About Me

I am a fifth-year PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University studying Electrical and Computer Engineering, advised by Prof. Guannan Qu and Prof. Yorie Nakahira. I obtained my M.S. degree at Duke University in Computer Science in 2022. I obtained my B.S. degree in Honors math and computer science at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2021.

My current research interests are in stochastic control, reinforcement learning, and diffusion models. I study how to learn and control unknown dynamical systems with provable guarantees, and I work on both the theory and the applications of diffusion models, from their convergence on manifolds to topology-aware 3D generation. More broadly, I am interested in graph theory, algebraic topology and their applications in machine learning.

Publications

Also on Google Scholar.

Conference Papers

HilbertGen-3D: Hilbert–Multifractal Conditioning for Topology-Aware 3D Generation

Z. Zhang, S. Li, Y. Nakahira, P. Bogdan, and G. Qu

Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2026

Learning Fractional-Order Dynamics from a Single Trajectory

X. Zhang, Z. Zhang, Z. Zhao, S. Tu, G. Qu, Y. Nakahira, and P. Bogdan

Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2026

Polynomial Convergence of Riemannian Diffusion Models

X. Xu, Z. Zhang, Y. Nakahira, G. Qu, and Y. Chi

International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2026

Stabilizing LTI Systems under Partial Observability: Sample Complexity and Fundamental Limits

Z. Zhang, Y. Nakahira, and G. Qu

Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2025

Learning to Stabilize Unknown LTI Systems on a Single Trajectory under Stochastic Noise

Z. Zhang, Y. Nakahira, and G. Qu

Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI), 2025

Fast Bandit-based Policy Adaptation in Diverse Environments

Z. Zhang, G. Qu, and Y. Nakahira

American Control Conference (ACC), 2025

Journal Articles

Predictive Control and Regret Analysis of Non-Stationary MDP with Look-ahead Information

Z. Zhang, Y. Nakahira, and G. Qu

Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR), 2025

Polyhedra of small relative mixed volume

Z. Zhang

Beiträge zur Algebra und Geometrie / Contributions to Algebra and Geometry, 2020

Preprints

UAVGENT: A Language-Guided Distributed Control Framework

Z. Zhang, X. Deng, G. Qu, and Y. Nakahira

arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.13212, 2026

Experience

  • Summer 2026
    Software Engineer Intern (Gmail Ads), Google LLC, Sunnyvale, CA

    Built an LLM-based agentic system to adjust bidding parameters produced by the hidden distribution model for impressions.

  • Summer 2025
    AI System Intern, Aira Technologies Inc., Saratoga, CA

    Designed and implemented an agentic LLM network for root cause analysis (RCA) in AT&T network.

  • Summer 2020
    Software Engineer, Guochuang Software Co.

    Designed a commercial website using HTML and JavaScript.

Full CV

Teaching

  • 2024
    18-667: Algorithms for Large-scale Distributed Machine Learning and Optimization, Teaching Assistant
  • 2023
    10-625: Introduction to Convex Optimization, Teaching Assistant