WELCOME TO SHU YAO’s HOMEPAGE

About Me

I am currently a researcher at the Guangdong Lab of AI and Digital Economy (SZ), focusing on pioneering advancements in principled artificial intelligence research. Previously, I was a senior researcher at Tencent, where I contributed to cutting-edge technology projects. My academic journey includes a Research Fellow position at the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) School of Computing, within the MapleCG group, under the esteemed guidance of Prof. Bryan Low. I earned my Ph.D. from NUS in 2022, under Prof. Low’s mentorship, following a B.Sc in Computer Science and Technology from Huazhong University of Science & Technology, China, in 2017.

Openings: Our principled AI research group ($\pi$-Group), specializing in AI learning and optimization theories, seeks researchers and engineers to explore core AI theories, develop sophisticated optimization algorithms, and create practical, robust AI solutions. Interested candidates should contact directly at shuyao@gml.ac.cn.

Research Interest

Currently, my research interests include but are not restricted to the following aspects of Machine Learning and Deep Learning:

• Deep Learning Theory, e.g., Neural Tangent Kernel, Statistical Learning Theory.
• Optimization & Decision-Making, e.g., Zeroth-Order Optimization, Bayesian Optimization, Bandit Algorithm, Reinforcement Learning.
• Generative Models, e.g., Large Language Model, Diffusion Model.
• Data-Centric AI, e.g., Data Optimization, Data Valuation, Data Ownership.
• Automated Machine Learning, e.g., Automated Data Optimization, Neural Architecture Search, Hyper-parameter Optimization.

Education Background

• National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore (Aug 2017 - Aug 2022)
  • Ph.D. student in Artificial Intelligence, School of Computing.
  • Advisor: Bryan Kian Hsiang Low.
  • Thesis: Understanding and Improving Neural Architecture Search.
• Huazhong University of Science & Technology (HUST), China (Sep 2013 - June 2017)
  • Bachelor of Computer Science, Honor of Outstanding Student

Career Background

• 2024.01 - Now, Researcher (PI of Principled AI Research Group), Guangdong Lab of AI and Digital Economy (SZ)
• 2023.08 - 2023.12, Senior Researcher (Tencent Talent), Tencent
• 2022.04 - 2023.06, Research Fellow (PostDoc.), National University of Singapore (NUS)
• 2021.09 - 2022.04, Research Assistant, National University of Singapore (NUS)

What’s New

• 2024.10: Our Ferret paper is accepted to FL@FM-NeurIPS’24 as an oral paper and our Flexora is accepted to FITML-NeurIPS’24!
• 2024.09: Our two papers on “Prompt Optimization” (ZOPO as spotlight!) and one paper on “Parallelized First-Order Optimization” are accepted to NeurIPS 2024!
• 2024.09: Our position paper on “Data-Centric AI in LLMs” is accepted to EMNLP 2024 Findings!
• 2024.09: Our Ferret paper is now available! Come and see how it significantly enhances the federated full-parameter tuning of Large Language Models!
• 2024.06: Our one paper on “Heterogeneous Federated Zeroth-Order Optimization” is accepted to Differentiable Almost Everything workshop @ ICML 2024 and two paper on “Prompt Optimization” are accepted to In-Context Learning workshop @ ICML 2024!
• 2024.05: Our paper on “Prompt Optimization” is accepted to ICML 2024!
• 2024.01: Our paper on “Training-free NAS” is accepted to ICLR 2024!

Honors and Awards

• Valedictorian for the class of Ph.D. graduates, School of Computing, NUS, 2023 (the script)
• IMDA Excellence in Computing Prize (Best Ph.D. Thesis), School of Computing, NUS, 2023 (the news)
• Dean’s Graduate Research Excellence Award, School of Computing, NUS, 2022 (the news)
• 2nd prize of 5th AutoML Challenge (AutoML for Temporal Relational Data) in the KDD Cup 2019 provided by 4Paradigm, ChaLearn and Microsoft, June 2019 (our solution, the news)
• Honor of Outstanding Student, 2015
• 2nd prize for The Chinese Mathematics Competitions (Non-professional), 2013

Professional Services

• Program Committee (PC) member/reviewer of
  • ICML: 2022,2023,2024
  • NeurIPS: 2022,2023,2024
  • ICLR: 2023,2024,2025
  • AAAI: 2024,2025
  • IJCAI: 2024
  • TPAMI: 2023
  • AAMAS: 2023,2024,2025
  • UAI: 2023,2024
  • AISTATS: 2023,2024
  • TIT

Teaching Activities

• TA for CS3244 Machine Learning, NUS (Spring 2021)
• TA for CS5242 Neural Networks and Deep Learning, NUS (Fall 2019)
• TA for CS5242 Neural Networks and Deep Learning, NUS (Spring 2019)