Zhenglin (Carlos) Wan

Zhenglin (Carlos) Wan

😊 About me

Contact: vanzl3386 [at] gmail.com (main), 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).

My research is driven by the curiosity of genuinely understanding (both theoretically and intuitively) the rationale, spirit and failure modes of ML algorithms and methods, rather than merely improving the benchmark scores. In this mode, insight should be the first product and the novelty is naturally derived from it. I am recently working on fundamental side of Multi-modal generation, RL Post-training and Physical AI. Particularly:

  • Diffusion(flow) models and Reinforcement Learning (Diffusion RL), and develop efficient, scalable and stable post-training for diffusion-based generative models (such as text/image/video/audio/policy/omni generation)
  • Unified autoregressive reasoning and diffusion-based generation
  • Extending these methods and insights to interactive video generation and world/action models for Physical AI
  • Agentic workflow (for both LLM Agent and Video Gen)

I like intellectual games in my spare time: I am a 17-years chess player as National Chess Athlete of China, and have won the 1-st prize in Chinese Mathematics Olympiad (CMO)-1st round by 1-year’s part-time self-training. I am also an music player (playing guitar/piano/keyboards in several bands).

I always enjoy working with talents, academic collaboration/industrial opportunities/VCs are welcomed to 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 invited by Meta MRS (topic: 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 providing a new perspective 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 (Evolutionary Strategy for Quality Diversity RL) is accepted by ICML 2025.
  • 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.

📖 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)-1st round

💬 Press/Media

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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 17-years chess player, with the honor of “National Athlete”. I love the process of comprehensive planning, logical-thinking and reasoning. Visit my Lichess profile.

  • 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.