Xusheng Zhang
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Department of Computer Science, Durham University
- Email xusheng.zhang [at] durham.ac.uk
About
I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Durham University, working with Peter Davies-Peck. Previously, I was a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, working with Leslie Ann Goldberg. I received my PhD from Penn State in 2024, where I was advised by Antonio Blanca. Before graduate school, I built cloud products at Amazon Web Services.
News (places you might have run into me)
- Invited talk at the Durham Probability Seminar.
- Contributed talk at Randomness in Computing, University of Sheffield.
- Attended GoldbergFest 2026 in Oxford, celebrating Leslie Ann Goldberg's 60th birthday.
- Volunteered at SIROCCO 2026 in Durham.
- Presented our paper on mixing matrix design for energy-efficient decentralized federated learning at IEEE INFOCOM 2026 in Tokyo, and attended the N2 Women event there.
- Contributed talk at the Joint NESTiD – Business School workshop, Durham.
- Joined Durham University as a Postdoctoral Research Associate, working with Peter Davies-Peck.
Research
My research lies at the intersection of theoretical computer science, probability theory, and statistical physics. I am especially interested in sampling via Markov chains, distributed and decentralized algorithms, and stochastic processes on networks. I also enjoy mathematical and algorithmic puzzles.
Selected Publications
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Uniqueness and Mixing in the Low-Temperature Random-Cluster Model on Trees and Random GraphsSODA 2027