HeavyBall Research

HeavyBall Research is a newly established research group in Computer Science at NYU Shanghai, launching in Fall 2025, led by Yucheng Lu.

Our mission is to advance the frontier of AI and machine learning systems. We work on a range of projects such as:

• Efficient training and inference algorithms for foundation models.

• Hardware/software co-design for efficient modeling.

• High-performance GPU kernels for modern AI workloads.

• Large-scale AI application systems (e.g., Agent frameworks, RAG systems).

We collaborate closely with industry partners and other research labs to build cutting-edge AI systems, and are well-supported with abundant compute resources and research funding. We warmly welcome passionate researchers who are excited about the intersection of systems and AI to join us!

Group Updates

• [April 2026] Thanks Google for supporting our research through the 2026 Google TPU Research Award!

• [April 2026] We are delighted to welcome three new PhD students (Zishuo, Yufeng, and Runyu) to our group!

Current Ph.D. Students

• Zishuo Bao

• Yufeng Xu

• Runyu Peng (Coadvisor: Chen Zhao)