Me
Jiayang Zou
Shanghai Jiao Tong University Shanghai, China
qiudao@sjtu.edu.cn

Biography

I am a third-year M.S. student at Institute of Image Communication and Network Engineering, SJTU, advised by Prof. Jia Wang. During my undergraduate studies, I majored in Information Engineering and minored in Mathematics at SJTU. My research mainly focuses on the intersection of information theory, optimal transport, with their applications in statistics and machine learning. During my graduate period, I was lucky enough to work with Prof. Jia Wang and Prof. Jun Chen. I am currently working with Prof. Sinho Chewi, Prof. Jason Altschuler and Dr. Matthew Shunshi Zhang as a remote collaborator. A public up-to-date resume can be found here. If you are interested to chat with me, feel free to drop me an email.

Interests

  • Information Theory

  • Optimal Transport

  • Sampling Theory

  • Kinetic Theory

Education

Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
  • B.Eng in Information Engineering, Sep. 2019 - Jun. 2023
  • B.S in Mathematics, Sep. 2019 - Jun. 2023
  • Mentor: Prof. Jia Wang

News Recent Updates

Feb 2026 Paper
CVPR 2026 paper accepted.
Congratulations for Dr. Gao and Dr. Zheng !
Feb 2026 Research
Stanford EE PhD offer received.
Starting from Fall 2026. Excited to join the Stanford EE family !

Publications ( / )

paper preview
Convexity of Mutual Information along the Fokker-Planck Flow
Jiayang Zou, Luyao Fan, Jiayang Gao, Jia Wang
ISIT 2025
[Paper] [Full Length Version]
Publication cover
Differential Properties of Information in Jump-diffusion Channels
Luyao Fan, Jiayang Zou, Jiayang Gao, Jia Wang
ISIT 2025
[Paper] [Full Length Version]
Bidirectional Beta-Tuned Diffusion Model
Tianyi Zheng, Jiayang Zou, Peng-Tao Jiang, Hao Zhang, Jinwei Chen, Jia Wang
TPAMI 2026
[Paper]
Publication cover
A Revisit to Rate-distortion Theory via Optimal Weak Transport
Jiayang Zou, Luyao Fan, Jiayang Gao, Jia Wang
Arxiv 2025
[Paper]
Publication cover
On Strong Data Processing Inequalities of Generalized Relative Fisher Information
Jiayang Zou, Luyao Fan, Jiayang Gao, Jia Wang
IEEE TIT Under Review
[Paper]
Publication cover
Rate-distortion Theory with Lower Semi-continuous Distortion: A Concentration-compactness Approach
Jiayang Zou, Luyao Fan, Jiayang Gao, Jia Wang
ISIT 2026 Under Review
[Paper]
C2FG: Control Classifier-Free Guidance via Score Discrepancy Analysis.
Jiayang Gao*, Tianyi Zheng*, Jiayang Zou, Fengxiang Yang, Shice Liu, Luyao Fan, Zheyu Zhang, Hao Zhang, Jinwei Chen, Peng-Tao Jiang, Bo Li, Jia Wang
CVPR 2026 Highlight
[Paper]

Research Experiences

Department of Statistics and Data Science, Yale
ULD Research Intern
Sep, 2025 - Present
Advised by Prof. Sinho Chewi, Prof. Jason Altschuler and Dr. Matthew Shunshi Zhang, my researches focuses on:
  • Differential privacy for noisy gradient descent with momentum via the study of the shifted composition rule applied to underdamped Langevin dynamics.
Institute of Image Communication and Network Engineering, SJTU
Master Student
Sep, 2023 - Present
Advised by Prof. Jia Wang, my researches include:
  • Conducted research on differential properties of information along Fokker-Planck and jump-diffusion channels, including proving the convexity of mutual information along the Fokker-Planck flow under certain conditions.
  • Studied strong data processing inequalities (SDPIs) for generalized Fisher-information-type functionals along Fokker-Planck flows, including the heat flow, the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck flow, and Langevin dynamics.
  • Developed new existence theorem for rate-distortion problems for general sources using the concentration-compactness principle in optimal transport theory.
  • Connected the rate-distortion function with the Schrodinger bridge problem, and established necessary conditions for optimality within the framework of optimal weak transport.

Honors & Awards

The First Prize Scholarship for Graduates of Shanghai Jiao Tong University
top 10% 2025
The First Prize Scholarship for Graduates of Shanghai Jiao Tong University
top 10% 2024
Outstanding Undergraduate Graduate of Shanghai Jiao Tong University
top 5% 2023
The 14th National College Student Mathematical Competition
City level, First Prize 2021
The 13th National College Student Mathematical Competition
Nation level, First Prize (top 0.2%) 2021
The 12th National College Student Mathematical Competition
Nation level, Second Prize (top 0.5%) 2021
Shanghai Jiao Tong University B-Class Excellent Scholarship for Undergraduate
top 5% 2021
The Mathematical Contest in Modeling
World level, Meritorious Winner (First Prize) 2021
Shanghai Jiao Tong University B-Class Excellent Scholarship for Undergraduate
top 5% 2020

Academic Services

Conference Reviewer
International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT)
Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR)
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML)
Journal Reviewer
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (TIT)
IEEE Transactions on Communication (TCOM)
Teaching Assistant
EE 453: Elements of Information Theory, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
ICE 6211: Optimal Transport Theory, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
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