DeepThink Lab

Think Deep, Bold, and Different.

Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Michigan, College of Engineering

About the Lab

Broadly speaking, our research interest lies in the intersection of signal processing, data science, machine learning, and numerical optimization. In particular, we are interested in computational methods for learning low-complexity models from high-dimensional data. The current research of our group focuses on (i) the foundations of generative AI (Slides), (ii) deep representation learning (Slides-1, Slides-2), and (iii) machine learning for scientific applications.

Recent Highlights & Upcoming Events

Upcoming Workshop: Co-organizing DeLTa 2026 workshop (Deep Generative Model in Machine Learning: Theory, Principle and Efficacy) at ICLR'26
Upcoming Lectures: Giving 3 Lectures at IAISS'25: (Lecture I, Lecture II, Lecture III)
OCT 2025 Tutorial (Website): Presenting a full-day tutorial at ICCV’25 on “Learning Deep Low-Dimensional Models from High-Dimensional Data: From Theory to Practice“,  together with Profs. Yi MaLiyue ShenAtlas WangZhihui Zhu , and Dr. Sam Buchanan
Jul 2025 Tutorial (Website): Presenting a 2.5-hour tutorial at ICML’25 on “Harnessing Low Dimensionality in Diffusion Models: From Theory to Practice” with Prof. Liyue Shen and Prof. Yuxin Chen
Jun 2025 Award: Received the Google Research Scholar Award in machine learning
May 2025 Group Member News: our lab members (1) Yifu Lu will be joining Princeton ECE as a PhD student, (2) Jinfan Zhou will be joining UChicago CS as a PhD student, (3) Pengyu Li will be joining Duke ECE as a PhD student, (4) Siyi Chen will be joining UMich ECE as a PhD student, (5) Dr. Peng Wang will be joining University of Macau as an assistant professor in Fall 2025.
Apr 2025 SIAM News Article on understanding generalization of diffusion models (news)
Mar 2025 Group Member News: Congrats to Can Yaras and Siyi Chen on receiving the Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship! (news1, news2)