Chunlin Tian

Ph.D. Student · University of Macau
Visiting Ph.D. Student · University of Cambridge

Email: yc27402@um.edu.mo / ct720@cam.ac.uk

🚀 Open to: Faculty · Postdoc · Research Scientist

Short Bio

👋 I am a final-year Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at the State Key Laboratory of Internet of Things for Smart City (SKL-IOTSC), University of Macau, advised by Prof. Li Li and Prof. Chengzhong Xu (IEEE Fellow). Currently, I am a Visiting Researcher at the Machine Learning Systems Group, University of Cambridge, working with Prof. Nicholas D. Lane. I also collaborate closely with Dr. Zhan Shi and Prof. Zhijiang Guo. Previously, I obtained my B.Eng. from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 2022.

💡 Research Interests: I specialize in ML for Systems and Edge AI.

My work focuses on software–hardware co-design to address stringent SWaP (Size, Weight, and Power) constraints for foundation models on edge devices. I have published 20+ papers in top-tier venues, including several Oral presentations. Currently, I am exploring edge reasoning and healthcare applications.

Education

University of Macau 08/2022–Now
PhD in Computer Science (MPDS awardee)
Xi'an Jiaotong University 09/2018–06/2022
BEng in Internet of Things (Outstanding Graduate)

Selected Publications

For a complete list of my publications, please refer to my Google Scholar profile.

CLONE: Customizing LLMs for Efficient Latency-Aware Inference at the Edge.

Chunlin Tian, Xinpeng Qin, Kahou Tam, Li Li, Zijian Wang, Yuanzhe Zhao, Minglei Zhang and Chengzhong Xu

ATC 2025. [AR: 100/634 = 15.8%]

“When one size doesn’t fit all, CLONE it to beat the edge latency!”

HydraLoRA: An Asymmetric LoRA Architecture for Efficient Fine-Tuning. Oral

Chunlin Tian, Zhan Shi, Zhijiang Guo, Li Li and Chengzhong Xu

NeurIPS 2024. [AR: 61/15671 = Top 0.4%]

“Unleash the asymmetric heads of Hydra to tame the beast of fine-tuning!”

Code News

Ranking-based Client Imitation Selection for Efficient Federated Learning.

Chunlin Tian, Zhan Shi, Xinpeng Qin, Li Li and Chengzhong Xu

ICML 2024. [AR: 2609/9653 = 27.0%]

“Don’t play dice with clients; Rank and Imitate for the win!”

Breaking the Memory Wall for Heterogeneous Federated Learning via Model Splitting.

Chunlin Tian, Li Li, Kahou Tam, Yebo Wu, Chengzhong Xu

IEEE TPDS 2024.

“Smash the Memory Wall by splitting the model, not the device!”

FedGCS: A Generative Framework for Efficient Client Selection in Federated Learning via Gradient-based Optimization.

Zhiyuan Ning*, Chunlin Tian*, Meng Xiao, Wei Fan, Pengyang Wang, Li Li, Pengfei Wang and Yuanchun Zhou

IJCAI 2024. [AR: 791/5651 = 14.0%]

“Why search for the perfect client when you can generate one via gradients!”

FedHybrid: Breaking the Memory Wall of Federated Learning via Hybrid Tensor Management.

Kahou Tam, Chunlin Tian, Li Li, Haikai Zhao, Chengzhong Xu

SenSys 2024. [AR: 58/313 = 18.5%]

“When memory gets tight, go Hybrid to keep the training flowing!”

HARMONY: Heterogeneity-Aware Hierarchical Management for Federated Learning System.

Chunlin Tian, Li Li, Zhan Shi, Jun Wang and Chengzhong Xu

MICRO 2022. [AR: 83/369 = 22.5%]

“Bring order to heterogeneous chaos with hierarchical HARMONY!”

Professional Services

Invited Conference Reviewer: NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, IJCAI, AAAI, ACM MM.
Invited Journal Reviewer: IEEE (TPDS, TMC, TPAMI, TCAD, TVLSI, TNNLS, TSN, TKDE, TITS), ACM TIST.
External Reviewer: MICRO, HPCA, ASPLOS.

Mentored Students

✨If you are passionate about research and innovation, I warmly invite you to join us on this exciting academic journey!

Xinpeng Qin, UESTC (B.S.) ---> Tsinghua University (M.S.)
Shuaihang Zhong, UESTC (B.S.) ---> Nanjing University (M.S.)
Xuyang Wei, UESTC (B.S.) ---> UESTC (M.S.)
Yunqi Li, RPI (B.S.) ---> UNC (M.S.)
Shitian Li, UMAC (B.S.) ---> NUS (M.S.)

Awards

10/2024, NeurIPS 2024 Scholar Award
08/2022, UM Macao PhD Scholarship
06/2022, Outstanding Graduate, Xi'an Jiaotong University
09/2019/2020/2021, Outstanding Student, Xi'an Jiaotong University
10/2020, The ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest (ROBOCON), First Prize

Teaching Assistants

CISC7203, Database and Data Mining Technologies @UM (Graduate), Spring 2025.
CISC7204, Data Science and Data Visualization @UM (Graduate), Fall 2024.
CISC1001, Programming Science @UM (Undergraduate), Spring 2024.
CISC2001, Computer Organization @UM (Undergraduate), Fall 2023.
CISC7303, Cloud Computing @UM (Graduate), Spring 2023.
CISC2001, Computer Organization @UM (Undergraduate), Fall 2022.