About Me

Hi, welcome to my academic homepage!

I’m Yao Zhou (周尧), currently an Associate Professor with Machine Intelligence Lab, College of Computer Science, Sichuan University. I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from Sichuan University in 2019, under the supervision of Prof. Yi Zhang (IEEE Fellow).

From Aug 2017 to Feb 2019, I was a Visiting Researcher sponsored by China Scholarship Council (CSC) at Oklahoma State University, USA, where I collaborated with Prof. Gary G. Yen (IEEE Fellow).

Email: yaozhou@scu.edu.cn

Research Interest

My primary research areas are neural networks, evolutionary computation and their applications. I’m currently recruiting highly self-motivated PhD and master’s students to work on topics including, but not limited to, generative models, model acceleration and automated artificial intelligence.

Selected Publications

• EW2A: Evolutionary Window Attention Adaptation for Medical Image Segmentation[J]
  Haonan Mei, Yao Zhou
  IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence, 2026
  DOI:10.1109/TETCI.2026.3663485

• Multi-Teacher Temporal Regulation Network for Surgical Workflow Recognition[J]
  Kaide Huang, Xiang-Lei Yuan, Rui-De Liu, Lian-Song Ye, Yao Zhou, Bing Hu, Zhang Yi
  IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 2025
  DOI:10.1109/TMI.2025.3580082

• Efficient Fine-tuning of Vision Transformers via Path-augmented Parameter Adaptation[J]
  Yao Zhou, Zhang Yi, Gary G. Yen
  Information Sciences, 2025
  DOI:10.1016/J.INS.2025.121948

• Low-rank interconnected adaptation across layers[C]
  Yibo Zhong, Jinman Zhao, Yao Zhou
  Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2025
  DOI:10.18653/v1/2025.findings-acl.874

• Rethinking Low-Rank Adaptation in Vision: Exploring Head-Level Responsiveness Across Diverse Tasks[C]
  Yibo Zhong, Yao Zhou
  IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), 2025
  10.1109/WACV61041.2025.00756

• Multi-Scale Periodic Residual State Space Model for Time Series Forecasting[C]
  Jiqing Wang, Nianping Qin, Yao Zhou
  International Conference on Intelligent Computing (ICIC), 2025
  DOI:10.1007/978-981-95-0006-2_36

• KFC: A Kalman Filtering Correction Method for Diffusion Model Acceleration[C]
  Junji Gong, Yao Zhou
  International Conference on Intelligent Computing (ICIC), 2025
  DOI:10.1007/978-981-96-9911-7_34

• EIVS: Unpaired Endoscopy Image Virtual Staining via State Space Generative Model[C]
  Yizhou Liu, Xianglei Yuan, Yao Zhou
  IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (BIBM), 2024
  DOI:10.1109/BIBM62325.2024.10822811

• Channel Independent Attention Network for Electricity Theft Detection[C]
  Nianping Qin, Yao Zhou
  IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC), 2024
  DOI:10.1109/SMC54092.2024.10831152

• Self-Supervised Feature Representation Distillation for Esophageal Cancer Screening[C]
  Xiaoyu Yan, Yao Zhou, Zhang Yi
  IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), 2024
  DOI:10.1109/IJCNN60899.2024.10650193

• Multi-Objective Evolutionary Generative Adversarial Network Compression for Image Translation[J]
  Yao Zhou, Bing Hu, Xianglei Yuan, Kaide Huang, Zhang Yi, Gary G. Yen
  IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 2024
  DOI:10.1109/TEVC.2023.3261135

• Evolutionary Neural Architecture Search for Automatic Esophageal Lesion Identification and Segmentation[J]
  Yao Zhou, Xianglei Yuan, Xiaozhi Zhang, Wei Liu, Yu Wu, Gary G. Yen, Bing Hu, Zhang Yi
  IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence, 2022
  DOI:10.1109/TAI.2021.3134600

• Artificial intelligence for diagnosing gastric lesions under white-light endoscopy[J]
  Xianglei Yuan, Yao Zhou, Wei Liu, Qi Luo, Xian-Hui Zeng, Zhang Yi, Bing Hu
  Surgical Endoscopy, 2022
  DOI:10.1007/s00464-022-09420-6

• Artificial intelligence-based assessments of colonoscopic withdrawal technique: a new method for measuring and enhancing the quality of fold examination[J]
  Wei Liu, Yu Wu, Xianglei Yuan, Jingyu Zhang, Yao Zhou, Wanhong Zhang, Peipei Zhu, Zhang Tao, Long He, Bing Hu, Zhang Yi
  Endoscopy, 2022
  DOI:10.1055/a-1799-8297

• Evolutionary Shallowing Deep Neural Networks at Block Levels[J]
  Yao Zhou, Gary G. Yen, Zhang Yi
  IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, 2021
  DOI:10.1109/TNNLS.2021.3059529

• Evolutionary Compression of Deep Neural Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation[J]
  Yao Zhou, Gary G. Yen, Zhang Yi
  IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, 2020
  DOI:10.1109/TNNLS.2019.2933879

• A Knee-Guided Evolutionary Algorithm for Compressing Deep Neural Networks[J]
  Yao Zhou, Gary G. Yen, Zhang Yi
  IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, 2019
  DOI:10.1109/TCYB.2019.2928174

• Cell Mitosis Detection using Deep Neural Networks[J]
  Yao Zhou, Hua Mao, Zhang Yi
  Knowledge-Based Systems, 2017
  DOI:10.1016/j.knosys.2017.08.016

Research Projects

• Evolutionary Multiobjective Acceleration of Generative Models, National Natural Science Foundation of China (国家自然科学基金,面上项目)
• Evolutionary Neural Network Compression, National Natural Science Foundation of China (国家自然科学基金,青年基金)
• Evolutionary Neural Network Models, National Postdoctoral Program for Innovative Talents (国家博新计划)

Teaching

• GPU Programming, Undergraduate level, Spring 2021-2026
• Freshman Seminar, Undergraduate level, Fall 2022-2026
• Artificial Intelligence Literacy, Undergraduate level, Fall 2024-2026
• Probability and Statistics, International undergraduate students, Spring 2022-2026
• Program Design Fundamentals, International undergraduate students, Spring 2023
• Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Graduate level, Spring 2022-2026
• Neural Networks and Machine Intelligence, Graduate level, Fall 2024-2026

Academic Service

• IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, Reviewer
• IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, Reviewer
• IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, Reviewer
• IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, Reviewer
• IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems, Reviewer
• IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence, AE
• IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence, Reviewer
• ACM Computing Surveys, Reviewer
• Information Fusion, Reviewer
• Information Sciences, Reviewer
• Applied Soft Computing, Reviewer
• Knowledge-Based Systems, Reviewer

Others

• Council Member, Sichuan Institute of Artificial Intelligence (SCIAI), 2022

• Session Chair, “Biometrics, Bioinformatics and Biomedical Applications I” at 2018 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC 2018), 8-13 July, 2018, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

• IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Conference Travel Grant, 2018

• Volunteer, IEEE Teacher In-Service Program (TISP) Training Workshop (Page 5)
  6-7 Aug 2016, Bangkok, Thailand