Curriculum Vitae

Education

• Michigan State University - East Lansing, MI
  Fall 2015 - Spring 2021 (expected)
  Dual Ph.D. in Computer Science and Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, & Behavior
  Advisor: Charles Ofria
  

• Mississippi State University - Starkville, MS
  Graduated Fall 2015
  B.S. in Computer Science (Summa Cum Laude)
  Advisor: Cindy Bethel
  

Research Experience

• Digital Evolution Laboratory, Michigan State University - East Lansing, MI
  Graduate student, advisor(s): Charles Ofria
  Fall 2015 - present
  

• Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems (CAVS), Mississippi State University - Starkville, MS
  Undergraduate research assistant, advisor(s): Cindy Bethel and Daniel Carruth
  Spring 2014 - Summer 2015
  As a member of the Ground Vehicles Virtual Testbed Environment Project team, I helped to integrate the ANVEL Ground Vehicle Simulator with the Robot Operating System (ROS). This work enabled researchers to more easily perform human-robot interaction studies using the ANVEL platform.
  

• Social, Therapeutic, and Robotic Systems (STaRS) Laboratory, Mississippi State University - Starkville, MS
  Undergraduate research assistant, advisor(s): Cindy Bethel
  Fall 2013 - Summer 2015
  I worked as a project lead on the Robot Intent and Control Project where we studied the effectiveness of different human-robot interfaces for allowing autonomous robots to communicate behavioral intentions to supervisory human operators who could optionally override the robot's behavior when necessary. Additionally, I assisted with other human-participant studies being run in the lab.
  

• Laboratory for Autonomous Systems Research (LASR), Naval Research Laboratory - Washington, DC
  Intern, advisor(s): Greg Trafton and Laura Hiatt
  Summer 2014
  I worked with cognitive scientists and image processing experts to research the effects of integrating contextual information (generated by a model of how humans learn associations between concepts) into a robot's object recognition system.
  

• Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) - Pasadena, CA
  Intern, advisor(s): William R. Johnson
  Summer 2012
  I developed software for a team of optics engineers and geoscientists. I focused on modernizing their instrument calibration software for their Near-Nulling Radiometers, enabling the team to perform more efficient and reliable calibrations.
  

• Physics Department, Mississippi State University - Starkville, MS
  Undergraduate research assistant, advisor(s): Angelle Tanner
  Fall 2011 - Spring 2012
  I developed tools to automate data retrieval from the NASA Star and Exoplanet Database.
  

Publications

2022

• Mingfei Shi*, Kaixun Hua*, Jiayang Ren, Yankai Cao (2022). A Scalable deterministic global optimization algorithm for clustering problems. In International Conference on Machine Learning (pp. 4391-4401). PMLR.
  ICML 2022

• Jiayang Ren*, Kaixun Hua*, Yankai Cao (2022). Global Optimal K-Medoids Clustering of One Million Samples. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 35, 982-994.
  NeurIPS 2022

• Kaixun Hua, Jiayang Ren, Yankai Cao (2022). A Scalable Deterministic Global Optimization Algorithm for Training Optimal Decision Tree. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 35, 8347-8359.
  NeurIPS 2022

• Jiayang Ren, Ningning You, Kaixun Hua, Chaojie Ji, Yankai Cao (2022). A Global Optimization Algorithm for K-Center Clustering of One Billion Samples. arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.00061.
  Under review for Management Science

2021

• Kaixun Hua, Mingfei Shi, Yankai Cao (2021). A Scalable deterministic global optimization algorithm for clustering problems. In International Conference on Machine Learning (pp. 4391-4401). PMLR.
  ICML 2021

2019

• Ziyao Xu, Jijian Lian, Lingling Bin, Kaixun Hua, Kui Xu, Hoi Yi Chan (2019). Water Price Prediction for Increasing Market Efficiency Using Random Forest Regression: A Case Study in the Western United States. Water.
  

• Dan A. Simovici, Kaixun Hua (2019). Data ultrametricity and clusterability. In Journal of Physics: Conference Series (Vol. 1334, No. 1, p. 012002). IOP Publishing.
  

Before 2018

• Kaixun Hua, Dan A. Simovici (2018). Dual Criteria Determination of the Number of Clusters in Data. In 2018 20th International Symposium on Symbolic and Numeric Algorithms for Scientific Computing (SYNASC ‘18), Timisoara, Romania, pp. 201-208.
  

