Changhe YuanAssociate Professor

RESEARCH INTERESTS: • Machine Learning: graphical models; structure learning; probabilistic inference; big data analytics Practical graphical models such as Bayesian networks are reaching the size of thousands of variables. Building these models and reasoning with them become increasingly more difficult. The goal of this project is to develop novel inference and learning algorithms for Bayesian networks in large domains. • Decision making under uncertainty: influence diagrams; anytime decision making Influence diagrams provide a natural framework for modeling the relations between random variables, decisions, and preferences; they also provide principled methods for finding an optimal decision policy that maximizes the expected utility. This project aims to relax the restrictive assumptions behind influence diagrams and develop novel algorithms and representations for solving general decision making problems under uncertainty. • Interdisciplinary research: quantitative finance; natural language processing; computational biology We have genuine interest in interdisciplinary research, as we believe an application area typically presents its unique challenges and requires the development of new and improved methods. There are several ongoing collaborative projects on quantitative finance, natural language processing, and computational biology. A common theme of these projects is the application of state-of-the-art machine learning methods to discover useful information and knowledge from big data. AWARDS & HONORS: • Best Paper Award, the FLAIRS Conference, 2015 • NSF CAREER Award, 2010 • State Pride Faculty Award, 2010, 2011 • MS State Honors Faculty, 2010 • Upsilon Pi Epsilon Honor Society in Computer Science (UPE), 2008 • Andrew Mellon Pre-doctoral Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh, 2004, 2005 • Faculty of Arts and Sciences Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh, 2001, 2002 • Excellent Graduate Student Award, Tongji University, 2000 • Graduate Student with Honor, Tongji University, 1998 • De’An Scholarship, Tongji University, 1996 • People Fellowship, Tongji University, 1995-1998