Biography

Hi there! I’m Ziyan “Ray” Luo, a Ph.D. candidate at Mila, McGill. I’m so lucky to work with (and learn from) Dr. Xujie Si, Dr. Doina Precup, and my talented colleagues!

My research interest mainly lies at the intersection of Reinforcement Learning and Abstraction. I’m eager to find a balance point between formal methods (strict and delicate) and machine learning approaches (more “magical” but general).

For RL, I’m trying to understand the underlying principles of abstraction techniques (e.g., state, action, temporal abstraction; behavior metric learning), and how those abstractions benefit sample efficiency, generalization and planning. For formal methods, I’m interested in understanding abstractions in formal verification problems (e.g., solving Constrained Horn Clauses). It also potentially poses important challenges for RL in dealing with “logical-intensive” tasks and combinatorial spaces.

I was once a research intern at Microsoft Research Asia (System Research Group, Bing), and a research assistant at Tsinghua University.

Have fun with me - I’m a music enthusiast who loves to create various genres of “storytelling-styled” music, here is my music portfolio (you may also find them in popular rhythm games). Using a mixture of electronic genres and acoustic instruments, I create music that impresses people and conveys intended themes. I also enjoy ball sports like tennis, table tennis, badminton, and billiards! Besides, I love animals (especially but not limited to cats - Instagram)!