• Dan A. Simovici, Rosanne Vetro, Kaixun Hua (2017). Ultrametricity of Dissimilarity Spaces and Its Significance for Data Mining In: Guillet F., Pinaud B., Venturini G. (eds) Advances in Knowledge Discovery and Management. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 665. Springer, Cham.
  

• Irina Scheffner, Kaixun Hua, Dan Simovici, Tanja Abeling, Hermann G. Haller, & Wilfried Gwinner (2016). Prediction of Patient Survival After Kidney Transplantation: Construction, Validation and Evaluation of Decision Models Using Data Mining Approaches. In American Journal OF Transplantation (Vol. 16, pp. 572-573). 111 River St, Hoboken 07030-5774, NJ USA: WILEY-BLACKWELL.
  

• Kaixun Hua, Dan A. Simovici (2016). Long-lead term precipitation forecasting by hierarchical clustering-based bayesian structural vector autoregression. 2016 IEEE 13th International Conference on Networking, Sensing, and Control (ICNSC ‘16), Mexico City, Mexico, pp. 1-6.
  

Presentations

Talks

• Evolving Signal-driven Digital Organisms with SignalGP
  By Alexander Lalejini, Matthew Andres Moreno, and Charles Ofria
  Presented at Evolution of Complex Life (ECLife). May 15, 2019. Atlanta, Georgia. Abstract. Slides.

• Random Subsampling Improves Performance in Lexicase Selection
  By Jose Hernandez, Alexander Lalejini (speaker), Emily Dolson, Charles Ofria
  Presented at The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO). July 12, 2019. Prague, Czech Republic. Slides.

• Data Standards for Artificial Life Software
  By Alexander Lalejini, Emily Dolson, Clifford Bohm, Austin J. Ferguson, David P. Parsons, Penelope Faulkner Rainford, Paul Richmond, and Charles Ofria
  Presented at The 2019 Conference on Artificial Life. July 29, 2019. Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Slides.

• Evolving reactive agents with SignalGP
  By Alexander Lalejini and Charles Ofria
  Presented at 2018 Conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE). July 26, 2018. Tokyo, Japan. Slides.

• Evolving event-driven programs with SignalGP
  By Alexander Lalejini and Charles Ofria
  Presented at 2018 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO). July 17, 2018. Kyoto, Japan. Slides.

• What else is in an evolved name? Exploring evolvable specificity with SignalGP
  By Alexander Lalejini and Charles Ofria
  Presented at Genetic Programming Theory and Practice XVI. May 18, 2018. Ann Arbor, MI (USA). Slides.

• Evolving event-driven programs with SignalGP
  By Alexander Lalejini
  Presented at weekly BEACON Friday seminar. April 6, 2018. East Lansing, MI (USA).

• Gene Duplications Drive the Evolution of Complex Traits and Regulation
  By Alexander Lalejini, Michael J. Wiser, and Charles Ofria
  Presented at 14th European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL). September 5, 2017. Lyon, France. Slides.

• Gene Duplications Drive the Evolution of Complex Traits and Regulation
  By Alexander Lalejini, Michael J. Wiser, and Charles Ofria
  Presented at 2017 Annual BEACON Congress. August 4, 2017. East Lansing, MI (USA). Slides.

• The Evolutionary Origins of Phenotypic Plasticity
  By Alexander Lalejini and Charles Ofria
  Presented at 2016 Annual BEACON Congress. August 11, 2016. East Lansing, MI (USA). Slides.

• The Evolutionary Origins of Phenotypic Plasticity
  By Alexander Lalejini and Charles Ofria
  Presented at Fifteenth International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems (ALIFE). July 7, 2016. Cancun, Mexico. Slides.

• Evaluation of supervisory control interfaces for mobile robot integration with tactical teams
  By Alexander Lalejini, Dexter Duckworth, Richard Sween, Cindy L. Bethel, and Daniel W. Carruth
  Presented at 2014 IEEE Workshop on Advanced Robotics and Its Social Impacts (ARSO). September 11, 2014. Evanston, IL (USA).

Posters

• Tag-accessed Memory
  By Alexander Lalejini and Charles Ofria
  Presented at The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO). July 15, 2019. Prague, Czech Republic. Poster.

• SignalGP
  By Alexander Lalejini and Charles Ofria
  Presented at Engineering Graduate Research Symposium. March 29, 2018. Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI. Poster.

