I’m Junhao Zhao, a Ph.D. student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, advised by Nan Xu. I received bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics and Physics and in Mechanical Engineering from Tsinghua University, where I was fortunate to work as a research intern in Prof. Gao Huang’s group. My research asks how autoregressive models use history to make predictions, and when that history provides reliable learning signals. My recent work explores credit assignment in long-horizon forecasting and the role of state-transition complexity in brain activity prediction. I’m interested in extending these insights to reinforcement learning, world models, and long-horizon LLM agents. I’m seeking research internship opportunities for Summer 2027.
Publications
* denotes equal contribution † denotes equal supervision
Search for Junhao (Jay) Zhao's papers on the Publications Page