Prospective Students

Sep 15, 2025 • Zhiming Zhou

I’m looking for talented students with enthusiasm for fundamental research in machine learning/artificial intelligence.

• Overall:
  • I have a very high standard for research and require students to do RIGOROUS and IN-DEPTH research INDEPENDENTLY.
  • As the entrance assessment, you will need to clearly explain a recent paper from a top conference or journal to me.

• Our goal:
  • Research that pursues perfection and truth (which will naturally lead to publications in top conferences/journals).
  • I personally prefer theoretical/theory-driven research on fundamental topics in the field of machine learning.

• The first thing you will need to do when you become one of my students:
  • Read 20 ~ 50 papers from top conferences/journals (which you may find via https://papercopilot.com/top-venues/).
    • In topics that interest you, or just somehow randomly.
    • This is to familiarize you with the basic paradigms of scientific papers and help find/determine your research topic.
  • Guidelines for reading a paper:
    • L1: Overall Idea (Required)
      • What problem is this paper concerned with?
      • What limitations of existing work motivate this study?
      • What is the main contribution? Try to explain the high-level idea clearly.
    • L2: Detailed Analysis (Whenever possible)
      • How does the proposed method work? Try to explain it in a step-by-step manner.
        • (If applicable) How is it trained? How is it used after training? Why does this necessarily work as intended?
      • Why is it designed as such? Does it have to be like that? Are there any aspects that seem unjustified?
    • L3: Critical Assessment (Have a try)
      • What is your assessment of this work? Is there any limitation? Can you do better in any aspect?

• What will be your research topic?
  • We DO NOT assign topics to students in principle.
  • Find your research topic on your own by reading papers, and I will always be there if you need any guidance.
  • When you have read 50 papers and still haven’t found a suitable topic that interests you, I may give my suggestions.

• My style:
  • I might be generally very nice, but I can be rather critical upon research.
  • You will be required to build a DEEP and CLEAR understanding of your research topic and related works.
    • This may take quite a while, but it is a prerequisite for us to start the real research.
  • I will guide and force you to think deeply, clearly, and logically. Hope we have the same belief that:
    • Superficial understanding may lead to specious conclusions.
    • Deeper thinking can bring simpler/better solutions.

• Characteristics that I value most:
  • [5’] The ability to think deeply.
  • [5’] Clear and strict logic.
  • [5’] Good intuition and critical thinking.
  • [4’] Good at math and programming.
  • [4’] Good (self-)learning ability.
  • [4’] Confidence and perseverance.

• Management:
  • There will be a weekly meeting, which is typically online and one-on-one.
    • You may need to prepare a slide or something similar to make your presentation more fluid.
  • You are encouraged to keep a research diary, which summarizes:
    • New techniques you learn;
    • New papers and/or related content you read;
    • New thoughts about your research topic or the related;
    • New experiments and/or their analysis; and so on.
  • There will be an ENTRANCE ASSESSMENT and a PROBATIONARY period of one semester for every newcomer.

• Principle of authorship:
  • We determine the authorship according to the contribution. The tentative score-based rules are as follows:
    • Idea: 0 ~ 2 points, depending on the importance.
    • Theory: 1 ~ 4 points, depending on the importance and workload.
    • Coding: 0 ~ 3 points, depending on the workload.
    • Writing: 1 ~ 2 points, depending on the workload.
  • The points of each part will be allocated to the participants according to their contribution.
  • For conferences/journals that typically do not regard authors as of equal contribution:
    • The authors with higher contribution points have a higher priority in choosing the position in the author list.
    • For authors that share similar contributions, the relatively lower-ranked can argue for a claim of equal contribution.
      • E.g., their difference in contribution points is less than 1.
  • In principle, people with too little contribution will not be regarded as one of the authors.
    • E.g., get less than 1 point, even though somehow participated in.