About Me

I am a fourth-year undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, pursuing a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. I currently work in Prof. Sergey Levine's lab as an undergraduate researcher, working on model-based reinforcement learning together with my mentors Roberto Calandra and Rowan McAllister.

Starting Fall 2019, I will be attending Princeton University as a PhD student in Computer Science.

My interests include reinforcement learning, theoretical machine learning, as well as mathematics.

This semester, I am a TA for EECS 126, an upper-division course on probability and random processes.

You may reach me at kchua (at) berkeley (dot) edu.

Publications

• Deep Reinforcement Learning in a Handful of Trials using Probabilistic Dynamics Models.
  arXiv | website | code
  Kurtland Chua, Roberto Calandra, Rowan McAllister, Sergey Levine.
  NeurIPS 2018 (Spotlight presentation, ~4% of submitted papers).

Talks

• “Deep Reinforcement Learning in a Handful of Trials using Probabilistic Dynamics Models.” Bay Area Machine Learning Symposium (Baylearn). October 2018.
  video

Teaching

• EECS 126: Probability and Random Processes
  Undergraduate Student Instructor (uGSI)
  Spring 2019 | Fall 2018

Honors and Awards

• National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2019).
• EECS Major Citation (2019).
• UC Berkeley EECS Honors Program (2019). Pursuing a concentration in Mathematics.
• NVIDIA Pioneer Award (2018). Awarded for Deep Reinforcement Learning in a Handful of Trials using Probabilistic Dynamics Models at NeurIPS 2018.
• Phi Beta Kappa Honors Society (2018). Inducted as a junior.
• Dean’s Honors List for Fall ‘15, Spring ‘16, Fall ‘16, Spring ‘17, Spring ‘18, Fall ‘18.
• Quantedge Award for Academic Excellence (2018). Awarded to students of senior standing with a 4.0 GPA.