Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science
Princeton University
Email: zhuangl [at] princeton [dot] edu
35 Olden St, Princeton, NJ 08540
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Zhuang Liu
[Pronouncing Zhuang]
I'm an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. My research builds AI systems that perceive and understand the world, studies how models work, and explores how to use them to accelerate scientific research.
I value simplicity, and look for clean models, methods, and ideas that make complex systems easier to build and understand. My work has introduced simple, widely used designs in deep networks and efficient models (e.g., DenseNet, ConvNeXt, Network Slimming, Rethinking Pruning, Wanda), and more recently, simple designs and analyses that help explain how multimodal and large language models work (e.g., DyT, MetaMorph, Massive Activations, dataset bias). My work has been recognized by 110,000+ citations and a CVPR Best Paper Award.
Before joining Princeton, I was a Senior Research Scientist at Facebook AI Research in New York. I received my Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, where I worked with Trevor Darrell, and my B.S. in Computer Science from Tsinghua University (Yao Class).
Research Topics
We build open multimodal foundation models, and develop AI agents for long, open-ended tasks, from assisting research to robotics. We also study how models work, and use what we learn to make them simpler.
Join Us
PhD Students: I'm looking for PhD students starting Fall 2027. Apply to Princeton's CS PhD program and mention my name.
Research Interns: I am always excited to collaborate with motivated students on long-term research projects. Get in touch via this form.
Postdocs: Apply to the PLI Postdoctoral Fellow program and mention my name.
Lab
• Gabe Sarch, PLI Postdoctoral Fellow
• Haozhe (Tony) Chen, PhD Student (w/ Karthik Narasimhan)
• Sachin Konan, PhD Student
• Kechen Liu, PhD Student
• Taiming Lu, PhD Student
• Boya Zeng, PhD Student
• Linrong (Chris) Cai, MSE Student
• Zhuorui Ye, Incoming PhD Student (w/ Danqi Chen)
Talks and News
Selected Publications (* equal contribution, for full list please see Google Scholar)
Teaching
COS 324: Introduction to Machine Learning, Princeton, Spring 2026
COS 597K: Frontiers in Deep Learning, Princeton, Fall 2025