I'm currently a PhD candidate in the School of Statistics at the University of Minnesota. My advisors are Prof Adam J. Rothman and Prof Galin Jones. My research interests lie in multivariate analysis, particularly covariance matrix and precision matrix estimation. WIth a graduate minor in moving image studies, I am also interested in applications of statistics to film studies and digital humanities.
Before coming to Minnesota, I obtained my Bachelor degree in Pure and Applied Mathematics from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China in 2016, where I did my undergraduate thesis on bioinformatics under the supervision of Prof Stephen Shing-Toung Yau.
Education
Ph.D., Statistics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA, Aug 2016 - present
Ph.D. Minor, Moving Image Studies, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA, Sept 2017 - present
B.Sc., Pure and Applied Mathematics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, Aug 2012 - July 2016
Publications
In Progress
Zhu, Z. Are critics' polls biased? A case study on Cahiers du Cinéma's annual top 10 lists.
Zhu, Z., Jones, G. L., and Rothman, A. J. Estimating covariance matrices and precision matrices via fitting Bayesian ridge penalized models.
Submitted
Zhu, Z., Identifying films with noir characteristics using audience's tags on MovieLens.
Published
Dong, R.*, Zhu, Z.*, Yin, C., He, R.L., and Yau, S.S. (2018). A new method to cluster genomes based on cumulative Fourier power spectrum. Gene 673, 239-250. [*co-first authors]