Team
Members of the KOALA Lab at Georgia Tech.
Principal Investigator
Kai Wang
Assistant Professor, School of Computational Science and Engineering, Georgia Tech
PhD, Harvard University
Office: CODA S1309 · kaiwang.gua@gmail.com · Google Scholar · GitHub · Twitter
PhD Students
| Name | Program | Research |
|---|---|---|
| Tianyi Chen | ML PhD | Reinforcement learning, diffusion policy |
| Zihao Zhao | CS PhD | Differentiable optimization, decision-focused learning |
| Shing-Hei Ho | ML PhD | First-order methods, optimization layers |
| Yi-Ching Lee | CS PhD | — |
| Wanchaloem Wunkaew (Omzin) | CSE PhD | — |
| Grace Seoyoung Ko | CSE PhD | — |
| Shuhan Zhang | ML PhD | — |
MS Students
| Name | Program | |
|---|---|---|
| Cac Phan | ECE MS | Stochastic bilevel optimization |
| Zenghui Sun | CSE MS | Networked restless bandits |
| Ashwath Karunakaram | CS MS | — |
| Soumil Sahu | CSE MS | — |
| Shreeyash Gowaikar | CSE MS | — |
Incoming
| Name | Role | Start |
|---|---|---|
| Yu-Heng Hung | Postdoc | Fall 2026 |
Alumni
| Name | Role at KOALA | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Nathan Blackthorn | ML PhD | — |
| Hanmo Zhang | CS Undergrad → MS | MS student at CMU |
| Kavya Velmurugan | CS MS | Graduated |
| Chen Lin | Math CSE MS | ML PhD student at Georgia Tech |
| Timi Omoteso | CS Undergrad | Graduated |
Join Us
We will recruit 1–2 PhD students for Fall 2027 — prospective students are welcome to apply through the Georgia Tech CSE PhD program and reach out by email.
MS/BS students at Georgia Tech are welcome to take our courses (CSE/ISyE 6740, CSE 8803) and reach out afterward. We have limited research capacity for non-PhD students.