• Evolving event-driven agents with SignalGP
  By Alexander Lalejini and Charles Ofria
  Presented at 2018 Annual BEACON Congress. August 8, 2018. East Lansing, MI (USA). Poster.

• The Evolutionary Origins of Phenotypic Plasticity
  By Alexander Lalejini and Charles Ofria
  Presented at Engineering Graduate Research Symposium. March 29, 2016. Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI. Poster.

• Robot Control
  By Alexander Lalejini and Cindy Bethel
  Presented at Bagley College of Engineering Undergraduate Poster Competition. April 24, 2014. Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS.

Workshops

• Co-Organizer, Developing Software Standards for the Artificial Life Community - July, 2018; August, 2018
  2018 Conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE); 2018 BEACON Congress
  This workshop aimed to start a conversation about identifying best practices and developing data and tool standards amongst individuals who design, develop, and use a wide range of artificial life systems, including artificial chemistries, abstract ecologies, evolutionary systems, and a range of other communities who express interest.

Teaching Experience

• Co-instructor for the 'Making a Game of It' summer camp for high school students - Summer 2019
  Michigan State University College of Engineering Summer Programs, East Lansing, MI
  Making a Game of It is a weeklong summer camp for high school students organized and run by Michigan State University. I, along with two other instructors (Josh Nahum and Matthew Andres Moreno), taught students Python. After two days of introductory material, students formed groups and designed & implemented their own video games. At the end of the camp, students presented their work to their peers and parents. Summer camp materials (lesson plans, examples, resources) can be found here.

• Teaching Assistant for CSE 491: Algorithms Engineering - Spring 2017
  Michigan State University Computer Science and Engineering Department, East Lansing, MI
  Held regular office hours. Met one-on-one with students. Graded homeworks (written and programming) and exams.

Awards, Honors, and Fellowships

• Honorable Mention, Engineering Graduate Research Symposium Recognition for Outstanding Research
  Awarded - Spring 2018
  Awarded for my poster presentation titled, SignalGP

• National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship
  Awarded - Spring 2017
  Chosen as 1 of 2,000 recipients out of over 13,000 applicants.

• Best Student Paper at the 2016 International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems (ALIFE)
  Awarded - Summer 2016
  Awarded for our paper titled, The Evolutionary Origins of Phenotypic Plasticity

• Honorable Mention, Engineering Graduate Research Symposium Recognition for Outstanding Research
  Awarded - Spring 2016
  Awarded for my poster presentation titled, The Evolutionary Origins of Phenotypic Plasticity

• BEACON Top-up Fellowship
  Awarded - Fall 2015
  Awarded by BEACON Center for Evolution in Action to incoming graduate students.

• University Distinguished Fellowship
  Awarded - Fall 2015
  Awarded by Michigan State University to 20 out of approximately 500 incoming Ph.D. students.

• Stephen D. Lee Scholar
  Awarded - Spring 2015
  This designation is reserved for students who graduate with a perfect 4.0 GPA in all courses attempted while earning a bachelor's degree at Mississippi State University.

• James Worth Bagley College of Engineering Student Hall of Fame
  Awarded - Spring 2015
  Awarded by the Bagley College of Engineering at Mississippi State University to students who have demonstrated superior academic achievement, leadership, service, and character.

• Computing Research Association (CRA) Outstanding Undergraduate Male Researcher, Honorable Mention
  Awarded - Spring 2015
  

Service and Outreach

• Reviewer
  European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL) 2017, Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) 2018, and Artificial Life Conference (ALIFE) 2018, BEACON funding requests (2016, 2017, 2018, & 2019)

• Mentor, MSU Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP)
  Summer 2016, summer 2017, summer 2018, and summer 2019
  I worked with undergraduate students to choose, perform, and present summer research.

• Volunteer, BEACON Outreach Activities
  Fall 2015 - present
  Regularly participate in elementary school science nights, teaching concepts related to evolutionary biology to students. I've also participated in various other outreach events as a BEACON affiliate (e.g., MSU Darwin Day, MSU Science Festival).

• Volunteer, Poolside judge for the National SeaPerch Challenge
  May 17, 2014
  

• Volunteer, Monthly SWAT training exercises
  Fall 2013 - Spring 2015
  As a member of the STaRS Lab, I assisted with monthly training exercises with the Starkville, MS Police Department SWAT team. Our lab worked to integrate robots into the team's slow and methodical search of large buildings training sessions. During these training sessions, I operated robots and role-played as a survivor in need of rescue.