team

opening

I am recruiting for two kinds of positions in my group at HKBU CS:

  • Ph.D. students — multiple openings starting Fall 2026 and Spring 2027, fully funded.
  • Research Assistants (RAs) — short-term positions, remote or onsite at HKBU, on a 3- or 6-month term. Open to senior undergraduates, master’s students, or recent graduates. A good fit if you want to try out research before committing to a Ph.D., build a paper around a concrete project, or strengthen your application for the next admissions cycle.

We work on the algorithmic foundations of two networks that will shape the next decade — quantum networks that distribute entanglement across distant nodes, and agentic networks of AI/LLM agents — held together by a shared methodology in online learning and sequential decision-making under uncertainty.

Research directions include:

  • Quantum Networking — algorithms for the future quantum internet

    • Entanglement routing and resource allocation
    • Quantum network tomography, evaluation, and monitoring
    • Quantum-enhanced sequential decision-making and learning

  • Agentic Networking — learning algorithms for networked AI agents

    • Multi-agent online and reinforcement learning (communication-efficient, heterogeneous, asynchronous)
    • LLM-agent coordination, alignment, and evaluation from interactive feedback
    • Provable guarantees under adversarial or strategic agents

  • Online Learning Foundations — the methodology underpinning both pillars

    • Robustness to adversarial / corrupted / multi-modal feedback
    • Multi-fidelity and human-in-the-loop learning

Ideal background: strong fundamentals in probability, optimization, or theoretical CS; experience with one of RL/bandits, networking/systems, or quantum information is a plus but not required — what matters most is mathematical maturity and curiosity.

How to apply: email me at xuchuangw [@] comp [dot] hkbu [dot] edu [dot] hk with one of the following subject lines:

  • “Application for Ph.D. in [Start Cycle]” — e.g., Application for Ph.D. in Fall 2026
  • “Application for RA ([Remote/Onsite], [3/6] months, [Start Month])” — e.g., Application for RA (Remote, 3 months, Jul 2026)

Please include:

  • A short paragraph on your research interests (and which direction above resonates with you)
  • CV
  • Transcripts
  • (Optional) any paper, project, or note you are proud of

I read every inquiry. I apologize in advance if I cannot personally reply to each due to volume — a non-reply is never a rejection of your potential.

mentoring

Note: bold venue names indicate that the mentored student is the first author; I am typically the second or third author.

University of Massachusetts Amherst — CICS (with Prof. Don Towsley and Prof. Mohammad Hajiesmaili)

  • Fatemeh Ghaffari (Ph.D. student, UMass Amherst, with Prof. Hajiesmaili), 2024–Present: L4DC’25, ICML’26 (in submission), KDD’26 (in submission)
  • Amirmahdi Mirfakhar (Ph.D. student, UMass Amherst, with Prof. Hajiesmaili), 2023–Present: AAAI’25, ICML’26 (in submission)
  • Janice Y.Z. Chen (Ph.D. student, UMass Amherst, with Prof. Towsley), 2022–Present: QCNC’26, SIGMETRICS’25, AAAI’25, UAI’23, ICLR’23, AISTATS’23
  • Matheus Andrade (Ph.D. student, UMass Amherst, with Prof. Towsley), 2023–Present: QCNC’26, AAAI’25, npj QI (in submission)
  • Anvi Gunjikar (Undergraduate, UMass Amherst, with Prof. Hajiesmaili), 2025–Present
  • Ezra R. Johnson (Undergraduate, Caltech, with Prof. Hajiesmaili), 2026–Present
  • Richard Lin (Undergraduate, UMass Amherst), 2026–Present

Chinese University of Hong Kong — CSE (with Prof. John C.S. Lui)

  • Maoli Liu (Ph.D. student, CUHK), 2023–Present: INFOCOM’25, ICLR’25, INFOCOM’26
  • Xiangxiang Dai (Ph.D. student, CUHK), 2024–Present: AAAI’26
  • Yu Jiang (Ph.D. student, CUHK), 2025–Present

City University of Hong Kong — CS (with Prof. Jinhang Zuo)

  • Qirun Zeng (Ph.D. student, CityU), 2024–Present: ICML’25, ICML’26 (in submission, ×2)

Nanjing University — SIST (with Prof. Lin Yang)

  • Haoran Zhang (Ph.D. student, NJU), 2023–Present: NeurIPS’25, UAI’25
  • Jingyuan Liu (Undergraduate, NJU), 2023–Present: ICML’26 (in submission), KDD’26 (in submission)

Shanghai Jiao Tong University — John Hopcroft Center (with Prof. Shuai Li)

  • Zichun Ye (Master’s student, SJTU), 2025–Present: ICML’26 (in submission)
  • Runqi Wang (Undergraduate, SJTU), 2025–Present: ICML’26 (in submission)