Yuzhang Shang

I am an Assistant Professor of Computer Science (Starting Fall 25) at University of Central Florida (UCF), affiliated with the Artificial Intelligence Initiative (Aii).

I obtained my Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Illinois Institute of Technology advised by Prof. Yan Yan (now at University of Illinois Chicago, UIC). During my Ph.D. journey, I was awarded MLCommons Rising Star in 2025. I was a visiting student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison hosted by Prof. Yong Jae Lee (lab famous for LLaVA). I interned as a researcher at Google DeepMind working with Daniele Moro and Andrew Howard (team famous for MobileNet), and I interned as a research scientist at Cisco Research working with Gaowen Liu and Ramana Kompella. Before Ph.D., I worked as research assistants at Shandong University and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) under the supervision of Prof. Liqiang Nie and Prof. Dan Xu, respectively. I received my bachelor’s degrees in Applied Mathematics and Economics (dual degrees) at Wuhan University.

[Hiring!] I am actively looking for postdocs, Ph.D. students, visiting scholars/students, and master/undergraduate researchers. If you are interested in working with me, feel free to contact me via yuzhang.hire@gmail.com. UCF@CSRankings: Computer Vision (8th), AI (46th), Overall (55th). 

Besides research, I am a contract photographer for Shutterstock Images and Getty Images (my portfolio).