Highlights

  • Recruiting: I am looking for Ph.D. students to join my group at RIT in Spring 2027 or Fall 2027.
  • Students interested in working with me can check the Work With Me for application forms and next steps.

Research Interest

I received my Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in 2020, advised by Prof. Chang-Tien Lu. I previously served as an Assistant Professor at Mississippi State University before joining RIT. I study behaviors in dynamical and structural systems — graph-structured, dynamic, uncertain, and knowledge-rich — and how to estimate and control them. Recently I focus on cross-system behaviors and generalized patterns across very different real-world systems, including traffic grids, power networks, epidemics, social networks, banking, supply chains, and most recently large language models viewed as dynamical systems with structural representations. Techniques I've been working on include spectral / functional analysis and uncertainty quantification (UQ).

Relevant support: NSF CAREER #2443266 · NSF CIRC #2345921 · all grants →

Generalized patterns across systems

① "Analogy learning": Generalized patterns across systems. Shared operators, conserved quantities, and structural invariants that transfer across unrelated graph domains.

Cross-system behaviors

② "Interplay learning": Cross-system behaviors. Behaviors that propagate between networks, where cross-edges carry the dynamics.

③ "Network Digital Twin": Executable replicas of coupled infrastructure. Traffic, power, and communication testbeds for stress-testing estimation and control.

Selected Paper

Full publication

Cross-Network Dynamics

Network Interdiction Goes Neural
Lei Zhang, Zhiqian Chen, Chang-Tien Lu, and Liang Zhao
Proceedings of the 31st ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, 2025 CORE A*

Uncertainty Quantification

Spectral Graph Theory

Spatial Forecasting

Software / Hardware

Symbolic Discovery

Science

Music

Selected Repo

Full repo
  • Spectral Graph Survey-driven entry point to spectral graph theory, graph signals, and modern graph learning. 175
  • Fusion GAN Music generation project on genre fusion with adversarial dual learning. 19
  • XFlow Python library for graph flow simulation, diffusion, and network dynamics experiments. 147
  • SumoXPypsa Coupled transportation-power simulation stack behind the WWW 2026 line of work. 2