Portrait
Zuobin Xiong
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
About Me
Curriculum Vitae

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas (UNLV). I received my Ph.D. degree from the Department of Computer Science at Georgia State University under the supervision of Dr. Wei Li and Dr. Zhipeng Cai. My research has been recognized through publications in leading conferences and journals, including AAAI, ECML, ICDM, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (TII), IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology (TVT), IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IoT-J), etc. I also actively serve the academic community as a reviewer for these premier venues and as the Associate Editor for IEEE TNNLS, IEEE Networking Letters, and Elsevier High-Confidence Computing Journal.

Research Vision
We study how to make modern AI systems trustworthy and reliable under real-world constraints such as distributed data, adversarial environments, heterogeneous resources, and limited supervision, via:
Distributed Machine Learning
Generative Models
Machine Unlearning
Trustworthy AI
Internet of Things (IoT)
Cybersecurity
💡🚀! I am looking for self-motivated students with strong mathematical and programming skills to work with me on Distributed Learning, Machine Unlearning, Generative Models, and Cybersecurity projects. If you are interested, please email your detailed CV, all academic transcripts, and a research statement in one PDF file directly with the subject line: "Your Name, PhD Applicant for 20XX Fall/Spring".
Experience
  • University of Nevada, Las Vegas
    University of Nevada, Las Vegas
    Assistant Professor
    Department of Computer Science
    Jul. 2023 - Present
  • University of Southern California
    University of Southern California
    Visiting Scholar, NSF Supported
    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
    Aug. 2025
  • Georgia State University
    Georgia State University
    Graduate Research/Teaching Assistant
    Department of Computer Science
    Jan.2019 - Jun. 2023
Education
  • Georgia State University
    Georgia State University
    Ph.D. in Computer Science
    Department of Computer Science
    Aug. 2018 - Jul. 2023
  • Harbin Engineering University
    Harbin Engineering University
    M.E. in Computer Science
    Department of Computer Science
    Sep. 2016 - Jun. 2019
  • Northeast Forestry University
    Northeast Forestry University
    B.S. in Mathematics
    Department of Mathematics
    Sep. 2012 - Jun. 2016
Awards & Grants
  • NSF HSI
    A Guided Pathway to Enhancing HSI Student Experience and Success in Generative AI with the Planting of Education Oriented GPU Cluster
    PI, $200,000
    2025 - 2027
  • NSF EPSCoR Research Fellows
    An Explainable AI Supported Performance Monitoring System in Distributed Sustainable Energy Networks
    Sole PI, $300,000
    2025 - 2027
  • NSF EPSCoR HDRFS Seed
    Harnessing Data Revolution for Fire Science (HDRFS) Data Analytics Mentor
    PI, $4,750
    2025 - 2025
  • University of Nevada Las Vegas Foundation
    Are You Ready for College? An Explainable AI-Supported Efficient Solution for College Students Mental Health Condition Detection and Beyond
    PI, $35,000
    2024 - 2026
  • South Korea IITP
    Intelligent IoT Security - Next-Generation Cyber Defense Mechanisms and Vulnerability Exploration Using Language Models
    Co-PI, $357,739
    2024 - 2026
  • NSF EPSCoR RII Track-2 FEC AI SUSTEIN
    Seed Grant of NSF RII Track-2 FEC AI SUSTEIN
    PI, $30,000
    2023 - 2025
News
2026
I start to serve as the Associate Editor for IEEE TNNLS.
Jan 01
2025
Our paper "It is Hard to Unlearn Dogged Backdoor Samples in Diffusion Models" is accepted by NeurIPS Workshop.
Sep 28
Our paper "How Well Do LLMs Unlearn Facts? - A Knowledge Graph Perspective" is accepted by NeurIPS Workshop.
Sep 22
Our paper "Distributed Generative Model: A Data Synthesizing Framework for Multi-Source Heterogeneous Data" is accepted by IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence.
May 28
Our paper "A Survey of Machine Unlearning in Generative AI Models: Methods, Applications, Security, and Challenges" is accepted by IEEE IoT-J.
May 12
Our paper "Efficient Phishing Website Detection via HTML Tag Sequence Analysis Using Encoder Models" is accepted by IEEE ICCCN 2025.
May 11
I start to serve as the Associate Editor for the IEEE Networking Letters.
Apr 18
2024
Our NSF proposal (Lead PI) titled "A Guided Pathway to Enhancing HSI Student Experience and Success in Generative AI with the Planting of Education-Oriented GPU Cluster" is awarded by NSF HSI Program.
Dec 03
My NSF proposal (Single PI) titled "An Explainable AI Supported Performance Monitoring System in Distributed Sustainable Energy Networks" is awarded by NSF EPSCoR Research Fellows Program.
Nov 21
Our paper "DDSNet: A Lightweight Dense Depthwise Separable Network for Tumor Classification" is accepted by the 40th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing (SAC).
Nov 21
Selected Publications (view all )
A Survey of Machine Unlearning in Generative AI Models: Methods, Applications, Security, and Challenges
A Survey of Machine Unlearning in Generative AI Models: Methods, Applications, Security, and Challenges
IoT-J 2025

