Xinhua Zhang 
Senior Researcher
Machine Learning Research Group
National ICT Australia (NICTA)
Adjunct Research Fellow
Research School of Computer Science,
CECS
The Australian National University (ANU)
Office Address:
Level 2, Tower A, 7 London Circuit
Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia
Postal Address:
Locked Bag 8001, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia
| Tel: | +61 (02) 6267 6273 (O) |
| +61 (0) 481 208 994 (M) | |
| Email: |
I will join the faculty of Department of Computer Science,
University of Illinois at Chicago in October 2015.
Research Interests
My research interests are mainly nonparametric methods for machine learning. This includes kernel methods and exponential families, especially support vector machines, conditional random fields, and nonparametric Bayesian methods. I am also interested in probabilistic modeling with graphical models and efficient inference. Using undirected graphical models and kernel representation of distributions, I study the independence tests for structured data which has many applications to unsupervised learning. In practice, large scale optimization techniques are required and I am particularly interested in first order methods such as cutting plane and bundle methods.
I work on applications in pattern recognition, document analysis, image processing, and any prediction problem that is useful in life.
Biography
I am currently a Senior Researcher at the Machine Learning Research Group of National ICT Australia (NICTA). From April 2010 to September 2012, I was a post-doc working with Prof Dale Schuurmans at the Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta. From March 2006 to October 2009, I was a NICTA-endorsed PhD student of the Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University (ANU), working with Prof SVN Vishwanathan and Prof Alex Smola. I visited Prof SVN Vishwanathan at the Department of Statistics at Purdue University from February 2009 to March 2010. From January 2004 to March 2006, I pursued my Master's degree (by research) under the supervision of Prof Wee Sun Lee at the Department of Computer Science, National University of Singapore (NUS). I received my B.E. Degree from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in July 2003. My hometown is Shanghai.