Cailong Hua

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Salaphaka Lab at the University of Minnesota. I received my Master’s degree in Control System with Distinction from Imperial College London. I obtained Bachelor’s degrees in Automation Engineering from Politecnico di Milano in Italy and from Electronic Information and Engineering from Tongji University in China.

My background spans machine learning, large language models (LLMs), signal processing, and data analysis. Specifically, I have developed advanced statistical algorithms to quantify error in non-equilibrium experiments and automated time-series analysis of single-molecule data using a physics-informed deep learning model. During my internship at the University of Phoenix, I fine-tuned LLMs using parameter-efficient methods and deployed chatbots on AWS.

Download CV Here

selected publications

ICML

A Physics-Augmented Deep Learning Framework for Classifying Single Molecule Force Spectroscopy Data

Cailong Hua, Sivaraman Rajaganapathy, Rebecca A Slick, Joseph Vavra, Joe M Muretta, James M Ervasti, and Murti V Salapaka

Forty-second International Conference on Machine Learning, 2025

Bib HTML

@article{hua2025identification,
  title = {A Physics-Augmented Deep Learning Framework for Classifying Single Molecule Force Spectroscopy Data},
  author = {Hua, Cailong and Rajaganapathy, Sivaraman and Slick, Rebecca A and Vavra, Joseph and Muretta, Joe M and Ervasti, James M and Salapaka, Murti V},
  journal = {Forty-second International Conference on Machine Learning},
  year = {2025},
}

PNAS

Multiple modes of AFM reveal distinct mechanical properties for dystrophin and utrophin not manifest by small fragments

Cailong Hua, Joseph Vavra, Jacob Powers, Joe M Muretta, James M Ervasti, and Murti V Salapaka

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (Under Review), 2025

Bib

@article{hua2025multipleafm,
  title = {Multiple modes of AFM reveal distinct mechanical properties for dystrophin and utrophin not manifest by small fragments},
  author = {Hua, Cailong and Vavra, Joseph and Powers, Jacob and Muretta, Joe M and Ervasti, James M and Salapaka, Murti V},
  journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (Under Review)},
  year = {2025},
}

PRE

Quantifying errors in the Jarzynski estimator

Sivaraman* Rajaganapathy, Cailong* Hua, and Murti V Salapaka

Physical Review E. (under review), 2025

Bib

@article{rajaganapathy2025PRE,
  title = {Quantifying errors in the Jarzynski estimator},
  author = {Rajaganapathy, Sivaraman and Hua, Cailong and Salapaka, Murti V},
  journal = {Physical Review E. (under review)},
  year = {2025},
}