Hongli (Bob) Zhao

Hello! I am Bob, a third-year graduate student in Computational and Applied Mathematics at University of Chicago. I am happily advised by Prof. Mihai Anitescu, and also work with many outstanding mentors and peers both in and outside of UChicago. Previously, I graduated from UC Berkeley studying Applied Math, and Data Science. During undergraduate studies, I was very fortunate to have worked with Prof. Daniel Tartakovsky and Prof. Lin Lin. I also participated in BeBOP, organized by Prof. James Demmel.

I am broadly interested in numerical problems and algorithm development for scientific computing, often involving physical models under randomness. I currently think about the following topics:

• Estimating probabilities of rare events, such as cascading failures in an interconnected system
• Overcoming the curse of dimensionality using low-complexity numerical methods
• Explainable applications of generative machine learning on the above tasks.