Zixu Wu

B.S. in Mathematics Sun Yat-sen University Contact: wuzx35@alumni.sysu.edu.cn zixu.wu@mbzuai.ac.ae OpenReview

Short Bio

I am currently a Full-time Research Engineer in the Computing and Mathematical Science Division at MBZUAI, working with Prof. Zhiqiang Xu. I earned my B.S. in Mathematics (Information and Computing Science) from Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU,中山大学) in 2025, recognized as an Outstanding Graduate (top 5%).

Research Interests

Research Experience

• Full-time Research Engineer, 2026 - now; Research Intern (Remote), 2024 - 2026

  • Supervised by Prof. Zhiqiang Xu (MBZUAI);

  • Riemannian Optimization, Muon, Dataset Distillation, Matrix Analysis.

• Research Intern (Remote), 2025 - now;

  • Supervised by Prof. Difan Zou (HKU);

  • Theoretical Analysis of Diffusion Models and Flow Matching, Non-Log-Concave Sampling, Functional Inequalities.

Publications

Accepted papers

• Geometry-aware (1+1)-ES for Black-Box Optimization with Intrinsic Dimension Guarantees. NeurIPS 2026

• Path-Guided Flow Matching for Dataset Distillation. NeurIPS 2026

• No-U-Turn Hamiltonian Optimization. NeurIPS 2026 Workshop on DynaFront

• Beyond Sharpness: Two Local Stability Edges in Practical Muon. NeurIPS 2026 Workshop on DynaFront

In submissions

• Query Complexity of Silver Stepsizes in Noisy Gradient Descent. submitted to AISTATS 2027

• QuantRet: Quantization-Robust Language Model Pretraining via Geometric Retractions. submitted to ICLR 2027

• Beyond Uniform Lipschitzness: Pathwise Jacobian Stability for Flow Matching Samplers. submitted to ICLR 2027

• Sparse and Low-Rank Adaptation: Allocation, Calibration, and Knowledge Retention. submitted to TMLR

Honors and Awards (Selected)

• Outstanding Graduate Award (top 5%), Sun Yat-sen University.

• First-Class Scholarship (top 5%), Sun Yat-sen University.

• Moral Integrity Scholarship, Sun Yat-sen University.

• Finalist (<1%) in Mathematical/Interdisciplinary Contest In Modeling in the United States.

Relevant Coursework (Selected)

• Analysis & Equations

  • Mathematical Analysis II (94), Geometry and Algebra II (94), Partial Differential Equations (91), Functional Analysis (90), Complex Analysis(Grad, 93), Harmonic Analysis(Grad, 98)

• Algorithm & Numerics

  • Advanced Language Programming (92), Algorithm Design and Analysis (94), Algorithm Design and Analysis Laboratory (96), Discrete Mathematics (94), Intelligent Algorithms and Applications (99), Numerical Linear Algebra (99), Numerical Solution of Differential Equations (93), Advanced Numerical Analysis (Grad, 96)

• Stat & Data Science

  • Introduction to Statistics (96), Mathematical Statistics (96), Time Series Analysis (89), Operations Research (94), Stochastic Processes (92), College Physics (for Science) II (93), Advanced Statistics and Statistical Computation (Grad, 89), Optimization Theory and Methods (Grad, 92), Mathematical Foundations of Sparse Information Processing (Grad, 99), Data Mining (Grad, 91), Machine Learning (Grad, 90), Deep Learning (Grad, 92), Frontiers of Artificial Intelligence (Grad, 95), Advanced Artificial Intelligence (Grad, 94)

Teaching Experience

• Teaching Assistant, ML8501 Algorithms for Big Data.

  • MBZUAI (Fall 2026);

  • Instructor: Prof. Zhiqiang Xu.

• Teaching Assistant, MAZ344 Optimization.

  • Sun Yat-sen University (Spring 2025);

  • Instructor: Prof. Haifeng Liu.

  • Assisted the professor with comprehensive course support, including conducting weekly tutorial sessions, designing and grading assignments and exams, proctoring, and holding weekly office hours.

Programming Skills

• Python, MATLAB, LaTeX

Miscellaneous

• During my undergraduate at SYSU, I used to served as the Class President. I participated in the founding of the SYSU Fitness and Health Association and held the position of Vice President for Publicity.

• I deeply admire Gustav Mahler(马勒)'s symphonic works, with special appreciation for his Symphonies No. 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, and The song of the Earth.