PhD Student Admissions at the University of Central Florida

April 23, 2025
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Scholarship: Fully-funded
Degree: Bachelor, Master
Nationality: International Students
Location: USA
Application deadlines: Open

Scholarship Description:

Yuzhang Shang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Artificial Intelligence Initiative (Aii) at the University of Central Florida. He holds dual bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics and Economics from Wuhan University and earned his Ph.D. from the Illinois Institute of Technology under Prof. Yan Yan. His primary research focus is on Efficient and Scalable AI technologies. During his four years as a Ph.D. candidate, he published 16 papers at top conferences, including CVPR (6), NeurIPS (3), ICLR (1), ICCV (2), ECCV (3), and ICRA (1), with nine as the first author. He spent a year as a visiting student in Prof. Yong Jae Lee’s lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (known for LLaVA). He has multiple internships at Cisco Research and Google DeepMind, bringing extensive industry experience.

For more information, visit his homepage: Yuzhang Shang

The University of Central Florida (UCF), established in 1963, is currently the largest public university in the U.S. and one of the three major optical centers in the country. It is classified as an R1 research university. UCF ranks approximately 55th overall in the U.S. (42nd in Artificial Intelligence and 8th in Computer Vision).

Located in beautiful Orlando, UCF is near some of the best vacation destinations in the U.S., including Disney and Universal Studios. The cost of living and housing is reasonable, with many Asian grocery stores available, making life convenient in a pleasant climate.

Notable high-tech companies such as AMD, Siemens, Texas Instruments, Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi, General Motors, and Amazon have branches in Orlando and maintain close collaborations with UCF, offering numerous quality internships and job opportunities. Orlando is situated in Florida’s high-tech corridor, featuring top-tier defense, aerospace, modeling and simulation, and the high-tech media and entertainment industries.

Available Subjects:

  • 1.  Efficient/Scalable AI
  • 2.  Visual Generative Model Acceleration
  • 3.  Efficient (Visual, Language, and Multimodal) Large Models
  • 4.  Neural Network Compression
  • 5.  Efficient Training for Neural Networks
  • 6.  AI4Science

Eligibility criteria:

  • Highly motivated, curious, with a solid foundation in coding and mathematics.
  • Relevant undergraduate or master’s degrees include Computer Science, Mathematics, or related fields.
  • Ph.D. enrollment is set for January 2026. Suitable candidates will be supported in applying for full scholarships. Competitive postdoctoral fellowship, funding, or visiting scholar applications are also welcome.

Application Procedure:

Please email [email protected] with the following attachments:

  1. Resume (in English)
  2. Transcripts (Bachelor’s and Master’s)
  3. Representative academic papers or research outlines (if available)