I’m a tenure track assistant professor at the School of Data Science and Society in University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I received my Ph.D. from Department of Computer Science at University of California, Los Angeles. I have been fortunate to be advised by Prof. Quanquan Gu. I received my B.E. form Department of Automation, Tsinghua University and M.Sc. during my Ph.D. career. You can find my latest CV here.

Feel free to booking me an appointment my calendar if you would like to talk with me!

Research Interests

My research is centered around machine learning with particular interests in reinforcement learning. My research goal is to develop and understand the foundation of decision making processes for complicated tasks such as LLM, agentic systems and structural design. I’m also interested in developing AI agents for scientific (chemistry, physics) tasks (I’m also looking forward for more interdisplinary collaborations!). See my Research for a detailed description.

I’m actively seeking for highly motivated student to work with me:

• Prospective interns, Current UNC undergrad / grad students / Postdocs: Please fill out this form (feel free to skip some optional questions) and/or email me at weitongz [at] unc [dot] edu.

Recent News

Latest Update @ 2025-03

• [2025-03] We have been awarded an NVIDIA Academic Grant.
• [2024-05] I’ve successfully defended my dissertation (slides). I appreciate the constant support of all my committee members.
• [2024-04] I will be joining UNC SDSS as a tenure track assistant professor.
• [2023-06] It is my great fortune to have been awarded the UCLA Dissertation Year Fellowship.

Travel

I love traveling a lot, here is my first visitation to each state (not including the ‘connection airports’ like Houston IAH)