Members

Advisor

Prof. Yue-Jiao Gong (Senior Member, IEEE) received the B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Sun Yat-sen University, China, in 2010 and 2014, respectively. She currently holds the position of Full Professor at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, China. Her research interests encompass Optimization Methods based on Swarm Intelligence, Deep Learning, Reinforcement Learning, and their Applications in Smart Cities and Intelligent Transportation. She has published over 100 papers, including more than 50 ACM/IEEE Transactions papers, in her research area. Dr. Gong was a recipient of the Pearl River Young Scholar from the Guangdong Education Department in 2017, and the Guangdong Natural Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholars in 2022.

Student Founder

Zeyuan Ma (PhD, 22-26) received the B.Eng. degree in the school of Computer Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China, in 2022. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the School of Computer Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, China. He is working at the intersection of Machine Learning (ML) and Optimization. In particular, his research interests include Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL), Black-Box Optimization (BBO), Meta-Black-Box Optimization (MetaBBO), which has been featured in pioneering conferences and journals, such as NeurIPS, ICLR, GECCO, TSMC, etc. He has served as Reviewer Member for well-known conferences including NeurIPS 2024, ICML 2024, as well as journals such as TNNLS, TETCI, TEC, TCDS.

Hongshu Guo (PhD, 22-26) received the B.Eng. degree in the school of Computer Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China, in 2022. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the School of Computer Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, China. His research interests include deep reinforcement learning and evolutionary computing.

Student Member

Undergraduate

Master

Cooperator

Prof. Zhiguang Cao received the Ph.D. degree from Interdisciplinary Graduate School, Nanyang Technological University. He received the B.Eng. degree in Automation from Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China, and the M.Sc. in Signal Processing from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, respectively. He was a Research Fellow with the Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N), a Research Assistant Professor with the Department of Industrial Systems Engineering and Management, National University of Singapore, and a Scientist with the Agency for Science Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore. He joins the School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University, as an Assistant Professor. His research interests focus on learning to optimize (L2Opt).

Yining Ma received the B.E. degree in computer science from the South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China, in 2019. He obtained the Ph.D. degree with the Department of Industrial Systems Engineering and Management, National University of Singapore, Singaporein in March 2024. He joins the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) at MIT as a Postdoctoral Associate in August 2024, mentored by Prof. Cathy Wu. His research interests include learning to optimize, deep reinforcement learning, evolutionary computation, and combinatorial optimization.