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I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), a member of the Mathematics of Information, Learning and Data (MILD) research cluster, and a faculty member of the Institute of Applied Mathematics at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Before joining UBC, I was an NSF Center for Science of Information postdoctoral fellow, 2017-2019. From 2015-2017, I was a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University and Tel Aviv University. I obtained a PhD degree at the University of California San Diego in 2015. I attended the Academic Talent Program and obtained a B.E. degree at Tsinghua University, China in 2009.
My current research focuses on the information-theoretic approach to data science and machine learning. Several recent works in this direction include universal compression of graphical data, coding theoretical approach to distributed machine learning, statistical inference on graphs, noisy computing problems, group testing for controlling COVID-19 outbreaks, etc. More broadly, I am interested in developing and applying tools in information theory, coding theory, high dimensional statistics, combinatorics, random graphs, and deep generative models for emerging practical challenges in the data-driven world.
Contact
Kaiser 4112, ECE, UBC
4112-2332 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4
+1-604-822-3515
Openings
Openings
Students with strong backgrounds in probability, analysis, linear algebra, combinatorics, and a decent mathematical maturity are welcome to apply to the MASc or PhD program at UBC ECE. Here are some words for prospective students. If you are interested in working with me, please send me an email with your CV and transcripts.
Group
Group
Postdoctoral fellows
PhD students
Yuxin (Jossie) Jiang
Chun Hei Michael Shiu
Zike Wu (co-advised with Prof. Renjie Liao)
Qi Yan (co-advised with Prof. Renjie Liao)
Qihang Zhang (co-advised with Prof. Renjie Liao)
MASc students
AmirHossein Dabiri Aghdam
Yuxiang (Felix) Fu (co-advised with Prof. Renjie Liao)
Alumni
Nicholas Kwan (BASc, Engineering Physics, 2023), thesis: Constructions for Nonadaptive Tropical Group Testing
Jiahe Liu (MASC, 2022-2024), thesis: Diffusion Models for Visual Content Generation: Challenges and Insights
Ziao Wang (MASc, 2019-2021), thesis: Universal graph compression: Stochastic Block Models
Ziao Wang (PhD, 2021-2024), thesis: Statistical Inference on Structured Data: Sequences and Graphs
Animesh Sakorikar (MASc, 2019-2022), thesis: Soft BIBD and product gradient codes
Xuzhe Xia (BSc, Computer Science, 2025), thesis: On the Worst-Case Complexity of Gibbs Decoding for Reed-Muller Codes
Ning Zhang (MASc, 2020-2022), thesis: On the information-theoretic limits of attributed graph alignment
News
My student AmirHossein Dabiri Aghdam won the Four-Year Fellowship at ECE, UBC, March 2025
My first PhD student Ziao successfully defended his PhD dissertation! Congratulations Dr. Ziao Wang!!
Congratulations to Ziao, Qi, Jossie, Zike, and Qihang for winning the GSI Award for PhD students, ECE, UBC, November 2024!
My student Ziao Wang won the prestigious J.K. ZEE Memorial Scholarship at UBC, October 2024!
Jointly with Hye Won Chung (KAIST), I delivered a tutorial at ISIT 2024 on Graph Matching: Fundamental Limits and Efficient Algorithms, July 2024 (slides part I, part II).
My student Ziao Wang won the APSC Dean’s Graduate Academic Excellence Award, May 2024
Undergraduate student Bennett Galamaga won the NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award, March 2024. He will be working on coding for distributed storage.
Undergraduate student Xuzhe Xia won the NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award, March 2024. He will be working on algorithmic counting and sampling.
My student AmirHossein Dabiri Aghdam won the GSI Award for Master students, ECE, UBC, December 2023
My student Jiahe Liu won the GSI Award for Master students, ECE, UBC, December 2023
My student Ziao Wang won the GSI Award, ECE, UBC, September 2023.
My student Qi Yan won the GSI Award, ECE, UBC, September 2023.
My undergraduate student Yuxin (Jossie) Jiang from the Department of Statistics won the Work Learn International Undergraduate Research Award (WL IURA), April 2023. She will be working on coding theory.
My undergraduate student Nicholas Kwan from Engineering Physics won the NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA), April 2023. He will be working on high-dimensional expanders.
My student Ziao Wang won the Graduate Support Initiative Award, ECE, UBC, September 2022.
My undergraduate student Anthony Ho from Engineering Physics won the NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA), May 2022. He works on the graph alignment problem.
My student Qi Yan won the Four-Year Fellowship, ECE, UBC, March 2022.
My student Ziao Wang won the Graduate Support Initiative (GSI) Award, ECE, UBC, September 2021.
My student Ning Zhang won the Second Prize for Best Poster Prize at 2021 IEEE North American School of Information Theory, UBC, June 2021.
My undergraduate student Anthony Ho from Engineering Physics won the NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA), May 2021. He works on Polar codes for 5G wireless communication.
My student Animesh Sakorikar was a university-wide Semi-Finalist in Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition, UBC, March 2021.
My Ph.D. thesis "Channel coding techniques for network communication" won the 2017 IEEE Information Theory Society Thomas M. Cover Dissertation Award.
I received the NSF Center for Science of Information (CSoI) postdoctoral fellowship, 2017.
Last updated: May 2025
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