New Assistant Professor to begin Fall 2012:
Yunpeng Zhao

We welcome a new faculty member to our staff this coming fall, Yunpeng Zhao.

Yunpeng Zhao was born in Tianjin, a beautiful metropolis in northern China.

Yunpeng entered the University of Science and Technology of China for undergraduate study. He first chose mathematics as his major because he was so attracted by the accuracy and beauty of the subject. When he learned about statistics as a junior, he shifted his interest to this fascinating discipline, which seemed to have more practical applications, as well as the same level of rigor as math.

As a graduate student at the University of Michigan, Yunpeng focused on statistical theory and methodology in complex network analysis as Ph.D. thesis topic, under the supervision of Professor Levina and Professor Zhu. His research includes both unsupervised learning (community detection) and supervised learning (link prediction) methodologies in network analysis.

When not working, Yunpeng loves to play bridge since it is a good place to apply probability and statistics. He is also a big fan of Chinese history, literature, and poems.