About Qingyun:
I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia, advised by Prof. Hongning Wang. My research focuses on interactive online learning, including bandit algorithms, reinforcement learning, and their applications in real-world problems. My research has appeared in multiple top-tier venues, including SIGIR, WWW, KDD, and NeurIPS; and my algorithms have been evaluated in several commercial systems in industry (including Yahoo news recommendation and Snapchat lens recommendation). I received multiple prestigious awards from the University of Virginia for her excellence in research, including the Virginia Engineering Foundation Fellowship and the Graduate Student Award for Outstanding Research. My recent work on online learning to rank won the Best Paper Award of SIGIR'2019. I was also selected as one of the Rising Stars in EECS 2019. I will be joining Penn State University as an Assistant Professor in 2021.
One key concept of my research work is 'Learning by Exploration'. However, I seldomly explore when it comes to food (or in the exploitation stage in the explore-then-commit strategy).
What has kept Qingyun motivated:
One thing that constantly motivates me the most is curiosity no matter during pandemic or not. Another very important thing that claims me down is a desk by the window. I enjoy occasionally looking outside of the window while working. It is really comforting to see the beauty of nature.