Established @ USTC · 2025

Exploring the frontiers of Large Language Models, Multimodal AI, and Intelligent Recommendation — building AI systems that are capable, aligned, and beneficial.

NeurIPSICLR ICMLKDD ACLSIGIR WWWCVPR

About AlphaLab

AlphaLab is an AI research group at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), led by Prof. An Zhang at the School of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science (SAIDS). The lab was officially established in September 2025.

We work at the frontier of Foundation Models — large language models and diffusion models — with a focus on understanding their capabilities, reasoning, and alignment. Our research bridges theoretical insights with real-world applications in Personalization, Agentic AI, and Trustworthy AI.

We collaborate closely with leading research groups worldwide and actively publish at top-tier venues including NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, KDD, ACL, SIGIR, WWW, and CVPR. We warmly welcome passionate researchers to join our team.

An Zhang
An Zhang
Assistant Professor, USTC
anzhang314@ustc.edu.cn

Research Directions

Four core themes shaping our research agenda

Intelligent Recommendation

LLM and diffusion model-powered personalization and next-generation recommender systems.

LLM as RecGenRecDiffusion

Agentic AI

Autonomous AI agents with planning, memory, tool-use, and long-horizon decision-making.

AI AgentsTool UseMemory

LLM Reasoning

Scaling and improving complex reasoning, chain-of-thought, and self-verification in LLMs.

Chain-of-ThoughtRAGScaling

Trustworthy AI

LLM safety, alignment, and robustness for reliable real-world AI deployment.

SafetyAlignmentRobustness

Selected Publications

Representative recent work — view all →

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Our Team

Meet the people behind AlphaLab — full profiles →

🚀 Join AlphaLab

We are actively looking for PhD students, Master's students, and research interns who are passionate about AI research. We offer a vibrant research environment, close mentorship, and access to top-tier computing resources.

Interested? Please send your CV and a brief research statement to anzhang314@ustc.edu.cn with the subject line "[Application] [Your Name]".