William Chang

William
Chang

PhD student in Applied Mathematics at UCLA.

chang314@g.ucla.edu Google Scholar ResearchGate CV (PDF)
One agent, six armsUCB1
estimate + confidence true mean regret
round 0   regret 0.0

About

I'm a PhD student in Applied Mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles, where I've been since Fall 2023. Before that I earned a B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Southern California in 2022.

My research interests are broad and span mathematics and machine learning. See my papers below for more.

I'm also the founder of BruinML, a research group at UCLA where I mentor students on projects in machine learning and mathematics.

I enjoy tutoring and take students in math and physics at every level, from elementary school through university. Email me to book a session.

Outside of research I practice Taekwondo and sing. My covers are on YouTube and Spotify.

UCLAPhD, Applied Math, 2023–2027
USCB.A., Mathematics, 2018–2022
BruinMLFounder, January 2024

Research

Mentoring

I founded BruinML, a UCLA machine learning and mathematics research group, in January 2024. It's now led by Kenny Guo.

Since Spring 2024 I've mentored undergraduates through research projects from first idea to submission. Many of the papers above were led by students in the group, with work appearing at NeurIPS, UAI, EWRL, Asilomar and TMLR.

If you're a student interested in a project, send me an email with a bit about your background.

ProjectsSmall things I've built

TeachingTeaching assistant, UCLA Mathematics

I've also taught at the UCLA Math Circle since Fall 2023.

Background

Education

  • University of California, Los Angeles 2023–2027PhD, Applied Mathematics. Passed qualifying exams in Basic (Fall 2023), Applied Differential Equations (Fall 2023) and Geometry/Topology (Spring 2024).
  • University of Southern California 2018–2022B.A., Mathematics

Experience

  • Northrop Grumman Summer 2022Intern, Communications Systems and Mission Payload, Space Systems. Analyzed slant ranges and channel losses.
  • Baruch College Discrete Math REU Summer 2021Asymptotic bounds on cliques in Kt-minor-free graphs, with Fan Wei.
  • UCLA Applied Math REU 2020–2021Thin-film equations for pleural fluid in the lungs, with Hangjie Ji.
  • USC Math Center 2019–2020Tutor for linear algebra, calculus, probability, number theory and analysis.

Fellowships and awards

  • NSF EAGER REU Fellowship 2021–2022Multi-agent bandits with information asymmetry, with Rahul Jain.
  • USC CURVE Fellowship 2021, 2021–2022Decentralized multiplayer bandits (Rahul Jain); stability of physics-informed neural networks (Assad Oberai).
  • USC Provost Undergraduate Research Fellowship 2020–2022Matrix varieties (Robert Guralnick); e-positivity of chromatic polynomials (Greta Panova).
  • Putnam Competition 2018–2021Top 500 in 2020; USC representative four years.

Talks and service

  • ReviewerICLR and NeurIPS (2023, 2024); IFAC and CDC (2023).
  • IEEE CDC 2022Online learning for cooperative multi-player multi-armed bandits.
  • Asilomar 2022Approximation capabilities of neural networks using morphological perceptrons.
  • Joint Mathematics Meetings 2022Undergraduate poster: maximal cliques in Kt-minor-free graphs.