About Me

I am a Senior Lecturer in the Computer Science Department of the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) at Columbia University. I teach undergraduate and graduate computer science courses, with a focus on mathematics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. I am also the instructor of Decision Making and Reinforcement Learning on Coursera. This semester (Summer 2026), I am teaching Artificial Intelligence (COMS 4701).

I am a faculty director of Columbia Engineering’s MS program in Artificial Intelligence, and I am a faculty co-lead of Columbia Engineering’s Agentic AI for Business executive education program. I am also the faculty director of the CS@CU MS Bridge program for students and professionals from non-CS backgrounds seeking to make a transition into a CS-oriented career.

I regularly advise undergraduate and graduate students on individual research projects. My research interests primarily span the domains of robotics, reinforcement learning, and deep learning. I am particularly interested in the potential of machine learning algorithms to exploit mathematical structures and symmetries of physical systems and improve learning effectiveness.

Important: If you are not a Columbia student, please do not contact me about research opportunities. I do not have the resources to support or sponsor students from other institutions. Furthermore, even if you are a Columbia student, I prefer that you take a course with me before reaching out about possible projects. Unlike many faculty, I don’t have a list of ongoing projects; most of my students come up with project ideas on their own and mainly look to me for feedback and suggestions rather than a specific direction.

Background

My hometown is San Francisco, CA, USA. I am a second-generation immigrant; my parents both immigrated from Guangdong, China. I lived in the Bay Area until I received my B.S. from UC Berkeley in EECS in 2012. I subsequently moved to Pittsburgh, PA, to study in The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, from which I received my M.S. in 2015 and Ph.D. in 2018 under the advisement of Dr. Howie Choset.