Hunter Qin

Hi! I’m Hunter Qin, a fourth-year accelerated BS/MS student in Computer Science and Mathematics at Vanderbilt University. My research explores the mathematical foundations of machine learning—especially geometric deep learning, optimal transport, and representation learning—and I aim to translate these theories into practical advances in vision and language transformers as well as biomedical discovery.

I have been working in the Machine Intelligence & Neural Technology (MINT) Lab under the supervision of Dr. Soheil Kolouri, where I study the theory of low‑rank adaptation and model compression on large‐scale transformer networks. Concurrently, I have been an active researcher in the Maizie Zhou Computational Biology Lab with Dr. Maizie (Xin) Zhou, applying geometric deep learning and optimal‐transport–assisted representation learning to spatial transcriptomics and single‐cell RNA‐seq data to uncover cellular heterogeneity through self‐supervised frameworks.

I also enjoy turning these ideas into real-world software. As a Software Engineer, I’ve led multiple machine learning projects from development through deployment—feel free to visit my LinkedIn profile for details.

Outside academia, I’m passionate about cooking, music, and running. I particularly enjoy Asian-inspired recipes, Bebop and Hard Bop jazz as well as Romantic classical music (especially Chopin), and long-distance runs!