Cheng Mao is a fourth-year PhD student in the Mathematics Department at MIT, working with Professor Philippe Rigollet on statistics and machine learning. Recently, he has been working on the design and analysis of statistical models that aim to recover a latent order of objects in high-dimensional and noisy settings. He also has an interest in probability, and has worked on scaling limits of random planar maps. Mao completed BS and MA degrees in Mathematics at UCLA in 2013.