· Winston Chen

Updated on October 23, 2022

CV (pdf)

About

I am a PhD student in the Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Michigan, working with Prof. Jenna Wiens. My research lies at the intersection of causality and healthcare.

Previously, I worked with Prof. William Stafford Noble and Prof. Yang Lu on developing error-control interaction discovery method using deep neural networks.

Education

University of Michigan

PhD in Computer Science & Engineering
Sepetember 2023 - June 2028 (Expected)

University of Washington

B.S in Electrical Engineering, Cum Laude
Sepetember 2018 - June 2022
GPA: 3.8/4.0

Publications

Winston Chen, William Stafford Noble, Yang Young Lu, "DeepROCK: Error-controlled interaction detection in deep neural networks", arxiv. 2023. Link. Poster.

Research Experience

Noble Research lab, University of Washington

Confidence Estimation for Network Propagation

Developed a framework to estimate statistical confidence (q-value) for a class of ML algorithm called network propagation.
Implemented the framework on Rankprop, a network propagation-based protein homology detection algorithm.
Applied Rankprop with confidence estimation on a large-scale protein database (SCOP) to demonstrate its ability of identifying protein homologies with high-precision.
Presented research work at University of Washington's annual undergraduate research symposium.

Error-controlled Interaction Detection in Neural Network

Developed a neural network interpretation method that discovers learned feature interactions at desired error rate.
Designed and implemented a compute module that debiases the raw interaction interpretation results.
Applied the interpretation method on fruit flies (Drosophila) genomics data to identify meaningful transcription factor (TF) interactions.

UW ECE ENGINE Capstone/RealNetworks, University of Washington

Real-Time SDR to HDR Up Conversion

Conducted research on a class of SDR to HDR video up-conversion algorithm called inverse tone mapping.
Improved the existing inverse tone mapping algorithm by introducing a dynamic parameter estimation based on input image.
Built a webpage for interactively optimizing inverse tone mapping parameter for given images.
Summarized the research result in a poster and presented at UW's 2022 ENGINE show case.

Honors and Awards

Mary Gates Research Scholarship, Mary Gates Endowment For Students, UW (2021)

Scholarship supporting outstanding undergraduate research

Lawrence & Lucille Frey Endowed Electrical & Computer Engineering Scholarship, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, UW (2020)

Scholarship awarded to ECE students with academic excellence

Herschel & Caryl Roman Scholarship, Department of Genome Science, UW (2020)

Scholarship awarded to undergraduate students working in genetics research.

Teaching Experience

Teaching Assitant, University of Washington

Programming For Signal and Information Processing Applications (Spring 2022)
Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering (Winter 2021, Winter 2022)
Digital Circuit and System (Autumn 2021)

Industry Experience

Software Engineering Intern, RealNetworks

Built a FIDO2 roaming authenticator prototype that allows passwordless authentication on web services supporting support Webauthn.
Integrated the authenticator with SAFR facial recognition technology to enable biometric verification.
Demonstrated the authenticator in collaboration with StrongKey at the flagship FIDO conference, Authenticator 2022.

Python Engineering Intern, NVIDIA

Built and deployed a testing infrastructure for analyzing and visualizing NVIDIA's genomics computing software logs.
Drove discussions with core developers regarding testing infrastructure's feature requirements.
Presented the final project results through a slide deck, confluence page, and detailed README.

Leadership Experience

Assistant Resident Director, Housing & Food Services, UW

Facilitated moving 500+ residents into Elm Resident Hall in the course of four days.
Advised Elm Hall council in organizing 20+ building-wide events during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Assisted the Elm Hall resident director in managing 10 resident advisors through performing administrative tasks such as scheduling on-calls.

Corporate Relations Officer, IEEE-HKN Honor Society

Attended weekly meetings to provide updates on current corporate relationship projects.
Collaborated with industry recruiters (e.g. TI, Tesla, Wyze) to organize 10+ industry networking events.
Maintained positive relationship with industry sponsors through emails and check-in meetings.

Resident Advisor, Housing & Food Services, UW

Collaboratively planned and executed 30+ events every year to engage 150+ residents.
Created and maintained floor decorations to form a welcoming residential environment.
Regularly being on-call 5PM-8AM to provide residents with emergency assistance and secure the safety of the entire residence hall.

Technical Skills

Programming Languages

Python , JavaScript , Java , C/C++ , R

Frameworks

PyTorch , TensorFlow , Numpy , NetworkX

Tools

Git , Latex

Projects

KiwiLink, June 2020 - Oct. 2021

KiwiLink is an Android/iOS mobile app for online study buddy finding in college setting.
Rapidly built the prorotype app using JavaScript, React Native, and Firebase (Summer 2020).
Led a team of 10 engineers maintaining app operation and developing new features to serve 1500+ users at the University of Washington. (Sept 2020 - Oct. 2021)

Fasr, Jan. 2021 - June 2021

Fasr is a portable facemask sanitizer device that allows user to efficiently clean their mask using heat and disinfectant.
Led a team of 6 people developed the hardware prototype and a business plan.
Participated in the UW Dempsey Startup Competition (2021).
Open sourced all the technical and business documentations.

Posters & Presentations

2022 ENGINE Showcase

Real-Time SDR to HDR Up Conversion, June 1, 2022

Motivation of this work: developed a real-time SDR to HDR conversion algorithm that can be applied to perform video conversion on the fly.
Discussed the two existing approach to perform SDR to HDR and their limitations: 1) Inverse tone mapping(ITM)-based approach (low conversion quality). 2) Deep learning-based approach (too slow for real-time application)
Explained our approach: an improved ITM method that can dynamically estimate the optimal conversion parameters using ML techniques.

NVIDIA Internal Meeting

A Log-based Testing Tool for NVIDIA's Genomics Computing Software, Sept. 10, 2021

Introduced a web tool that performs parsing, analysis, and visualization for the entire suite of NVIDIA's genomics computing softwares (Clara Parabricks)}
Demostrated the usage of the web tool.
Explained web tool's internal architecture and the role of each components.
Summarized the technologies used to build and deploy the web application: JavaScript, Python, React, FastAPI, Nginx, Gunicorn.

University of Washington’s Undergraduate Research Symposium

Confidence Estimation for Network Propagation-based Biological Studies, May. 18, 2021

Intuitively explained the network propagation algorithm: a method that mimic diffusion process to make inference from network data.
Limitation of network propagation: no confidence estimation for its inference results, which can be limiting for biological discovery.
Our method: integrating network propagation with the knockoff framework to efficiently estimate confidence level (q-value).
Showcased experiment results of applying network propagation with confidence estimation on protein homology discovery.