About Me

I am currently pursuing my Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I have the privilege of being co-advised by Profs. Stephen Wright and Jelena Diakonikolas. I obtained my B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Hong Kong in 2020, where I completed my senior thesis under supervision of Prof. Xiaoming Yuan. I spent a wonderful summer at UCLA in 2019 working with Prof. Ernest Ryu.

Research

My research interest lies in the interplay between optimization and machine learning. I currently focus on developing machine learning algorithms that uphold various forms of robustness.

Here is a list of my publications:

• Learning a Single Neuron Robustly to Distributional Shifts and Adversarial Label Noise
  Shuyao Li*, Sushrut Karmalkar*, Ilias Diakonikolas, Jelena Diakonikolas
  Accepted to NeurIPS 2024 [arXiv]

• Robust Second-Order Nonconvex Optimization and Its Application to Low Rank Matrix Sensing
  Shuyao Li, Yu Cheng, Ilias Diakonikolas, Jelena Diakonikolas, Rong Ge, Stephen Wright
  In Proc. NeurIPS 2023 [arXiv]

• A Randomized Algorithm for Nonconvex Minimization With Inexact Evaluations and Complexity Guarantees
  Shuyao Li, Stephen Wright
  [arXiv] [slide]
  
  

Teaching

• CS 540 Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Fall 2021, Teaching Assistant
• CS 540 Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Summer 2021, Teaching Assistant
  
  

Misc

Selected awards:

• NeurIPS 2023 Scholar Award
• IFDS RAship (Spring 2022)
• UW Madison CS Departmental Research Fellowship (Fall 2020–Spring 2021)
• Outstanding Winner at Mathematical Contest In Modeling (MCM 2017)