Professional Summary

About Me

I am an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Northern Illinois University (NIU). I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from Virginia Tech in December 2023, where I was advised by Prof. Chang-Tien Lu at the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics.

My research focuses on graph-based representation learning and reasoning, as well as information retrieval. Feel free to reach out if you see potential alignment and are interested in collaborating.

At NIU, I co-founded the NIU AI and organize the AI & ML research seminar series. NIU students can subscribe here to participate.

Interests

Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Graph Learning Bi-Level Optimization
Note

Hiring undergraduate research assistants and PhD students to work on AI and Machine Learning.

  • 07/25 One paper is accepted by ACM SIGSPATIAL
  • 05/25 One paper is accepted by KDD2025
  • 05/25 Chaired one session at SIAM SDM 25'
  • 05/25 Hosted tutorial session at SIAM SDM 25’
  • 04/25 One paper is accepted by Knowledge and Information Systems (KAIS)
  • 10/24 Hosted tutorial session at SIAM MDS 24’
  • 10/24 Hosted tutorial session at CIKM 24’
  • 06/24 Check our CVPR 24’ tutorial on Unifying Spectral and Spatial Graph Neural Network. See the tutorial website CVPR 24’ Tutorial.
  • 08/24 Joined the Computer Science Department of Northern Illinois University
♾️ My Research
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Open Papers

AI/ML conference paper scraper for building a high-quality dataset of research papers.

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Secure-AI Project

Overview The Secure-AI Project is a research initiative focused on integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity literacy into high school education. As AI …

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Network Interdiction Goes Neural

Solving Network Interdiction Problems with Graph Neural Networks

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Lei Zhang
Infinitely Deep Graph Transformation Networks featured image

Infinitely Deep Graph Transformation Networks

Deep Equilibrium Model for Node-Edge Co-Evolution Graph Neural Network

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Lei Zhang
📋Recent Publications
(2025). Network Interdiction Goes Neural. In KDD ‘25.
(2024). Unifying Spectral and Spatial Graph Neural Networks. In CIKM ‘24.
(2023). Infinitely Deep Graph Transformation Networks. In ICDM2023.
(2023). Fast and adaptive dynamics-on-graphs to dynamics-of-graphs translation. Front. Big Data.