It is with great pleasure that I recommend Guang Zeng for a graduate position at your institution. Guang joined my lab in the Spring of 2021, collaborating with one of my Ph.D. students Brett Nelson on several research areas, including modeling and classification of high-dimensional neuroscience data. As his research advisor, I have observed significant academic progress and growth. Over the past 2 years, he has improved significantly in statistics, model building, and agile software development principles within our projects, which focused on rat reaching data pre-processing, validating rat reaching kinematics, and behavioral classification. Guang’s intelligence, meticulousness, and commitment made him a valued member of my lab.
Guang has worked with Brett on ReachMaster-3D, a novel assay capable of measuring reaching 3-D kinematics from freely-behaving rats reaching to a handle varied in position from 0 to 3 task dimensions. Our cu
ent research extends the cu
ent understanding of freely-behaving rats reaching in 3-D task environments. This contributes to modern translational research in kinesiology and neurophysiology of reaching that seeks to fully rehabilitate or restore natural reaching behavior in humans. Guang leveraged his considerable skills in machine learning and programming to develop an ensemble of models for our behavioral classification task, increasing accuracy by up to 15% for some tasks. He also contributed greatly to our existing codebase, particularly in regimes of data transformation and interpretation.
Guang’s writing and speaking skills have improved greatly since beginning to work within our group. While working in our group, he eagerly participated in weekly meetings, including presenting applied research and methodology. Additionally, his coursework has proved incredibly useful for his cu
ent and future research projects. As an undergraduate student, he took a graduate school level class—CS 194/294(decentralized finance), publishing his work which uses a neural network(LSTM) to predict a specified NFT collections price. Additionally, he has assisted in developing quantitative strategies for modeling time-based processes, which he has incorporated into his own research strategies. I find him to be highly motivated to learn new aspects of machine learning and quantitative analysis, putting a great effort into assimilating his own experiences and perspectives to motivate quantitative solutions to research problems.
Guang also has demonstrated an ideal commitment to giving back to the community. He is a talented violin player and uses this skill for good, starting a voluntary service club called Spring-Kids. With this club, Guang led a group of over 30 people in raising money to build schools for children in his hometown Guangdong, China, by making music public concerts. Guang infuses a sense of planning and directs others by mutual cooperation and communication. His kindness, compassion and dependability are unmatched. I look forward to Guang’s future research and community outreach, as it is clear he prioritizes giving back to our community.
Therefore, I wholeheartedly recommend Guang as a young scientist for your institution. Guang has shown dedication to our group despite challenging semesters, going above and beyond the call of duty. He possesses important qualities required of a researcher: an analytical mind, intellectual curiosity, and resilience; these traits, combined with his resourcefulness and persistence will prove an enormous asset to your institution. Future collaborators with Guang can look forward to an intelligent and innovative researcher who will always give the best of his effort and knowledge. I am looking forward to watching his career develop with great interest and high expectations. Please give Guang every consideration as you review his application.