I am a computer science PhD student at the University of California, San Diego, advised by Rose Yu. I received my Master’s degree in computer science from Georgia Institute of Technology, and Bachelor degrees in computer science and physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

I am interested in mathematical structures in deep learning. Currently, I am studying symmetries in the parameter space of neural networks, as well as their impact on optimization, generalization, and the loss landscape.

Publications

Preprints

• Emergence of Hierarchical Emotion Representations in Large Language Models
  Bo Zhao, Maya Okawa, Eric J. Bigelow, Rose Yu, Tomer Ullman, Hidenori Tanaka
  In submission.
  Workshop version to appear at SciForDL 2024.
  [pdf] [project page]

• Finding Symmetry in Neural Network Parameter Spaces
  Bo Zhao, Nima Dehmamy, Robin Walters, Rose Yu
  In submission.
  Workshop version to appear at UniReps 2024.

• Understanding Mode Connectivity via Parameter Space Symmetry
  Bo Zhao, Nima Dehmamy, Robin Walters, Rose Yu
  In submission.
  Workshop version appeared at UniReps 2023.

Conference

• Understanding the Difficulty of Solving Cauchy Problems with PINNs
  Tao Wang, Bo Zhao, Sicun Gao, Rose Yu
  Proceedings of The 6th Annual Learning for Dynamics and Control Conference (L4DC), 2024
  [arXiv]

• Improving Convergence and Generalization Using Parameter Symmetries
  Bo Zhao, Robert M. Gower, Robin Walters, Rose Yu
  International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2024 (Oral presentation)
  [arXiv] [code]

• DYffusion: A Dynamics-informed Diffusion Model for Spatiotemporal Forecasting
  Salva Rühling Cachay, Bo Zhao, Hailey Joren, Rose Yu
  Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2023
  [arXiv] [code] [blog]

• Symmetries, Flat Minima, and the Conserved Quantities of Gradient Flow
  Bo Zhao*, Iordan Ganev*, Robin Walters, Rose Yu, Nima Dehmamy (*equal contribution)
  International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2023
  [arXiv] [code]

• Symmetry Teleportation for Accelerated Optimization
  Bo Zhao, Nima Dehmamy, Robin Walters, Rose Yu
  Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2022
  [arXiv] [code] [video]

• LIMO: Latent Inceptionism for Targeted Molecule Generation
  Peter Eckmann, Kunyang Sun, Bo Zhao, Mudong Feng, Michael Gilson, Rose Yu
  International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2022
  [paper] [code] [video] [website]

• Concentric Spherical Neural Network for 3D Representation Learning
  James Fox, Bo Zhao, Beatriz Gonzalez Del Rio, Sivasankaran Rajamanickam, Rampi Ramprasad, Le Song
  International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), 2022
  [paper] [pdf] [code]

Journal

• Multiple Aging Mechanisms in Ferroelectric Deuterated Potassium Dihydrogen Phosphate
  Gregory A. Fields, Samuel F. Cieszynski, Bo Zhao, Kidan A. Tadesse, Mohammed A. Sheikh, Eugene V Colla, and M. B. Weissman.
  Journal of Applied Physics 125, 194102, 2019
  [paper] [pdf]

Teaching

• Teaching Assistant, CS 4641 Machine Learning, Georgia Tech (Fall 2020)

• Lead Course Assistant, CS 225 Data Structures, UIUC (Spring 2019)

• Course Assistant, CS 225 Data Structures, UIUC (Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018)

Academic Service

• Student Program and Funding Chair, WiML Workshop at NeurIPS 2024

• Workshop Chair Assistant, NeurIPS 2024

• Reviewer: ICML (2022–2024), NeurIPS (2022–2024), ICLR (2024–2025), AISTATS (2024–2025), AAAI (2025), TMLR (2024)

Experience

• NTT Research, Research Intern, 2024.6–2024.9

• IBM, AI Intern, 2022.6–2022.9

Honors and Awards

• Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship finalist, 2024

• DeepMind PhD Fellowship, 2023

Education

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of California San Diego, 2021–present

• M.S. in Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019–2021

• B.S. in Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2016–2019

• B.S. in Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2016–2019