
Research Overview - by PI
My research journey spans both academia and industry, unified by a central interest in low-dimensional principles of intelligence - a high-level overview is available in my writeup for the CPAL conference, for those interested: https://cpal.cc/vision/.
At the university level, we currently revisit classical sparse and low-rank optimization through the lens of modern AI, developing theory-driven algorithms that accelerate training and inference in large-scale models. We also investigate how algebraic and logical structures emerge during learning, uncovering the interplay between neural and symbolic computation across streamlined architectures, reasoning pipelines, and multi-agent systems. Our latest research efforts are organized into four thematic thrusts, outlined below.
Historically, my work has included deep learning theory, learning-augmented optimization, sparse coding & inverse problems, and visual restoration & understanding — areas in which I remain (somehow) engaged.
​
In parallel, my industry experiences have opened several new, distinct research directions inspired by practical deployments and large-scale systems: geometry deep learning and graphs (with Amazon), video generation (with Picsart), and foundation model training for trading (with XTX Markets)
University Research

Thrust 1.
Theory-driven scalable optimization for GenAI model training
Designing theory-grounded optimization methods that slash memory and compute for training large language models, diffusion models, and 3D Gaussians.
Thrust 2.
Efficient inference algorithms and architecture optimization
Building theory-informed, lightweight inference solutions and elastic model architectures that meet any device budget while preserving state-of-the-art accuracy.


Thrust 3.
Emergent symbolic reasoning and controllable multi-agent systems
Uncovering and exploiting the symbolic structures that arise inside neural agents to enable steerable reasoning, verifiable safety, and coordinated multi-agent workflows.
Thrust 4.
Resource-aware and trustworthy AI in medicine
Translating AI efficiency and reliability advances into high-stakes healthcare, from expert-level ultrasound diagnostics to conversational cognitive support.

Past Research Trajectory
/ 2022-2024
Theoretical properties of sparse neural networks and transformers
Representative work: [ICLR 2025], [NeurIPS 2024], [JMLR 2024a], [JMLR 2024b]
/ 2016-2021
"Learning-to-optimize" algorithms with theoretical guarantees
Representative work: [JMLR 2022], [ICLR 2022], [ICLR 2019], [NeurIPS 2018]
/ 2016-2021
Image and video generative models for restoration and enhancement
Representative work:
[IEEE TIP 2021] (IEEE SPS Young Author Best Paper Award, 2024)
[NeurIPS 2021] (covered by Quanta Magazine)
[ICCV 2019] (Implemented by Intel OpenVINO and GNU Image Manipulation Program)
/ 2012-2019
Robust visual and multimodal perception in unconstrained environments
Representative work: [IEEE TIP 2018], [ICCV 2017], [CVPR 2016]
/ 2010-2018
Compressive sensing, dictionary learning, and low-rank representations
Representative work: [NeurIPS 2018], [AAAI 2016]
My students often pursue broader research interests than myself, reflecting diverse perspectives within VITA group. I encourage exploring their own profiles for more details.
Industry Research

01 / XTX Markets (2024–present)
​Leading the development of large-scale foundation models for high-frequency trading data.
02 / Picsart (2022–2024)
Directing the generative AI initiative and contributing influential open-source video generation models. Representative Work:


03 / Amazon (2021–2022)
Improving cold-start performance in recommendation systems for emerging markets using geometric deep learning. Representative Work: