Zhao named Sloan Research Fellow

Illinois ECE Assistant Professor Zhizhen Zhao was recently named as one of the 126 recipients of the 2020 Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Illinois physics professor Barry Bradlyn was also named as a Sloan Research Fellow according to the Illinois News Bureau. 

One of the most competitive and prestigious awards available to early career researchers, this two-year fellowship is awarded yearly to researchers who displayed distinguished performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field. 

Zhao's research is focused on biomedical signaling, signal processing, machine learning, applied and computational harmonic analysis, data science and change signal processing to mathematical signal processing. 

Notably, Zhao is working on a method to efficiently compare a multitude of related items. In her recently funded project, "Geometric Harmonic Analysis in Learning and Inference: Theory and Applications," Zhao and her team are analyzing the "manifold and data relationships to improve the efficacy and accuracy of computational data extraction using information already found within the data" according to the CSL.

Zhao's work can be applied to data sets from social, biomedical, and comparative biological sciences. The new models that Zhao's team is developing could revolutionize how data is analyzed. Furthermore, Zhao and her team plan on using their models to disseminate research among various fields to build connections and organize workshops. Zhao is also affiliated with the CSL.

 

Read more about her research on the CSL site and her award on the Illinois News Bureau site.