About me
Hi, I am Yilun Xu. I am a fourth year PhD student in MIT, advised by Tommi Jaakkola. I obtained my Bachelor’s degree from Turing Class in EECS dept, Peking University. I had the privilege of working with Yizhou Wang in PKU, and Stefano Ermon in Stanford.
My research interests are machine learning, with a current emphasis on generative modeling: (i) new family of generative models; (ii) improving the training, sampling and controllability of generative models, e.g. PFGM and diffusion models. Previously, I worked on bridging machine learning and information theory.
Contact: ylxu@mit.edu , xuyilun@pku.edu.cn
Publications
(*) denotes equal contribution
- Restart Sampling for Improving Generative Processes
Yilun Xu*, Mingyang Deng*, Xiang Cheng*, Yonglong Tian, Ziming Liu, Tommi Jaakkola.
In Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2023.
[PDF] ,[Code]
News Coverage: [MarkTechPost],
Star - PFGM++: Unlocking the Potential of Physics-Inspired Generative Models
Yilun Xu, Ziming Liu, Yonglong Tian, Shangyuan Tong, Max Tegmark, Tommi Jaakkola.
In International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2023.
[PDF] ,[Code] ,[Slide]
News Coverage: [Quanta Magazine], [Jiangmen Venture (CN)]
Star
- GenPhys: From Physical Processes to Generative Models
Ziming Liu, Di Luo, Yilun Xu, Tommi Jaakkola, Max Tegmark.
In preprint, 2023
[PDF]
News Coverage: [Quanta Magazine], - Stable Target Field for Reduced Variance Score Estimation in Diffusion Models
Yilun Xu*, Shangyuan Tong*, Tommi Jaakkola.
In International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2023
[PDF] ,[Code] ,[Slide] ,[Poster]
News Coverage: [MarkTechPost],
Star - Poisson Flow Generative Models
Yilun Xu*, Ziming Liu*, Max Tegmark, Tommi Jaakkola.
In Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2022. (Spotlight)
[PDF] ,[Code] ,[Slide] ,[Poster]
News Coverage: [Quanta Magazine], [AssemblyAI Blog], [MarkTechPost], [Synced (CN)], [PaperWeekly (CN)], [QbitAI (CN)],
Star - Controlling Directions Orthogonal to a Classifier
Yilun Xu, Hao He, Tianxiao Shen, Tommi Jaakkola.
In International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2022. (Spotlight)
[PDF] ,[Code] ,[Slide] ,[Poster]
Star - A Survey on Generative Diffusion Model
Hanqun Cao, Cheng Tan, Zhangyang Gao, Yilun Xu, Guangyong Chen, Pheng-Ann Heng, Stan Z. Li.
In preprint, 2022
[PDF] ,[Code]
Star - Learning Representations that Support Robust Transfer of Predictors
Yilun Xu, Tommi Jaakkola.
In preprint, 2022
[PDF] ,[Code] - Can Subnetwork Structure Be the Key to Out-of-Distribution Generalization?
Dinghuai Zhang, Kartik Ahuja, Yilun Xu, Yisen Wang, Aaron Courville.
In International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2021. (Long talk)
[PDF] - Anytime Sampling for Autoregressive Models via Ordered Autoencoding
Yilun Xu, Yang Song, Sahaj Garg, Linyuan Gong, Rui Shu, Aditya Grover, Stefano Ermon.
In International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2021
[PDF] ,[Code] ,[Slide] ,[Poster]
Star - A Theory of Usable Information under Computational Constraints
Yilun Xu, Shengjia Zhao, Jiaming Song, Russell Stewart, Stefano Ermon.
In International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2020. (Oral)
[PDF] ,[Code] ,[Slide] ,[Video]
News Coverage: [Synced (CN)], - TCGM: An Information-Theoretic Framework for Semi-Supervised Multi-Modality Learning
Xinwei Sun*, Yilun Xu*, Peng Cao, Yuqing Kong, Lingjing Hu, Shanghang Zhang, Yizhou Wang.
In European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), 2020. (Oral)
[PDF] ,[Code] - L_{DMI} : A Novel Information-theoretic Loss Function for Training Deep Nets Robust to Label Noise
Yilun Xu*, Peng Cao*, Yuqing Kong, Yizhou Wang.
In Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2019
[PDF] ,[Code] ,[Slide]
News Coverage: [Synced (CN)], [PKU-CFCS News (CN)]
Star - Max-MIG: an Information Theoretic Approach for Joint Learning from Crowds
Peng Cao*, Yilun Xu*, Yuqing Kong, Yizhou Wang.
In International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2019
[PDF] ,[Code] ,[Slide]
News Coverage: [PKU-CFCS News (CN)]
Star
Education

Sept. 2021* - : Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston
PhD student
Advisor: Tommi Jaakkola
*: remote during Sept 2020 - Aug 2021

Sept. 2016 - July. 2020: Peking University, Beijing
B.S. in Turing Class, Computer Science (summa cum laude)
Advisor: Yizhou Wang

Work Experience

Talk
Peking University, CFCS, Aug 2023
Unlocking the Potential of Physics-Inspired Generative Models,
NVIDIA Research, July 2023
Unlocking the Potential of Physics-Inspired Generative Models,
ByteDance, AI for Science Team, July 2023
Unlocking the Potential of Physics-Inspired Generative Models,
Swarma Club, May 2023
Unlocking the Potential of Physics-Inspired Generative Models, [Slide] [Video (CN)]
TechBeat/Jiangmen Ventures, April 2023
Unlocking the Potential of Physics-Inspired Generative Models, [Slide] [Video (CN)]
MLTea Talk, MIT, April 2023
Unlocking the Potential of Physics-Inspired Generative Models, [Slide]
Guest lecturer at 6.S052/6.S952: Modeling with Machine learning for CS, MIT, April 2023
Conditional and Controllable Generation, [Slide]
Stanford University, hosted by Prof. Mert Pilanci, Feb 2023
Unlocking the Potential of Physics-Inspired Generative Models, [Slide]
AssemblyAI AI Hackathon, Dec 2022
Poisson Flow Generative Models, [Slide]
Princeton University, hosted by Prof. Mengdi Wang, Nov 2022
Poisson Flow Generative Models (and beyond), [Slide]
MIT NetMIT Group, hosted by Prof. Dina Katabi, Nov 2022
Poisson Flow Generative Models (and beyond)
AI TIME, June 2022
Controlling Directions Orthogonal to a Classifier, [Slide]
AI TIME, June 2021
Anytime Sampling for Autoregressive Models via Ordered Autoencoding, [Slide]
Service
Conference Reviewer: NeurIPS 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023; ICLR 2021, 2022, 2023; ICML 2021, 2022, 2023
Workshop Reviewer: ICML-AI4Science 20220
Journal Reviewer: TMLR, TPAMI
PC member: ICLR 2022 PAIR2Struct Workshop
Panelist: ICML 2023 Workshop on Structured Probabilistic Inference & Generative Modeling
Teaching Assistant for 6.S052/6.S952: Modeling with Machine learning for CS, MIT, Spring 2023 (co-design the problem set and lectures for this new course, and receive an outstanding TA rating of 6.9 out of 7.0 from students)
Miscellaneous
I am a national second-class table tennis player in China. Men’s single champion in PKU Freshman’s Cup (2016). I also played for MIT table tennis team, winning the 3rd place (group) in the 2022 NCTTA Upper New England Championship.
I have been playing PUBG (mobile), LoL a lot. Find me out!