About me

I am currently a postdoc in the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University, working with Emma Brunskill. Before coming to Stanford, I completed my Ph.D. in the Department of Statistics at the University of Washington, and my advisors are Alex Luedtke and Lalit Jain. Prior to that, I received my B.A. in mathematics and computer science at Macalester College.

My research centers on designing methods for sequential decision-making problems that are both provably optimal and practically effective. For example, I would like to develop algorithms to learn the optimal policy through adaptive data collection. More specifically, I’m working on bandits, policy learning for dependent data as well as designing adaptive algorithms for estimation. I’m also interested in applications to education, online advertising, healthcare and others.

Contact me at zli9 [at] stanford [dot] edu.