Zhangsheng Lai

Hi I’m Zhangsheng (pronounced “zunction” hence my GitHub account handle) and 长盛 in Chinese. I am currently a lecturer in Singapore Polytechnic (SP), a post-secondary educational institution in Singapore. I teach mathematics and statistics in the School of Mathematics and Sciences, and hello to my current or previous students who have found this page of mine after Googling my name.

Prior joining SP, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Singapore University of Technology and Design in Prof. Dr. Ernest Chong’s team. Over there we researched on how computational algebra such as Gröbner bases and Buchberger’s algorithm can be used to develop algebraic reasoning capabilities for fluid intelligence. During my time there, I successfully developed the perception model to interpret the Raven’s Progressive Matrix data before being piped to the algebraic reasoning model My training as an undergraduate was in mathematics at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and upon graduation I worked as a lecturer at Temasek Polytechnic (TP) as a mathematics lecturer. Three years into the job, I decided I wanted to further grow and do more with my mathematical knowledge and thus embarked on a graduate program.

My PhD was generously supported by the Economic Development Board (EDB) Industrial Postgraduate Programme (2016/20), advised by Dr Shaowei Lin in collaboration with NVIDIA Singapore. My thesis, “Dependent Types, Canonical Structures and Reflection Strategies for Assisted Reasoning and Computation on Knowledge Graphs” investigates how we can build machines with reasoning capabilities to assist humans. Particularly, we look to dependent type theory implemented in the proof assistant COQ for assisted writing of formally verified algorithms used for querying knowledge graphs. I also have an interest in category theory, especially the Yoneda lemma, which you can read from this excellent blog post, that it says: all vantage points give all information. This is evident when we look at the knowledge graph, a resource (node) is characterised by not its name, but the relations (edges) that it has with other resources.

In my free time outside of research, I can be found working on my mobility and flexibility as a newbie at yoga 🙏, or training my swings at the golf range ⛳ , or trying my best not to fall at the ice skating rink ❄️.