☕️Hi! My name is Kam Chuen Tung (I usually go by Alex) and I am from Hong Kong. I am currently a PhD student in the University of Waterloo, advised by Prof. Lap Chi Lau. My research involves studying expansion properties of graphs from the perspectives of spectral graph theory, convex optimization, random walks, and metric embedding. Prior to my PhD studies, I obtained a BSc in Mathematics (minor in French) in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. I am known as alex20030190 on Codeforces. Some of my socially acceptable hobbies are writing, solving puzzles, and choir singing.
Experiences
We prepare competition and team selection problems (I have authored 80+ problems so far), conduct training sessions, and other duties to ensure the competition seasons are run smoothly. The pipeline for preparing a problem involves description writing, test case creation, testing of correct and incorrect solutions, and writing editorials.
I found refuge in the music produced during the rehearsals and in the connections made with fellow musicians. For each concert, our repertoire is diverse but tightly held by a common theme. I also served as manager and (tenor) section leader for a few of the terms.
I was recently on an internship at the National Institute in Informatics (NII) in Tokyo, Japan. I worked with Prof. Yoshida Yuichi on spectral graph theory projects.
Our team won the inaugural "Enigma Cup". It was a three-day series of math-themed cryptic puzzles, and I had a lot of fun solving them!
EPYMT is a summer course for talented secondary school students to learn university-level mathematics. I was TA in 2017 and 2019, teaching Differential Geometry and Number Theory. As the head TA for the latter course, I was responsible for preparing the quizzes and exam. (here, here, and here. The bonus questions should be an interesting challenge.)
Je me suis inscrit dans un cours français intensif d’été, au niveau B1+, à l’Université Catholique de Lyon. C’était une très belle expérience et j’en ai bien profité!
I took part in the number theory seminar organized by Dr. Charles Chun-Che Li. We met roughly once a week and read and discussed results in number theory: modular forms, p-adic number theory, and more.
I helped Dr. Jeff Chak-Fu Wong set up WebWork for the 2018/19 offering of MATH 1010 (Calculus I) at CUHK. WebWork is an open-source online homework system for STEM courses, founded by MAA in 2018. My job was to create and import exercise questions of answer formats with parameter randomization.
I worked with Prof. Po Lam Yung (now at ANU) to study a problem related to bivariate polynomials, that has connections to the Brascamp-Lieb inequality.
La Salle-Pui Ching Programming Challenge is an ACM-ICPC style programming contest for secondary school students, jointly hosted by La Salle College (my alma mater) and Pui Ching Middle School. I was involved in setting problems for the first three editions of the Challenge and also in running the contest.
I worked under the supervision of Dr. Esmond G. Ng to investigate solving sparse linear systems with Sherman-Morrison-Woodbury formula. A lot of MATLAB experimentation involved. (Slides)
I took part in the ACM-ICPC World Finals twice, qualifying through the EC region in both 2015/16 and 2016/17. In the qualifiers, we obtained a few 2nd places and 3rd places, only behind super-schools like Tsinghua University. Our team got 41st place in the 2016 World Finals in Thailand and 35th place in the 2017 World Finals in USA. I was also involved in setting several problems in the 2016 Hong Kong Regional Contest.
🥈🥈🥈 in IOI 2013 (Australia), 2014 (Taiwan), 2015 (Kazakhstan).
Honorable Mention in the 56th IMO in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Honorable Mention in the 2014 Hang Lung Mathematics Awards. The research topic was “Two Methods for Investigating the Generalized Tic-Tac-Toe”. Joint work with Lut Yin Luke Lau. (Paper)
Publications
Contact
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- kctung [at] uwaterloo.ca
- DC 3139, 200 University Ave W, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1