Profile & Research

I develop efficient and trustworthy machine learning methods that learn robust representations from multi-source data, with applications in intelligent communications and industrial systems.

I am an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Graduate Program Director for the M.S. program at Old Dominion University, where I joined in July 2021. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island in May 2021, advised by Prof. Haibo He, and my B.S. (2014) and M.S. (2017) in Computer Science and Technology from Zhongnan University of Economics and Law.

Research Themes

• Multimodal Learning & Knowledge Transfer — Multi-view and multimodal learning, graph learning, pretrained models, domain adaptation and generalization, and few-shot and zero-shot learning.

• Trustworthy & Secure AI — Adversarial attacks and defenses, and backdoor attacks and mitigation.

• AI-driven Intelligent Communications — Semantic communications and dynamic spectrum management

Honors & Research Funding

Selected Honors

• 2026 Distinguished Early Career Research Award, College of Sciences, ODU. 

• AAAI 2026 Outstanding Program Committee Award (Top 0.16%, 42/26,421).

• Gabron Family Graduate Fellowship Scholarship Award, URI, 03/2021. 

• Kenneth J. & Virginia E. Hylander Graduate Engineering Fellowship Scholarship Award, URI, 03/2021. 

• Outstanding Graduate Researcher Award, URI, 02/2021. 

Research Funding & Fellowships

• Physics-Aware Guardrails for Real-Time Integrity Protection of AI-Driven Scientific Workflows, DOE Genesis Mission, $730K, Role: Co-PI.

• 2026 NSF CISE Research Experience for Undergraduates Student Funding Award, $10K, 05/2026 - 05/2027. Role: Sole-PI.

• Securing Clustered Semantic Communications in Agentic AI Systems, COVACCI, $80K, 04/2026 - 03/2027. Role: PI.

• Quantitative Assessment of Hybrid Infrastructure for AI-Enabled, Multi-Disciplinary Coastal Resilience under Recurrent Tidal Flooding, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, $31K. Role: Co-PI.

• Towards Trustworthy Coastal Health Intelligence: A Provenance-Aware Knowledge Graph for Coastal Hazards and Community Health Integration, ICAR 2026, $31K Role: Co-PI.

• Cyber-Resilient Multi-Sensor Radiation Monitoring for High-Energy Accelerators, CCI, $100K, 01/2026 - 12/2026. Role: Co-PI.

• Toward Integrated Security and Privacy Solutions for Multi-Modal AI, COVACCI, $60K, 01/2025 - 01/2026. Role: PI.

• Trustworthy AI in the Data Revolution for Adaptation and Resilience in Coastal Communities, ICAR 2025, $31K. Role: Co-PI.

• A Compound AI System for Transportation Resilience Management in Flood-Prone Coastal Areas, ICAR 2025, $31K. Role: Co-PI.

• Faculty Proposal Preparation Program (FP3) Award, ODU, 08/2024 - 05/2025. Role: Sole-PI.

• Cheng Fund for Innovative Research Award, COS, ODU, $15K,  05/2024-08/2025. Role: Sole-PI.

• CRII: CNS: Towards Robust and Efficient Dynamic Spectrum Sharing with Knowledge Transfer, NSF, $175K, 10/2023 - 09/2026. Role: Sole-PI.

• TrustAI: enhancing human confidence and trust in AI models, CCI, $60K, 12/2022 - 08/2025. Role: Co-PI.

• Summer Research Fellowship Program (SRFP) 2022 Award, ODU, 05/2022-08/2022. Role: Sole-PI.

• Provost's Initiative for Retention of Underrepresented Faculty (PI-RUF) Award, ODU, $10K, Role: Sole-PI. 

We gratefully acknowledge the support from: