Meet KAUST New Student: Zhenwei Tang

About

By Taruna Rapaka

Zhenwei Tang, a telecommunications graduate from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China, joined KAUST in January 2021. Tang joined KAUST as a M.S./Ph.D. candidate and member of the Machine Intelligence & kNowledge Engineering (MINE) Lab under the supervision of Professor Xianglinag Zhang.

Tang believes KAUST is a state-of-the-art research environment that can help him focus on his work and collaborate with other researchers.

What was your main subject during your undergraduate degree? Why did you choose it?

Telecommunications and data science. I chose telecommunications because I wanted to understand how information in our world is transmitted. At the same time, I also wondered what we could do with this collected information, so I did research in data mining.

When did you first become interested in computer science? What are your research interests?

My interest began two years ago when I successfully analyzed the development of Xiong'an (a rising city in China) using billions of online search queries. I am keen on computationally exploring information around us and alleviating information overload.

What do you do in your spare time? What are you passionate about?

I am a fan of sports. Except for basketball, badminton, and swimming, I may try other sports available here, such as golf and water sports.

What is your future outlook?

I expect to do a series of in-depth research works and earn my Ph.D. degree from KAUST in the next five or six years. For now, I cannot think too much about the distant future. Perhaps I will become a postdoctoral fellow.

Can you give a piece of advice to students who plan to pursue a M.S./Ph.D. at KAUST?

I would like to share my motto: "Worrying solves nothing."