicategory Classification with Applications to Cancer Genomics. In

preparation.

Presentations

Oral

• “Fast Regression Based Multicategory Classification”, Department of Computer Science,

UNC-CH, Chapel Hill, NC, USA (12/12/2012)

• “Multicategory Angle-based Large Margin Classification”, Joint Statistical Meetings, Mon-

treal, QC, Canada (8/5/2013)

Poster

• “Multicategory Large-margin Unified Machines”, Eastern North American Region, Or-

lando, FL, USA (3/10/2013)

Professional Memberships

American Statistical Association (ASA)

Eastern North American Region (ENAR)

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