What is New!
[09/2025] Our paper FlowerTune: A Cross-Domain Benchmark for Federated Fine-Tuning of Large Language Models was accepted by NeurIPS 2025! [Core A*, CCF-A]
[09/2025] We are pleased to announce that On the Out-of-Distribution Backdoor Attack for Federated Learning has been accepted to ACM MobiHoc 2025! [Core A, CCF-B]
[08/2025] Excited to share that our work Federated Learning for Smart Grid: A Survey on Applications and Potential Vulnerabilities was accepted at ACM TCPS 2025! [IF 3.65, CCF-C]
[08/2025] I received the HDRFS Student Publication & Travel Support from NSF EPSCoR, USA, 1,500 USD.
[06/2025] Thrilled to announce the acceptance of Fed-HeLLo: Efficient Federated Foundation Model Fine-Tuning with Heterogeneous LoRA Allocation at IEEE TNNLS 2025! [JCR-Q1, IF 8.9, CCF-B]
[02/2025] Our paper Detecting Backdoor Attacks in Federated Learning via Direction Alignment Inspection has been accepted for publication in CVPR 2025! [Core A*, CCF-A]
[10/2024] We are delighted that Achieving Byzantine-Resilient Federated Learning via Layer-Adaptive Sparsified Model Aggregation was accepted by WACV 2025! [Core A]
[01/2024] I received the Nevada WateReuse Research Grant as Co-PI from WateReuse Association, USA, 2,500 USD.
[12/2023] I gave an invited talk at the Computational Modeling and Analysis Core Meet at UNR, Online.
[10/2023] I received the 2023 IEEE CNS Travel Grant from NSF, USA, 1,200 USD.
[10/2023] I won First Place Poster at the 2023 UNR CyberSecurity Conference, Reno, NV, USA.
[08/2023] Our work Byzantine-robust Federated Learning with Variance Reduction and Differential Privacy has been accepted to IEEE CNS 2023! [IEEE ComSoc Core Conference]
[01/2023] I started my PhD program in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno, USA. 🎉
[07/2022] Our paper Global-local Feature Aggregation for Event-based Object Detection on Eventkitti was accepted by IEEE MFI 2022!
[10/2021] I received a Chinese patent: "Wheat Head Detection Method based on Computer Vision Semi-supervised Pseudo Label Learning" (CN113554627A).
[08/2021] I joined Tongji University (Shanghai, China) as a research assistant, working on multi-modality research projects.
[07/2021] Pleased to announce that DRNet: Towards Fast, Accurate and Practical Dish Recognition was accepted by Science China-Technological Sciences 2021! [JCR-Q1, CCF-A]
[07/2021] I received a Chinese patent: "Low-power Consumption Real-time Helmet Detection Method based on Computer Vision Target Detection" (CN113128476A).
[05/2021] I joined DMAI (Guangzhou, China) as a research intern, focusing on AI research for education.
[02/2021] Excited to share that our paper Distractor-Aware Fast Tracking via Dynamic Convolutions and MOT Philosophy has been accepted at CVPR 2021! [Core A*, CCF-A]
[08/2020] I achieved TOP 1% (22/2245), Silver Medal in the Kaggle Global Wheat Detection Competition, Computer Vision Problems in Plant Phenotyping (CVPPP) Workshop, ECCV 2020, Online.
[10/2018] I received the Graduate Innovation Fund in Scientific Research from Huaqiao University, China, ~2,800 USD.

Selected Publications

Preprints

► Zikai Zhang, Rui Hu, Ping Liu, and Jiahao Xu. Fed-pilot: Optimizing LoRA Allocation for Efficient Federated Fine-Tuning with Heterogeneous Clients. Under Review. [pdf]

