Wenbin Zhang

Hello, my name is Wenbin Zhang (Pronouns: he/him/his; pronounced: jahng wen-bee-eehn). I am a Hakka born Assistant Professor at Florida International University, and an Associate Member at the Te Ipu o te Mahara Artificial Intelligence Institute. The main focus of my research is on designing machine learning algorithms that have theoretical performance guarantees and social consciousness. I am particularly interested in combining the aspect of gaining machine learning knowledge with an orientation towards making machine learning usable and useful for high-stakes decision-making, such as healthcare, digital forensics, finance, climate, policy, and law. To this end, I have been exploring complex real-world data (e.g., EHR, MODIS, supply chain data), under multifarious contexts (e.g., censorship, imbalance, distribution shift), subject to different metrics (e.g., fairness, regime centroids, c-index), through joyful collaboration and team work with computational scientists and domain experts. Supporting and recognizing my work, I delivered a New Faculty Highlights talk at AAAI'24, earned the NSF CRII Award and the Leibniz Fellowship, and won best paper awards/candidates at FAccT'23, ICDM'23, DAMI, and ICDM'21. Incidentally, my Erdős number is 3 (Me -> Alan Evans -> David Avis -> Erdős) as a result of the enjoyed interdisciplinary collaboration. You can read more about my research here.

I southwarded all the way to Miami from the Upper Peninsula where I held the same role at Michigan Technological University. Prior to that, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Carnegie Mellon University after receiving a Ph.D. degree from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. I also spent time at multiple global research centers and institutions, including L3S Research Center, University of Milano-Bicocca, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Télécom Paris, George Mason University and National Institutes of Health. I had four Stendhal syndrome years in Beijing and Tianjin before starting my study abroad in Newfoundland, where it snowed in June (not anymore due to global warming).

Aside from my obvious interest in research, I enjoy watching and playing all kinds of sports especially soccer. I had the experience of my life at Kaliningrad Stadium cheering the 2018 World Cup. I ran my very first Marathon at Virginia Beach credit to November Project. Finally, I believe Manchester is red as I thought David Beckham was cool when I was young. Him growing up, me supporting United till date.

Last but not least, I appreciate you taking the time to surf the internet this far to check up on and to read a bit of my story. Presuming I am not that boring, I encourage you to say hello before you leave for our interesting conversations to come.