Yang Ni

Yang Ni

UESTC/UofG -> UCSD -> UCI

Yang Ni @ Purdue Northwest

Dr. Ni is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University Northwest, where he leads the Next-gen Efficient & Intelligent Systems (NEXIS) Lab. He received his Ph.D. in June 2025 from the Department of Computer Science, University of California, Irvine (UCI). His research focuses on designing advanced human-like artificial intelligence, and he has made pioneering contributions to neuro-symbolic hyperdimensional computing for ultra-efficient AI algorithms. His work has been recognized with the Best Paper Award at DATE 2022 and published in leading venues including DAC, ICCAD, ECCV, ACM MM, and IEEE TBME. His research has also received significant attention from industry leaders like Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), Intel, IBM, Cisco, and NXP.

NEXIS Lab aims at building efficient, human-like AI systems that integrate diverse modalities and world knowledge for advanced reasoning and trustworthy decision-making in novel computer vision, smart healthcare, industrial AI, and autonomous systems. At NEXIS Lab, we believe that next-generation AI must go beyond accuracy to also deliver interpretability, efficiency, reliability, and readiness for real-world deployment.

At UCI, I was a member of the Bio-Inspired Architecture and Systems Laboratory (BIASLab). I am very fortunate to be advised by Dr. Mohsen Imani. Prior to UCI, I obtained my M.S. in computer engineering from the University of California, San Diego, where I worked with Dr. Tajana Rosing and Dr. Yeseong Kim.

News

  • 2025.08: Dr. Ni joined Purdue University Northwest as an assistant professor of computer science, and he moved to Indiana after spending 6 years in SoCal.
  • 2025.07: One paper, LVLM_CSP: Accelerating Large Vision Language Models via Clustering, Scattering, and Pruning for Reasoning Segmentation, is accepted by ACM MM!
  • 2025.07: One paper, PACKETCLIP : Multi-Modal Embedding of Network Traffic and Language for Cybersecurity Reasoning, is accepted by Frontiers in AI!
  • 2025.06: I received my Ph.D. degree from UC Irvine! Thank you, Prof. Imani!
  • 2025.04: Our paper is accepted by AAAI workshops!
  • 2024.10: One paper, VLTP: Vision-Language Guided Token Pruning for Task-Oriented Segmentation, is accepted by WACV’25!
  • 2024.08: One paper, Recoverable Anonymization for Pose Estimation: A Privacy-Enhancing Approach, is accepted by WACV’25!
  • 2024.07: One paper, Taskclip: Extend large vision-language model for task oriented object detection, is accepted by FOCUS Workshop@ECCV’24!
  • 2024.07: One paper, Intelligent Sensing Framework: Near-Sensor Machine Learning for Efficient Data Transmission, is accepted by IEEE Sensors!
  • 2024.05: One paper, Hyperdimensional Brain-Inspired Learning for Phoneme Recognition With Large-Scale Inferior Colliculus Neural Activities, is accepted by IEEE TBME!
  • 2024.04: One paper accepted by GLSVLSI’24, and I received the NSF Student Travel Grant!
  • 2024.04: One paper accepted by FCCM’24!
  • 2024.01: One paper accepted by CICC’24!
  • 2023.10: I received the ICCAD Student Scholar Program Grant!
  • 2023.07: One paper presented at IJCAI’23!
  • 2023.06: One paper, Brain-inspired Trustworthy Hyperdimensional Computing with Efficient Uncertainty Quantification, is accepted by ICCAD’23!
  • 2023.04: One paper accepted by GLSVLSI’23!
  • 2023.03: Two posters presented at DATE’23!
  • 2022.06: Two papers accepted by ICCAD’22!
  • 2022.04: Two papers accepted by DAC’22!
  • 2022.03: My paper, Algorithm-hardware Co-design for Efficient Brain-inspired Hyperdimensional Learning on Edge, received the Best Paper Award at DATE’22!
  • 2021.11: Two papers accepted by DATE’22!