Shichang Zhang, a Ph.D. candidate in the UCLA Computer Science Department, has been awarded the prestigious 2023 J.P. Morgan Chase Ph.D. Fellowship for his exceptional research in the field of eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) and machine learning on graph data.
Zhang is currently a fourth-year Ph.D. student in Computer Science at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Data Mining Lab working closely with Professor Yizhou Sun. Along with his J.P. Morgan Chase AI Ph.D. Fellowship, Zhang’s research is also generously supported by the Amazon Fellowship. Before joining UCLA, Zhang received both his B.A. and M.S. in Statistics from Berkeley and Stanford, respectively.
His research focus on developing efficient and transparent machine learning models for complex graph-structured data is paramount in today’s data-driven landscape, where the interpretability of AI systems is becoming increasingly crucial.
The 2023 J.P. Morgan Chase AI Fellowship recognizes Zhang’s contributions by supporting his research on advancing the field of XAI. By combining global and local information for more insightful explanations and incorporating causality for causal explanations, Zhang’s research contributes to creating AI models that are both efficient and transparent. This recognition highlights the increasing significance of AI ethics and transparency, particularly in financial services, and reinforces the value of collaborations between academia and industry in driving meaningful progress in the AI field.