Ziyang Xu

This photo was taken in Washington, D.C., during the cherry blossom season in March 2025.

I’m a Ph.D. Student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering under the supervision of Dr. Dean Pospisil. Before this, I worked as a Research Imaging Analyst at the University of Nebraska Medical Center with Dr. Jieqiong Wang. My research interests lie at the intersection of artificial intelligence and computational neuroscience.

news

Jul 26, 2026	On board Champaign-Urbana! I look forward to this new chapter as a Ph.D. student at UIUC!
May 18, 2026	On board Boston! I’m so excited to start the Summer Term at Boston University.
Apr 15, 2026	I accepted the offer to the ECE PhD program of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Thank everyone for your help during this application season!

selected publications

Conference Paper

nnU-BNST: Deep Learning-Based Automated Segmentation of the Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis

Ziyang Xu, Mohamed Azzam, Marshall Bivens, Marcus Dustin, Shibiao Wan, Jennifer Urbano Blackford, and Jieqiong Wang

In Machine Learning in Medical Imaging

@inproceedings{xu2025nnubnst,
  title = {nnU-BNST: Deep Learning-Based Automated Segmentation of the Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis},
  author = {Xu, Ziyang and Azzam, Mohamed and Bivens, Marshall and Dustin, Marcus and Wan, Shibiao and Blackford, Jennifer Urbano and Wang, Jieqiong},
  booktitle = {Machine Learning in Medical Imaging},
  series = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science},
  volume = {16241},
  pages = {637--648},
  year = {2025},
  publisher = {Springer Nature Switzerland},
  doi = {10.1007/978-3-032-09513-8_61},
}

Review Paper

A review of artificial intelligence-based brain age estimation and its applications for related diseases

Mohamed Azzam, Ziyang Xu, Ruobing Liu, Lie Li, Kah Meng Soh, Kishore B Challagundla, Shibiao Wan, and Jieqiong Wang

Briefings in Functional Genomics

@article{azzam2024brainAge,
  title = {A review of artificial intelligence-based brain age estimation and its applications for related diseases},
  author = {Azzam, Mohamed and Xu, Ziyang and Liu, Ruobing and Li, Lie and Soh, Kah Meng and Challagundla, Kishore B and Wan, Shibiao and Wang, Jieqiong},
  journal = {Briefings in Functional Genomics},
  volume = {24},
  year = {2024},
  doi = {10.1093/bfgp/elae042},
}