Ziniu Zhang

Ziniu (Michael) Zhang

I am a Ph.D student of Khoury College of Computer Sciences in Northeastern University starting from Fall 2024. I work with Prof. Hongyang R. Zhang. My name can be pronounced as "Tzu-niu Chang".

Before my PhD study, I was a visiting student in the University of Queensland advised by Prof. Yadan Luo and a research intern in MMLAB@NTU advised by Prof. Ziwei Liu.

I am extremely grateful to all professors, mentors, and friends who have helped me on my research journey.

I obtained my bachelor's degree in Computer Science (Honors College) from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) in 2024.

Email / Google Scholar / Github / LinkedIn / Twitter

Research

My research interest now aligns with fundamental machine learning and multi-source learning from the perspective of data.

(* equal contributions)

Structured Kernel Surrogate Models for Multimodal Attribution
Ziniu Zhang*, Zhenshuo Zhang*, Jianglin Lu, Ruoxuan Xiong, Yun Fu, Hongyang R. Zhang
NeurIPS 2026
Paper

Quantifying the Stability of Multi-Step Reasoning via Error Amplification
Dongyue Li, Ziniu Zhang, Minxuan Duan, Hongyang R. Zhang
NeurIPS 2026
Paper

Long-Context Demonstration Selection Using State Space Models
Ziniu Zhang, Zhenshuo Zhang, Ruoxuan Xiong, Gene Cooperman, Hongyang R. Zhang
EMNLP 2026 (Findings)
Project / Paper

MoPLEx: Estimating Plackett-Luce Mixture Models for Multi-Objective Alignment
Dongyue Li, Ziniu Zhang, Lu Wang, Hongyang R. Zhang
EMNLP 2026
Project / Paper

	Learning Multimodal Embeddings for Traffic Accident Prediction and Causal Estimation Ziniu Zhang, Minxuan Duan, Haris N. Koutsopoulos, Hongyang R. Zhang KDD 2026 Project / Paper / Video / Article
	Linear-Time Demonstration Selection for In-Context Learning via Gradient Estimation Ziniu Zhang, Zhenshuo Zhang, Dongyue Li, Lu Wang, Jennifer Dy, Hongyang R. Zhang EMNLP 2025 Project / Paper
	Efficient Ensemble for Fine-tuning Language Models on Multiple Datasets Dongyue Li, Ziniu Zhang, Lu Wang, Hongyang R. Zhang ACL 2025 Project / Paper / Blog
	Scalable Fine-tuning from Multiple Data Sources: A First-Order Approximation Approach Dongyue Li, Ziniu Zhang*, Lu Wang, Hongyang R. Zhang EMNLP 2024 (Findings)* Project / Paper
	MMInA: Benchmarking Multihop Multimodal Internet Agents Shulin Tian, Ziniu Zhang*, Liangyu Chen, Ziwei Liu ACL 2025 (Findings) Project / Paper / Demo

Awards

- Silver medal in the 47th ACM-ICPC International Collegiate Programming Contest Asian Regional (Rank: 48/511)
- Silver medal in the 8th China Collegiate Programming Contest (CCPC).
- Bronze medal in the 7th China Collegiate Programming Contest (CCPC).
- First Prize in the 23rd National Olympiad in Informatics in Provinces (NOIP) (Senior group).
- Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award, UESTC.
- Scholarship for Overseas Visiting Student Program, UESTC.
- First-class Student Scholarship, UESTC.

Service

- Reviewer: AAAI (2025-2027), ICML (2026), NeurIPS (2026), AISTATS (2025-2027), COLM (2026), CIKM (2026), DMLR (2024-2025), TMLR (2024-2026).
- Teaching Assistant: DS 5220 Supervised Machine Learning and Learning Theory; CS 4100 Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Northeastern University.
- Volunteer in the 10th China Collegiate Programming Contest (CCPC) Final.
- Member of the technical group of 2021 National Olympiad in Informatics in Provinces (NOIP).

Appendix

- I'm addicted to badminton and have won several medals in UESTC. My favorite player is Shi Yu Qi.
- I'm also passionate about cycling. I have completed several routes exceeding 100 km. My goal is to cycle along G318 to Lhasa.
- I served as the major volunteer in 31st FISU World University Games.

Last update: 9/28/2026

Credit to Jon Barron.