CV

Education

• Ph.D in Statistics and Data Science, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 2018-2023
  • Advisor: Zongming Ma
• M.Math. in Mathematics, University of Cambridge, 2017-2018
  • Distinction Honor
• B.A. in Mathematics, University of Cambridge, 2014-2017
  • Class I in Mathematical Tripos (2015, 2016, 2017)
  • Cambridge Overseas Trust Scholarship

Work Experience

• Citadel Securities, Summer 2022, Chicago, US
  • Quantitative Research Intern
  • Systematic Equities
• Baidu Natural Language Processing (NLP), Summer 2021, Shenzhen, China
  • Deep Learning Research Intern
  • Winner (2nd place) in KDD Cup 2021, Open Graph Benchmark, OGB-LSC Challenge
  • HOMO-LUMO gap prediction with LiteGEM
  • Code available here

Selected Publications

• Sparse GCA and Thresholded Gradient Descent. (2021). [arXiv] [journal] [BibTex] [software] [talk]

  • Sheng Gao, Zongming Ma.

  • Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR)

• An algorithm for forensic toolmark comparisons. (2024). [arXiv] [journal] [BibTex] [talk]

  • Maria Cuellar, Sheng Gao, Heike Hofmann.

  • Forensic Science International: Synergy (FSI Synergy)

• Multi-modal Analysis of PNC Data via Sparse Generalized Correlation Analysis. (2023) In Submission.

  • Sheng Gao, Fengling Hu, Theodore D. Satterthwaite, Russell T. Shinohara, Zongming Ma.

• DP-HyPO: An Adaptive Private Hyperparameter Optimization Framework. (2023). [arXiv] [conference] [BibTex]

  • Hua Wang, Sheng Gao, Huanyu Zhang, Weijie J. Su, Milan Shen.

  • Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)

Posters

• DP-HyPO: An Adaptive Private Hyperparameter Optimization Framework. NeurIPS 2023
• Sparse GCA and Thresholded Gradient Descent. JSM 2020

Awards

• Prize Winner of Alibaba Mathematics Competition 2021
• Winner of KDD Cup 2021, Large Scale Graph Machine Learning Challenge
• CTL Graduate Fellowship for Teaching Excellence, University of Pennsylvania, 2021
• Donald S. Murray Award for excellence in teaching, the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 2020
• First Place winner in Wellcome Data Re-use Research Competition for Malaria, 2019
• Cambridge Overseas Trust Scholarship, 2014-2018
• Braithwaite Prize (award to the College Top 1 in Mathematical Tripos), University of Cambridge, 2017

Talks

• AFTE Annual Conference, Austin, US, 2023
• KDD, Singapore, 2021
• Joint Statistics Meeting, Philadelphia, US, 2020
• Malaria Centre Panel Discussion, London, UK, 2019
• Joint Mathematics Meeting 2018, San Diego, US, 2018