Honam WONG

Honam WONG

Incoming PhD @ UPenn, passionate about understanding deep learning

About me

Hi! I am an incoming PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania, advised by Surbhi Goel (Computer Science) and Enric Boix-Adsera (Wharton Statistics & Data Science). I received my Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science & Mathematics from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 2025.

My research interests lie in theory and empirical science of deep learning and LLMs.

  • Theory: I am interested in fundamental theories that reveal principles of learning and scaling.
  • Empirical Science: I am enthusiastic about designing sandbox settings to understand language model (and interplay with theory). I am broadly interested in interpretability, understanding reasoning and alignment properties of LLMs.

Overall I am passionate about opening the black box of neural network and LLM through all possible ways.

Education

  • PhD in Computer & Information Science, The University of Pennsylvania (Incoming)
  • BSc in Computer Science & Mathematics, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2025 (GPA 4.099/4.3, Rank 1st, before grad-school app.)
  • Spring Exchange, EPFL, 2024

Review Experience

  • Conference / Journal: NeurIPS 2025, ICML 2025, L4DC 2025, NeurIPS 2024, TMLR
  • Workshop: ICML 2024 Workshop on Theoretical Foundations of Foundation Models (TF2M), ICLR 2024 Workshop on Bridging the Gap Between Practice and Theory in Deep Learning (BGPT)

Selected Awards

  • Chern Class Achievement Scholarship (Outstanding) (Highest Award for math graduates)
  • HKUST Epsilon Fund Award 24’ (For top math students at HKUST, <5 undergraduates each year)
  • Hong Kong Government Scholarship 22’ (Highest Academic Award in undergraduate, renewed annually)

Academic Activities

  • Heidelberg Laureate Forum, Heidelberg, Germany, Sep 2024
  • LeT-All Mentorship Workshop, Learning Theory Alliance, Online, June 2024
  • International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), Vienna, May 2024
  • Conference on Parismony and Learning (CPAL), Hong Kong, Jan 2024

My Erdos Number = 4

Honam Wong -> Surbhi Goel -> Danel Reichman -> Noga Alon -> Paul Erdős

Honam Wong -> Enric Boix-Adsera -> Emmanuel Abbe -> Noga Alon -> Paul Erdős