Open Positions

We constantly look for people with strong mathematical or programming skills to work on problems related to learning and optimization. If you are interested, we have multiple PhD, MPhil, Postdoc, RA, and Visiting positions available.

About CityU

City University of Hong Kong (CityU) is a public research university located in Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong. It is ranked #54 worldwide (HK #3) in the 2026 US News Best Global Universities, #10 in Asia (HK #3) in the 2025 QS Asia University Rankings, #4 in the QS Top 50 Under 50, #1 in Hong Kong in the ARWU subject ranking of Engineering/Technology/Computer Science, and #1 in the world in the Times Higher Education Most International Universities ranking.

About the Group

Optima (Learning and Optimization for Machine Intelligence) is a research group in the Department of Computer Science at City University of Hong Kong. Our research combines evolutionary computation, heuristic algorithms, traditional mathematical programming and machine learning to design efficient algorithms for hard search and optimization problems in engineering design, management planning and many other practical domains.

The group maintains close research collaborations with companies such as Huawei and CATL. Multiple algorithms have been deployed in industry, with several patents filed and granted, and our students enjoy abundant internship and job opportunities. The group currently has 30+ postdocs and PhD students and undertakes multiple research projects.

Our current research focus includes:

  • New concepts and methods for multiobjective optimization, and their applications in engineering design and artificial intelligence.
  • New concepts and methods for learning and optimization in machine intelligence.
  • LLM-based automatic generation of algorithms and knowledge, and their applications in engineering (e.g., operator generation, automatic software system upgrades, financial software systems) and artificial intelligence (e.g., automatic neural architecture design).
  • Brain-inspired computing and its applications in embodied intelligence: drawing on the sparsity, locality and dynamics of the brain to develop efficient brain-inspired network architectures and efficient non-BP learning algorithms, with the goal of realizing on-device brain-inspired large models and online/few-shot learning.

The multiobjective evolutionary algorithm framework (MOEA/D) proposed and developed by our group has become one of the mainstream frameworks in multiobjective evolutionary computation. EoH, proposed by our group, is pioneering work in the field of LLM-based iterative automatic algorithm generation and has been applied to 100+ different tasks.

We are always looking for passionate and innovative young talents to join the group. If you are interested, we have multiple PhD, MPhil, Postdoc, Research Fellow and Visiting Scholar positions open.

Advisors

Qingfu ZHANG is a Chair Professor of Computational Intelligence in the Department of Computer Science at CityU, a Changjiang Scholar Chair Professor, and an IEEE Fellow. The decomposition-based multiobjective evolutionary algorithm framework (MOEA/D) he proposed has become one of the mainstream frameworks in multiobjective evolutionary computation, with 55,000 Google Scholar citations. He has been selected as a SCI Highly Cited Researcher 9 times and received the IEEE CIS Evolutionary Computation Pioneer Award. His current research interests include artificial intelligence, evolutionary computation, metaheuristics, mathematical programming, multiobjective optimization, machine learning and related areas. The OptVerse-CityU team, jointly with Huawei, won the championship in the 30-day CVRPLib BKS Challenge.

Zhichao LU is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at CityU. He has long been engaged in methods and applications in computational intelligence and machine learning. His work has received the IEEE-CCF Best Journal Paper Award and the GECCO Best Paper Award, and he was named among Stanford’s 2025 top 2% scientists.

PhD Applications

We are recruiting multiple students for 2027 Spring and 2027 Fall intake. If you are interested in joining us, please first contact us at: qingfu.zhang [at] cityu [dot] edu [dot] hk or zhichao.lu [at] cityu [dot] edu [dot] hk.

  • Please highlight your BS’s Average Score/100 and TOEFL/IELTS, since CityU has specific requirements
  • Please provide your publications, national award, homepage link, research project/interns, …
  • Please attach your CV/Resume, and Transcripts of BS/MS programmes
  • More information is available from Link

CityUHK Full Scholarship: a monthly stipend of HK$19,200 during PhD study. Basic requirements: BS GPA above 3.3 (on a 4-point scale); with a Master’s degree, Master’s GPA above 3.0; a solid background in mathematics and programming; TOEFL 79 or IELTS 6.5; any major is welcome. Applicants with strong publications are preferred.

CityUHK Presidential Research Award (CPRA) Scheme: applicants whose bachelor’s degree is from Tsinghua University, Peking University or a world top-10 university. The university directly provides a 4-year PhD + 3-year postdoc scholarship, together with benefits such as tuition waiver.

Top Universities Studentship Scheme (TUSS): applicants whose bachelor’s degree is from the C9 League, UCAS or a world top-20 university. It provides a 4-year full scholarship with partial tuition waiver, and entry is available in 2027 Spring.

Exceptionally qualified students are encouraged to apply for the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme (HKPFS) by 1 December each year, with scholarship HK$28,100/month, travel allowance HK$14,000/year, free tuition, etc. Official evaluation criteria include GPA, national award, English, publication, recommendation letter, overseas study/visiting experience, etc.

Self-financed PhD positions are available year round.

Postdoc, RA, and Visiting Positions

We are actively recruiting talented and passionate Postdocs. Qualified candidates are encouraged to apply the Junior Research Fellow Scheme (JRFS) by Sep 26 (internal ddl), with basic salary HK$420,000/year and travel allowance HK$13,300/year.

Research Assistants: due to the limited positions each year, Master’s and Bachelor’s students at CityU who intend to work with us, please contact us as early as possible. ML knowledge, Python coding and English writing experience is desirable.

Visiting research students & scholars positions are available year around.

CityU at a Glance