An Huang, Zhipeng Cai, Zuobin Xiong

IEEE Internet of Things Journal 2025

[Paper]

A Survey of Machine Unlearning in Generative AI Models: Methods, Applications, Security, and Challenges

An Huang, Zhipeng Cai, Zuobin Xiong

IEEE Internet of Things Journal 2025

[Paper]

Appro-Fun: Approximate Machine Unlearning in Federated Setting
Appro-Fun: Approximate Machine Unlearning in Federated Setting
IC3N 2024

Zuobin Xiong, Wei Li, Zhipeng Cai

2024 International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN) 2024

[Paper]

Appro-Fun: Approximate Machine Unlearning in Federated Setting

Zuobin Xiong, Wei Li, Zhipeng Cai

2024 International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN) 2024

[Paper]

Exact-Fun: An Exact and Efficient Federated Unlearning Approach
Exact-Fun: An Exact and Efficient Federated Unlearning Approach
ICDM 2023

Zuobin Xiong, Wei Li, Yingshu Li, Zhipeng Cai

2023 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM) 2023

[Paper]

Exact-Fun: An Exact and Efficient Federated Unlearning Approach

Zuobin Xiong, Wei Li, Yingshu Li, Zhipeng Cai

2023 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM) 2023

[Paper]

Federated Generative Model on Multi-Source Heterogeneous Data in IoT
Federated Generative Model on Multi-Source Heterogeneous Data in IoT
AAAI 2023

Zuobin Xiong, Wei Li, Zhipeng Cai

The 37th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) 2023

[Paper]

Federated Generative Model on Multi-Source Heterogeneous Data in IoT

Zuobin Xiong, Wei Li, Zhipeng Cai

The 37th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) 2023

[Paper]

Towards Neural Network-Based Communication System: Attack and Defense
Towards Neural Network-Based Communication System: Attack and Defense
TDSC 2022

Zuobin Xiong, Zhipeng Cai, Chunqiang Hu, Daniel Takabi, Wei Li

IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing 2022

[Paper]

Towards Neural Network-Based Communication System: Attack and Defense

Zuobin Xiong, Zhipeng Cai, Chunqiang Hu, Daniel Takabi, Wei Li

IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing 2022

[Paper]

A Self-Supervised Purification Mechanism for Adversarial Samples
A Self-Supervised Purification Mechanism for Adversarial Samples

Bingyi Xie, Honghui Xu, Zuobin Xiong, Yingshu Li, Zhipeng Cai

IEEE SmartData 2022 Best Paper

[Paper]

A Self-Supervised Purification Mechanism for Adversarial Samples

Bingyi Xie, Honghui Xu, Zuobin Xiong, Yingshu Li, Zhipeng Cai

IEEE SmartData 2022 Best Paper

[Paper]

Generative Adversarial Networks: A Survey Toward Private and Secure Applications
Generative Adversarial Networks: A Survey Toward Private and Secure Applications
CSUR 2021

Zhipeng Cai#, Zuobin Xiong*, Honghui Xu*, Peng Wang*, Wei Li, Yi Pan (* equal contribution, # corresponding author)

ACM Computing Surveys 2021

[Paper]

Generative Adversarial Networks: A Survey Toward Private and Secure Applications

Zhipeng Cai#, Zuobin Xiong*, Honghui Xu*, Peng Wang*, Wei Li, Yi Pan (* equal contribution, # corresponding author)

ACM Computing Surveys 2021

[Paper]

Privacy Threat and Defense for Federated Learning With Non-i.i.d. Data in AIoT
Privacy Threat and Defense for Federated Learning With Non-i.i.d. Data in AIoT

Zuobin Xiong, Zhipeng Cai, Daniel Takabi, Wei Li

IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics 2021

[Paper]

Privacy Threat and Defense for Federated Learning With Non-i.i.d. Data in AIoT

Zuobin Xiong, Zhipeng Cai, Daniel Takabi, Wei Li

IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics 2021

[Paper]

All publications