Zhou Fan

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at Yale University. My research interests lie at the intersection of mathematical statistics, probability theory, and computational algorithms. I am particularly interested in inferential problems that arise in scientific applications, including statistical genetics and computational biology.

I received my Ph.D. in Statistics in 2018 from Stanford University, co-advised by Andrea Montanari and Iain Johnstone.

recent/representative papers

Random matrix theory
Kronecker-product random matrices and a matrix least squares problem (w/ Renyuan Ma)
Spectra of the Conjugate Kernel and Neural Tangent Kernel for linear-width neural networks (w/ Zhichao Wang)

AMP algorithms
Universality of Approximate Message Passing algorithms and tensor networks (w/ Tianhao Wang, Xinyi Zhong)
Approximate Message Passing algorithms for rotationally invariant matrices

Mean-field models
Mean-field variational inference with the TAP free energy: Geometric and statistical properties in linear models (w/ Michael Celentano, Licong Lin, Song Mei)
The replica-symmetric free energy for Ising spin glasses with orthogonally invariant couplings (w/ Yihong Wu)

Empirical Bayes methods
Gradient flows for empirical Bayes in high-dimensional linear models (w/ Leying Guan, Yandi Shen, Yihong Wu)
Empirical Bayes PCA in high dimensions (w/ Xinyi Zhong, Chang Su)

Group orbit estimation
Maximum likelihood for high-noise group orbit estimation and single-particle cryo-EM (w/ Roy Lederman, Yi Sun, Tianhao Wang, Sheng Xu)
Likelihood landscape and maximum likelihood estimation for the discrete orbit recovery model (w/ Yi Sun, Tianhao Wang, Yihong Wu)

contact

Department of Statistics and Data Science
24 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 06511
zhou.fan@yale.edu