Selected Publications

* indicates equal contribution.

Generalization of Diffusion Models Arises with a Balanced Representation Space

ICLR 2026 Zekai Zhang*, Xiao Li*, Xiang Li, Lianghe Shi, Meng Wu, Molei Tao, Qing Qu

Learning good representations is central to novel and meaningful generative modelling

A Closer Look at Model Collapse: From a Generalization-to-Memorization Perspective

NeurIPS 2025 (Spotlight) Lianghe Shi*, Meng Wu*, Huijie Zhang, Zekai Zhang, Molei Tao, Qing Qu

Diffusion models collapse to a low-diversity/quality mode when trained on their own outputs.

Understanding Representation Dynamics of Diffusion Models via Low-Dimensional Modeling

NeurIPS 2025 Xiao Li*, Zekai Zhang*, Xiang Li, Siyi Chen, Zhihui Zhu, Peng Wang, Qing Qu

How time conditioning shapes diffusion representations and how it can diagnose overfitting.

Efficient Compression of Overparameterized Deep Models through Low-Dimensional Learning Dynamics

AISTATS 2024 Soo Min Kwon*, Zekai Zhang*, Dogyoon Song, Laura Balzano, Qing Qu