Yufei Ding is the founder of PICASSO Lab. Yufei received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from North Carolina State University, and B.S. in Physics from the University of Science and Technology of China. Yufei’s research interests lie in the broad fields of domain-specific language design, architecture and compiler optimization, and hardware acceleration.

Yue Guan is a postdoctoral scholar working with Prof. Yufei Ding in the Department of Computer Science at UC San Diego. He received his PhD from the Department of Computer Science at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, in 2024. He obtained his M.S. in Integrated System from Waseda University, Japan, in 2019. Yue’s research interests focus on efficient machine learning, particularly the co-design of model compression and ML systems.

Zhengding Hu is a postdoctoral scholar working with Prof. Yufei Ding in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at UC San Diego. He received his PhD in Computer Science and Technology from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2025, and his M.S. from Tsinghua University in 2022. His research interests focus on high-performance computing and system optimization for machine learning workloads.

Yanju Chen is a postdoctoral scholar working with Prof. Yufei Ding in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at UC San Diego. He earned his PhD degree from the Department of Computer Science at UC Santa Barbara. Yanju develops formal and synthesis-based methods for building trustworthy, performant, and secure programming abstractions, with applications in zero-knowledge proofs, smart contract verification, and data-centric systems.

Hezi Zhang is a fifth-year Ph.D. student working with Prof. Yufei Ding on quantum computing in the computer science department of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Her research goal is to tap into the computational power of matter allowed by quantum laws and facilitate the acceleration and scaling of quantum computing through algorithm and system design.

Zheng Wang is a fifth-year Ph.D. student, working with Prof. Yufei Ding, at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, UC San Diego. He began his PhD studies at UCSB in 2021 and moved to UCSD in the fall of 2023. His research interests include high-performance system design and end-to-end optimization for deep learning  (especially recommendation systems and LLM).

Keyi Yin is a fourth-year Ph.D. student working with Prof. Yufei Ding at the University of California, San Diego, starting in 2023. He received his B.S. degree from the University of Science and Technology of China. Keyi’s current research area is quantum computing system designs, especially quantum error correction code (QEC) based quantum computing optimizations.

Xiang Fang is a second-year Ph.D. student working with Professor Yufei Ding at the University of California, San Diego, starting in Fall 2024. He holds a B.S. degree in Mathematics from Zhejiang University and an M.A. degree in Financial Mathematics from Columbia University. Previously, he was a Ph.D. student in Statistics at UC Santa Barbara before switching his focus to quantum computing. Xiang’s current research focuses on quantum error correction (QEC).

Jixuan Ruan is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Computer Science department at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), working with Professor Yufei Ding. She earned her B.S. degree from the University of Science and Technology of China. Her current research focuses on quantum computing system designs, especially on accelerating and scaling quantum computing through innovative algorithms.

Zaifeng Pan is a second-year PhD student at UCSD, working with Prof. Yufei Ding. He received his MS from Renmin University of China and his BE from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His current research interests include machine learning systems and compilers.

Zhongkai Yu is a second-year PhD student at University of California, San Diego, working with Prof. Yufei Ding. He received his M.S. degree from Institute of Computing Technology Chinese Academy of Sciences and his B.S. degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His current research focuses on computer architecture and machine learning systems.

Zhuo Chen is a first-year Ph.D. student working with Professor Yufei Ding at the University of California, San Diego, starting in Fall 2025. He earned his B.S. degree from Tsinghua University. His current research focus on quantum computing system designs.

Yichen Lin is a first-year Ph.D. student at the University of California, San Diego, starting in Fall 2025, working with Professor Yufei Ding. He earned his B.S. degree in Computer Science and Technology from Tsinghua University. His current research focuses on AI for Science and efficient machine learning systems.