Hi there! I am a first-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (UMN). I am grateful to be advised by Prof. Ju Sun.

Before enrolling in the Ph.D. program at UMN, I was in the M.Sc. program in Data Science at UMN, I received my B.Sc. in Applied Mathematics and Statistics and my B.A. in Economics at Stony Brook University.

My research interests are in AI for Science, Optimization for AI, and Computer Vision.

Future Plan – After completing my Ph.D., I aim to pursue a career as a tenure-track professor.

News

[ May 2024 ] I served as a volunteer for MMLS 2024.

[ May 2024 ] I presented the poster When Deep Learning Meets Nontrivial Constraints at AI-CLIMATE Annual Review Meeting, the same poster presented at MMLS 2024. Poster

[ April 2024 ] I presented the poster Single Instance or Supervised Learning: Two ways of solving inverse problems at 2024 Peter O. Stahl Advanced Design Forum, the same poster has been presented at MMLS 2024 by my colleague Yuxiang. Poster

[ March 2024 ] Our short paper What is Wrong with End-to-End Learning for Phase Retrieval? is available on ArXiv, which is also submitted to the EI 2024 workshop to be included in the proceedings. ArXiv

[ April 2023 ] I served as a volunteer for SIAM International Conference on Data Mining (SDM23).

Publications

Wenjie Zhang, Yuxiang Wan, Zhong Zhuang, Ju Sun (2024). What is Wrong with End-to-End Learning for Phase Retrieval? In Electronic Imaging 2024. ArXiv

Let me talk a little bit more …

Here I also want to introduce a little bit about my hobbies, you can skip this part if not interested :

Before entering my current research field, I was mostly interested in computer graphics and game programming . So previously, I was thinking about starting a game studio with Haoyu. We named it Guinea Pig Farmers and the logo was originally designed for that studio. We postponed this idea because none of us is good at painting or arts and right now we both started our Ph.D. degrees. So it looks like this idea will not be realized in the short term . Showing here is a demo of our previous snow globe project built on SPH water simulation.

Another thing that is important for me is piano . I have been playing the piano since I was 4 and have earned numerous certificates for amateur players in China. During my undergraduate time, I also provided introductory piano lessons for several students. My favorite artist is Animenz and I usually listen to his piano covers while doing the research. You can check his Youtube channel if you are interested. Right now I am picking up his cover of Kaibutsu and Ninelie. One of my goal is to place a Steinway & Sons 9’ Concert Grand Piano at home .