About Me
Hello! I'm an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Beijing Normal University. My research lies at the intersection of mathematics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, with an emphasis on developing mathematically grounded algorithms supported by rigorous theoretical analysis. My previous work has focused on optimization on manifolds, matrix factorization, manifold learning, dimensionality reduction, and lifelong learning. More recently, my research has expanded to reinforcement learning and diffusion models, with an emphasis on efficient optimization, representation learning, and scalable generative modeling.
Email: zhaizheng@bnu.edu.cn
ORCID: 0000-0002-7983-8134
Education
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Wuhan University of Technology
B.S. in Information and Computational Science -
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Zhejiang University
Ph.D. in Computational Mathematics -
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National University of Singapore
Postdoctoral Research Fellow -
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University of Toronto
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Academic Position
Department of Statistics
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Beijing Normal University
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– Present
Associate Professor -
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Assistant Professor
Industry Experience
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Researcher
Tencent, Shenzhen
Selected Publications
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Quadratic Matrix Factorization with Applications to Manifold Learning
Zheng Zhai; Hengchao Chen; Qiang Sun
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 2024, Volume 46(9).
DOI: 10.1109/TPAMI.2024.3380568 -
Uniform Projection for Multi-View Learning
Zhenyue Zhang; Zheng Zhai; Limin Li
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 2017, Volume 39(8).
DOI: 10.1109/TPAMI.2016.2601608 -
Subspace-constrained Quadratic Matrix Factorization: Algorithm and Applications
Zheng Zhai; Xiaohui Li
Pattern Recognition.
DOI: 10.1016/j.patcog.2024.111333 -
Rethinking Softmax in Incremental Learning
Zheng Zhai; Jiali Zhang; Haiyu Wang; Mingxin Wu; Keshun Yang; Xiaoyan Qiao; Qiang Sun
Neural Networks, Volume 193.
DOI: 10.1016/j.neunet.2025.108017 -
Graph Refinement via Simultaneously Low-Rank and Sparse Approximation
Zhenyue Zhang; Zheng Zhai; Limin Li
SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, 2022, Volume 44(3).
DOI: 10.1137/21M1446459 -
Bounded Projection Matrix Approximation with Applications to Community Detection
Zheng Zhai; Hengchao Chen; Qiang Sun
IEEE Signal Processing Letters, 2023, Volume 30.
DOI: 10.1109/LSP.2023.3298282 -
Sparse Projection Matrix Approximation and Its Applications
Zheng Zhai; Mingxin Wu; Jialu Xu; Xiaohui Li
IEEE Signal Processing Letters, 2025, Volume 32.
DOI: 10.1109/LSP.2024.3519459 -
Power Transformed Density Ridge Estimation
Hengchao Chen; Zheng Zhai (Corresponding Author)
IEEE Signal Processing Letters, 2025, Volume 32.
DOI: 10.1109/LSP.2025.3549699
Join Us
Motivated students with strong backgrounds in mathematics, statistics, computer science, artificial intelligence, or related fields are warmly encouraged to apply. I typically have 1–2 openings for Ph.D. students and several openings for Master's students each year. Outstanding undergraduate students interested in research are also welcome.
If you are interested in joining my research group, please send your CV, academic transcript, and a brief description of your research interests to zhaizheng@bnu.edu.cn .