Dr.
Zhangyang “Atlas” Wang
Education
2012-2016
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
2008-2012
University of Science and Technology of China (USTC)
Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering
advised by Prof. Thomas S. Huang
B.E. in Electrical Engineering and Information Science
Professional Experience
May 2024-
Research Director (Full Time)
XTX Markets (found & lead the new XTY AI Labs)
Sep 2023-
Temple Foundation Endowed Associate Professor #7
(tenured & currently on leave at XTX Markets)
Aug 2020 - Aug 2023
Jack Kilby/Texas Instrument Endowed Assistant Professor
Dept. Electrical and Computer Engineering
Dept. Computer Science (GSC Faculty)
Oden Institute (Affiliated Faculty)
NSF IFML AI Institute & UT Machine Learning Lab
UT Center for Generative AI (Area Leader)
The University of Texas at Austin, TX
Aug 2022 - May 2024
Director of AI Research (Part Time)
Picsart, Inc
(led the company's video GenAI initiative)
Aug 2021 - Jul 2022
Amazon Visiting Academic (Part Time)
Amazon Search
(geometric DL for recommendation systems)
Aug 2017 - July 2020
Assistant Professor
Dept. Computer Science and Engineering
Texas A&M University, College Station, TX
May 2015 - Aug 2015
Research Intern
Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA
(distributed ML training)
May 2014 - Aug 2014
Research Intern
Adobe Research, San Jose, CA
(creative visual editing)
May 2013 - Aug 2013
Research Intern
US Army Research Laboratory, Adelphi, MD
(ML for geo-mapping)
Research
Interests
I pursue a low-dimensional lens on intelligence, blending sparse/low-rank optimization theory with emergent algebraic structure to unite neural computation and symbolic reasoning.
These principles drive advances from Transformers and LLMs to diffusion models and 3D scene representations, while also catalyzing interdisciplinary progress, such as in AI-enabled medicine.
My current research thrusts are:
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Theory-driven, scalable optimization for GenAI model training
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Efficient inference algorithms and architecture optimization
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Emergent symbolic reasoning and controllable multi-agent systems
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Resource-aware and trustworthy AI in medicine and healthcare
Honors and
Impact
Faculty Research Awards
Jun 2025
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Best Paper Award, CVPR 2025 AI for Content Creation workshop
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Outstanding Paper (Honorable Mention), MLSys 2025
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DAPRA Disruptive Idea Paper Award, NeuS 2025
Mar 2025
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Sony Faculty Research Award
Dec 2024
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IEEE Signal Processing Society Young Author Best Paper Award
Aug 2024
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AI 100: The Top AI Thought Leaders (by H2O.ai)
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Best Paper Finalist, VLDB 2024
Apr 2023
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IEEE AI's 10 to Watch
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Google Research Scholar Award
Dec 2022
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Best Paper Award, Learning on Graphs (LoG) Conference 2022
Nov 2022
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Meta Reality Labs Research Award
Jun 2022
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NSF CAREER Award
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INNS Aharon Katzir Young Investigator Award
Nov 2022, Oct 2021
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Google TensorFlow Model Garden Award
Sep 2020
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Adobe Data Science Research Award
Apr 2020
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ARO Young Investigator Award (YIP)
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Amazon Research Award
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IBM Faculty Research Award
Mar 2020
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TEES Young Faculty Fellow, TAMU
Nov 2019
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Engineering Genesis Award for Multidisciplinary Research, TAMU
Jun 2021
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J. P. Morgan AI Faculty Research Award
May 2025
Oct 2017
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Lenovo AI Innovation Challenge Award
Selected Media Coverage
International Business Times
"Adobe Photoshop unveils artificial intelligence
tool to identify fonts from 20,000 typefaces" (May 2016)
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Also in: BBC News (Apr 2016)
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Fortune (Apr 2016)
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UIUC Alumni Magazine (Spring 2016 edition)
Quanta Magazine
"Will Transformers Take Over Artificial Intelligence?" (Mar 2022).
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Our research paper covered in this article, TransGAN (NeurIPS'21), has also been highlighted by top AI in uencers such as Andrew Ng and Yannic Kilcher
NSF News
MIT News
"Shrinking massive neural networks used to model language" (Dec 2020)
"Learning to Grow Machine-learning Models" (Mar 2023)
IEEE Intelligent Systems
"AI's 10 to Watch, 2022" (Apr 2023)
IEEE Computer Magazine
UT Engineering News
IDG Connect
"Reducing energy use in neural networks" (Jan 2021)
US ARL's "10 Coolest Techniques"
Our work on vision-based decentralized robotic control (VGAI) was selected as No. 3 of Year 2020. [Video Demo] (Oct 2020)
Research Funds
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Gratefully supported by NSF (9 grants), DARPA (5), ARL (3), IARPA (2), ARO (2), DOE (1), in addition to over two dozen of industry and university grants.
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As of March 2025, the total project funding amounts to $34 million, and PI Wang's personal share of external funding exceeds $8.5 million.
Other Awards (won myself as student)
Nov 2015
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Baidu Scholarship (10 worldwide annually)
May 2016
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Graduate College Dissertation Fellowship, UIUC
Apr 2016
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Thomas and Margaret Huang Award for Graduate Research, UIUC
May 2015
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Cognitive Science & AI Research Award, UIUC
Services
Conference Services
Area Chair
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ICLR (2022 - 2025), ICML (2022 - 2025), NeurIPS (2022, 2023)
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CVPR (2022 - 2025), ICCV (2023), ECCV (2024)
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AISTATS (2025), AAAI (2021 - 2024), DAC (2023, 2024)
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Recognized as:
NeurIPS 2023 Notable Area Chair
ICLR 2022 Highlighted Area Chair
NeurIPS 2021 & ICLR 2021 Outstanding Reviewer
Senior Area Chair
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NeurIPS (2024, 2025)
Program Chair
(inaugural)
Outstanding Paper Award Committee
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​​ICLR (2022)
Others
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Knowledge Graph Day Chair, WWW (2023)
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Publicity Chair, ICME (2023)
Journal Editorial Board
2025 - present
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Journal of Articial Intelligence Research (JAIR)
2025 - present
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IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI)
2023 - present
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ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
2024 - present
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Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR)
Professional Society
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IEEE Senior Member
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ACM Member (ACM Distinguished Speaker)
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Mentor, IEEE SPS Underrepresented Young Researchers Program (ME-UYR)
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Member, IEEE ML for Signal Processing Technical Committee (MLSP TC)