Zhenglin (Carlos) Wan

Zhenglin (Carlos) Wan

😊 About me

Contact: vanzl3386 [at] gmail.com (preferred), vanzl [at] u.nus.edu, 121090525 [at] link.cuhk.edu.cn

I am Zhenglin Wan (万政霖), a CS Ph.D. student at HPC-AI Lab at National University of Singapore (NUS), advised by Prof. Yang You. Previously, I worked at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) with Prof. Bo An, Centre for Frontier AI Research (CFAR), IHPC, A*STAR with Prof. Ivor Tsang , Hong Kong Generative AI Research & Development Center (HKGAI) with the team led by HKUST Prof. Yike Guo. I received my B.Sc (with 1-st class honor) in Statistics and Data Science from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).

I mainly work on Multi-modal generation and RL Post-training, with emphasis on:

  • genuinely understanding diffusion models (the forward process and reverse process) and the synergy/conflict with Reinforcement Learning
  • applying these insights for large-scale post-training of diffusion-based generative models (such as text/image/video/audio/omni generation)
  • infra-algorithm co-design, for identifying useful insights and developing easy-to-scale-up algorithms.

I am also interested in and have explored Agentic systems and Diffusion Language Models (although not an expert :D).

Always enjoy collaborating with talents, plz reach out via email!

🔥 News

  • 2026.05  🎉🎉 Three (co)first-author papers accepted by ICML 2026, congrats to all co-authors!
  • 2026.04  🎉🎉 Gave a talk at Meta-NUS MoU ceremony (Stable online RL for alignment of diffusion-based foundation models).
  • 2026.03  🎉🎉 Two papers accepted by ACL 2026.
  • 2026.01  🎉 Cave-Agent is open-sourced: an object-oriented agentic framework with superior token-efficiency, empowering the agentic AI system being built by the Hong Kong Government.
  • 2025.12  🎉 We released our new work GoRL for online RL training with diffusion/flow-based generative models. ([Paper], [Code])
  • 2025.10  🎉 OSCAR (training free technique for diverse rollout of Flow-based models) is on Arxiv. ([Paper], [Code]).
  • 2025.05  🎉🎉 EBC is accepted by ICML 2025 (Code available).
  • 2025.03  🎉🎉 One paper accepted by ICLR 2025 (generative models for robot learning workshop).
  • 2024.12  🎉🎉 One paper accepted by AAMAS 2025 (oral).
  • 2024.12  🎉🎉 One paper accepted by AAAI 2025 (oral).
  • 2024.09  🎉🎉 One invention patent is published.
  • 2024.09  🎉🎉 Awarded Academic Performance Scholarship (for top 5% students) for consecutive two years.
  • 2024.05  🎉🎉 One invention patent is officially granted.
  • 2023.12  🎉🎉 As tech co-founder, I co-founded enterprise “Metasequoia Intelligence” based in Shenzhen, China.
  • 2019.09  🎉🎉 Lucky to win the 1-st prize in Provincial Chinese Mathematics Olympiad (CMO). Thanks for this intellectually-rewarding experience.

📝 Selected Publications

Conference papers and Preprints

Please scroll down to view more. * denotes joint-first-author and equal contribution.

Invention Patents

As these works are patented in China, all these names are directly translated from Chinese.

  • A Method, System, Terminal Device, and Storage Medium for Air Quality Spatial Inference (Granted)

    Inventor: Jun Song, Yibo Xu, Yiwen Pan, Maohao Ran, Zhenglin Wan, Xiaoyun Yan, Yike Guo

  • A Single-UAV Atmospheric Pollutant Source Tracing Method Based on Gradient Ascent and Physical Kinematics (Public)

    Inventor: Zhenglin Wan, Jun Song, Yibo Xu, Maohao Ran, Yike Guo

White Paper

As these works are presented in China, these names are directly translated from Chinese.

  • White Paper on Cross-Border Economic Large Language Model

📖 Educations

  • Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D)

    National University of Singapore (NUS)

    • Affiliation: Department of Computer Science, School of Computing
    • Advisor: Prof. Yang You

    NUS

  • Bachelor of Science (B.Sc)

    The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)

    • 1-st class honor
    • Major: Statistics & Data Science, GPA: 3.85/4.0, Rank: 7%
    • Completed my undergraduate in CUHK-Shenzhen campus, while the degree is offered by CUHK.

    CUHK(SZ)

💻 Internships and Work Experiences

  • Full-time Research Staff

    Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

    • Affiliation: College of Computing and Data Science (CCDS)
    • Advisor: Prof. Bo An

    NTU

  • Intern (Remote)

    Hong Kong Generative AI Research & Development Center (HKGAI), HKUST

    • Affiliation: HKGAI
    • Director: Prof. Yike Guo
    • Proposed a new product-inspired Agentic Function Calling paradigm ([[CaveAgent]]).

    HKGAI

  • Intern Researcher

    Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore

    • Affiliation: Centre for Frontier AI Research (CFAR), Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC)
    • Advisor: Prof. Ivor Tsang, Dr. Xingrui Yu

    A*STAR

  • Research Assistant

    The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen

    • Affiliation: School of Data Science
    • Advisor: Prof. Jianfeng Mao

    CUHK(SZ)

🎤 Invited Talks

  • Object-Oriented Agent Infrastructure — Invited by Qingke AI Community
  • Stable Online Alignment of Diffusion-based Foundation Model — Invited by Meta (MRS)

🎈 Services

  • Reviewer of AAAI, ICLR, ICML, NeurIPS

🎖 Honors, Awards and Scholarships

  • NUS Research Scholarship (Ph.D stipend and tuition fee subsidy)

  • 1-st class honor undergraduate student awarded by The Chinese University of Hong Kong

  • Yearly Academic Scholarship: B Class (for GPA Top 3%, ￥40000)

  • Yearly Academic Scholarship: C Class (for GPA Top 5%, ￥20000)

  • Yearly Dean List Award (Outstanding 1-st class Performance, for 3 years)

  • Diligentia Bowen Scholarship (￥120000, Undergraduate Admission Scholarship for 1-st prize in Provincial CMO)

  • Zhejiang Guolong Inspirational Scholarship (￥120000, Undergraduate Admission Scholarship for top 0.5% students in Chinese College Entrance Exam)

  • 1st-Prize in Chinese Mathematics Olympiad (CMO)-Chongqing Province

💬 Press/Media

White Paper
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Miscellaneous

  • In my spare time, I’m an music enthusiast. I’ve been playing guitar for more than 10 years and began teaching myself the piano when I was 15. During my undergraduate, I played music in two bands: “Minor Blue” and “Major Pink.” See our photos:
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  • I am also a 15-years chess player, with the honor of “National Level-3 Athlete”. I love the process of comprehensive planning, logical-thinking and reasoning. Visit my Lichess profile.

  • I love play basketball 🏀. Sports makes me energetic.

  • I play video games like League of Legends, where I achieved the “diamond” level as my historically highest honor. I also play 3A games like Elden Ring, Dark Souls, Nier Automata, and elder scrolls.

  • I have a deep interest in philosophy of mind, particularly Buddhism and Taoism, as paths to explore the fundamental nature of human existence. I am also intrigued by the potential integration of these philosophical insights with modern artificial intelligence.