2025

► [2025-09] Yan Gao, Massimo Roberto Scamarcia, Javier Fernandez-Marques, Mohammad Naseri, Chong Shen Ng, Dimitris Stripelis, Zexi Li, Tao Shen, Jiamu Bai, Daoyuan Chen, Zikai Zhang, Rui Hu, InSeo Song, Lee KangYoon, Hong Jia, Ting Dang, Junyan Wang, Zheyuan Liu, Daniel Janes Beutel, Lingjuan Lyu, and Nicholas D Lane. FlowerTune: A Cross-Domain Benchmark for Federated Fine-Tuning of Large Language Models. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, NeurIPS (2025). [Core A*, CCF-A] [pdf][Project]
► [2025-09] Jiahao Xu, Zikai Zhang, and Rui Hu. On the Out-of-Distribution Backdoor Attack for Federated Learning. The 26th International Symposium on Theory, Algorithmic Foundations, and Protocol Design for Mobile Networks and Mobile Computing, ACM MobiHoc (2025). [Core A, CCF-B] [pdf][code]
► [2025-08] Zikai Zhang, Suman Rath, Jiahao Xu, and Tingsong Xiao. Federated Learning for Smart Grid: A Survey on Applications and Potential Vulnerabilities. ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems, ACM TCPS (2025). [IF 3.65, CCF-C] [pdf][code]
► [2025-06] Zikai Zhang, Ping Liu, Jiahao Xu, and Rui Hu. Fed-HeLLo: Efficient Federated Foundation Model Fine-Tuning with Heterogeneous LoRA Allocation. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, IEEE TNNLS (2025). [JCR-Q1, IF 8.9, CCF-B] [pdf][code]
► [2025-02] Jiahao Xu, Zikai Zhang, and Rui Hu. Detecting Backdoor Attacks in Federated Learning via Direction Alignment Inspection. Proceedings of the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference, CVPR (2025). [Core A*, CCF-A] [pdf][code]

2024

► [2024-10] Jiahao Xu, Zikai Zhang, and Rui Hu. Achieving Byzantine-Resilient Federated Learning via Layer-Adaptive Sparsified Model Aggregation. IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision, WACV (2025). [Core A] [pdf][code]

2023

► [2023-08] Zikai Zhang, and Rui Hu. Byzantine-robust Federated Learning with Variance Reduction and Differential Privacy. 2023 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security, IEEE CNS (2023). [IEEE ComSoc Core Conference] [pdf][code]

2022

► [2022-07] Zichen Liang, Hu Cao, Chu Yang, Zikai Zhang, and Guang Chen. Global-local Feature Aggregation for Event-based Object Detection on Eventkitti. 2022 IEEE International Conference on Multisensor Fusion and Integration for Intelligent Systems, IEEE MFI (2022). [IEEE RAS Important Conference]

2021

► [2021-07] Siyuan Cheng, Binfei Chu, Bineng Zhong, Zikai Zhang, Xin Liu, ZhenJun Tang, and XianXian Li. DRNet: Towards Fast, Accurate and Practical Dish Recognition. Science China-Technological Sciences (2021). [JCR-Q1, CCF-A] [pdf]
► [2021-02] Zikai Zhang, Bineng Zhong, Shengping Zhang, Zhenjun Tang, Xin Liu, and Zhaoxiang Zhang. Distractor-Aware Fast Tracking via Dynamic Convolutions and MOT Philosophy. Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, CVPR (2021). [Core A*, CCF-A] [pdf][code]

Teaching & Mentoring Experience

Teaching:
► 2025 Fall Graduate Teaching Assistant, CS442/642 Cloud Computing, UNR, Reno, Nevada, USA.
► 2025 Spring Graduate Teaching Assistant, CS302 Data Structure, UNR, Reno, Nevada, USA.
► 2019 Fall Sessional Lecturer, Web Interaction Design for Undergraduates, Software Engineering Department, Xiamen Institute of Technology, Xiamen, Fujian, China.

Mentoring:
► 2025 Fall Graduate Mentor, Research Project, UNR, Reno, Nevada, USA.
Students: Mia Fisher, Karam Alkherej
Project: Implicit Prompt Injection Attack and Defense
► 2023-2024 Graduate Mentor, Capstone Project for Undergraduates, UNR, Reno, Nevada, USA.
Students: Cody Long, Zachary Strazi, Kristian Konstantinov, Jacob Ayers
Project: Automatic Speech Recognition Attack with Adversarial Examples
► 2023 Summer Graduate Mentor, Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU), Reno, Nevada, USA.
Students: Manny Ortiz (Penn State University), Zhang Lin (Colorado School of Mines)
Project: Backdoor Attack in Federated Learning System
Supported by NSF #2150394

Scholarship and Grant

► Aug. 2025 HDRFS Student Publication & Travel Support, NSF EPSCoR, USA, 1,500 USD.
► 2024-2025 Co-PI, Nevada WateReuse Research Grant, WateReuse Association, USA, 2,500 USD.
► Oct. 2023 IEEE CNS Travel Grant, NSF, USA, 1,200 USD.

Academic Service

Reviewer/PC Member for:
[Journals] IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Information Processing and Management, IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, China Communication, Journal of Information Security and Applications, IEEE Latin America Transactions
[Conferences] ICLR 2026, AAAI 2025, ICML 2025, NeurIPS 2022, 2024, 2025, CVPR 2025, ICCV 2025, WACV 2025, ICPR 2025, CCNC 2024, 2025, ICCCN 2025