Hi! I’m Zhi.

I am a PhD student at UC San Diego advised by Tianhao Wang.

My research interests center on model training, both on the theoretical side, such as optimizer dynamics and representations, and on practical aspects like reinforcement learning and training system optimization/scale. I especially enjoy applying training ideas in the context of Lean.

If possible, I would love to learn more about robotics, especially foundational model training.

Publications

• Lee Eon, Andrés R. Vindas-Meléndez, and Zhi Wang. Generalized Snake Posets, Order Polytopes, and Lattice-Point Enumeration. Discrete Mathematics (2026): 115072. We derived the Ehrhart and h-star polynomials for the generalized snake posets, with closed-form formulae for the two extreme cases, and obtained a monotonicity result using a novel technique that bridges combinatorics and lattice polytopes, extending several previous results.

People I’ve worked with

Tianhao Wang, Difan Zou, Andrés R. Vindas Meléndez, Eon Lee, Quan Wen, Misha Belkin.

Huge thanks to all my mentors and collaborators! Here is my CV. (last updated: Apr 2026)