Thursday, February 19, 2026

Media Contact:
Desa James | Communications Coordinator | 405-744-2669 | desa.james@okstate.edu

Dr. Zeyuan Song, a recent Ph.D. graduate of the School of Chemical Engineering at
Oklahoma State University, and Dr. Zheyu Jiang, assistant professor for CHE, have achieved
a milestone rarely seen in Oklahoma’s research landscape: acceptance into the International
Conference on Learning Representations 2026, one of the world’s most competitive and
influential academic conferences in artificial intelligence and machine learning.  

ICLR ranks among the top AI venues globally – second in the field by h-index – and
is known for debuting many of the breakthroughs that have shaped modern AI, including
the variational autoencoder and the graph attention network. Each submission undergoes
a monthslong, double-blind review and rebuttal process, making acceptance highly selective.  

“I am proud of the research excellence Zeyuan achieved during his Ph.D. study in my research
lab,” Jinag said. “I have been impressed by his ability to bring in new ideas from
diverse fields in mathematics, engineering, and AI. This, when combined with a deep
understanding of the cutting-edge breakthroughs in the field, leads to this outstanding
work published in ICLR.”  

Song’s paper, titled Adaptive Fourier Mamba Operators, introduces a powerful new machine
learning framework for modeling complex natural and engineering phenomena described
by partial differential equations.   

“Imagine you are baking a cake,” Jiang said. “The temperature of the cake isn’t determined by
time alone. The outside heats faster than the inside, and the top browns more quickly
than the bottom. Partial differential equations describe changes that happen simultaneously
in space and time, like how heat moves through a cake as it bakes.”  

These types of equations govern real-world phenomena such as fluid dynamics, heat
transfer, quantum mechanics  and even the financial market.  

Unlike traditional numerical solvers, which can become extremely time-consuming to solve,
Song’s AFMO method uses a mathematically grounded neural operator framework to learn
how these systems behave, often with greater efficiency and generalizability.  

According to the paper, AFMO integrates two computational frameworks, Adaptive Fourier
decomposition, a novel signal processing technique that builds orthogonal spectral
bases tailored to the problem, and state-space models, an emerging neural network
architecture that can efficiently handle long-range dependencies, to solve general nonlinear partial
differential equations.  

“Imagine you are playing piano,” Jiang said. “Standard Fourier neural operator plays every
song on a standard piano. The piano keys are fixed, and you play by mixing those fixed
notes. It works great when the song fits that instrument well, but it can struggle
if the ‘song’ has unusual rhythms. Adaptive Fourier decomposition, on the other hand,
is like a custom keyboard tailored to the particular song one wants to play.

“Meanwhile, a state-space model is like a super-fast musician who reads the music
left-to-right and keeps a small memory of what happened so far, so they can play very
long songs efficiently. Therefore, AFMO builds a custom instrument for each song first,
and then has the super-fast musician to play it, so it has the right instrument and
efficient playing.”  

By uniting these in a novel way, AFMO can solve PDEs on irregular shapes and complex
geometries, capture sharp features and singularities, and produce results that are
both highly accurate and computationally efficient. 

“These are especially challenging problems to solve due to the intricacies of the systems
involved,” Jiang said. “They require us to think out of the box and develop truly innovative solutions.” 

In extensive testing, the method consistently outperformed leading neural operator
models across diverse benchmark problems, ranging from modeling fluid flow in airfoils
and pipes to predicting European option prices in financial mathematics.   

Song’s accomplishment represents more than an individual’s success.  

This publication is the first ICLR paper from the state of Oklahoma. Notably, this work comes from
a chemical engineering department, rather than a traditional computer science or electrical
engineering program.  

“As AI continuously transforms the world, we are in an exciting era for interdisciplinary
research,” Jiang said. “We are thrilled to see the broader impacts and implications
of this work in helping OSU recruit talented students, forming cross-department collaborations,
and competing for more federal and industry funding to support AI for Science research that pushes
toward AI capacity and workforce development in Oklahoma.” 

Earmark is the term many know, but technically it’s congressionally directed spending in the Senate, community project funding in the House, which is exactly what earmarks are: funding directed by members of Congress for projects in their community.

Fifth District Congresswoman Stephanie Bice visited the Edmond Water Treatment Plant on Tuesday to present city leaders with a symbolic check for $4 million.

The money is part of the Housing and Urban Development budget and is to be used to update the electrical grid in a city that, like all municipalities in Oklahoma, is funded predominantly through sales tax.

“Sometimes the revenue doesn’t meet the need, and this is one way that I can actually bring federal dollars back home to Oklahoma to help my communities across the 5th district,” said Bice.

Federal dollars like this have helped upgrade the 911 center in Logan County, the airport in Chandler, and the Forensic Science Institute at UCO.

Bice facilitated funding for 15 projects this way, and she’s certainly not alone. According to the nonpartisan National Taxpayers Union Foundation, Fiscal Year 26 appropriations contained just over 7600 earmarks, totaling about $14.3 billion, less than 1% of all discretionary. The Oklahoma delegation accounted for 66 of those earmarks, worth about $314 million.

“These are dollars that would have been spent by agencies, by federal agencies, and I think it’s incumbent upon me as an elected official representing this community to be able to secure those dollars and bring them back home for projects that are really vital,” said Bice.

By law, the projects are listed on each member’s website.

Multiple wildfires are burning in Oklahoma, prompting evacuations in a small town and injuring firefighters as extreme fire weather continues on Feb. 18, officials said.

The fire near Woodward, Oklahoma, a town of less than 12,000 about 150 miles northwest of Oklahoma City, has burned about 2,000 acres as of 8 p.m. local time on Feb. 17, according to the Oklahoma Forestry Service. The 43 Road Fire affecting Woodward was one of at least four fires in the state, including one that spread into parts of Kansas, totaling over 155,000 acres burned.

Officials in Woodward County issued an evacuation order for the southwest part of the town as crews battled flareups and hotspots.

“We’ve got quite a mess going on,” Matt Lehenbauer, the Woodward County emergency manager, told KOCO 5 News.

Lehenbauer told the outlet that 3,000 to 4,000 people live in the evacuation area, which is heavily wooded. He asked residents to stay away from the area, and said a big problem was the amount of traffic as people fled their homes.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said he has pledged state resources to help with response and recovery in Woodward.

“Oklahoma takes care of our own, and we will be there for recovery in the days ahead. We’re praying for the families affected and the brave first responders on the front lines,” he said.

The largest fire burning in the state, the Ranger Road Fire that started in Beaver County, has spread over 145,000 acres and reached into Kansas, where other fires were also burning amid the critical fire weather, the Forestry Service said the evening of Feb. 17.

4 firefighters injured in Oklahoma

Authorities said at least four firefighters have been injured while working to contain blazes in Beaver County, where the Ranger Road Fire was burning.

Three were injured when a fire truck with Rosston Fire overturned, according to Oklahoma Highway Patrol. They were taken to local hospitals.

Another firefighter was injured and taken to a hospital, the Forestry Service reported. The circumstances of that injury weren’t shared.

Evacuations ordered across multiple counties as buildings burn

Evacuations were ordered in parts of Woodward, Beaver and Texas counties, according to the Oklahoma Forestry Service.

Three structures were destroyed in Woodward County, including two at a U.S. Department of Agriculture facility, according to the Forestry Service. In Beaver County, “numerous outbuildings” were destroyed. In Texas County, five structures were destroyed.

As of 8 p.m. on Feb. 17, this is how much multiple wildfires had spread:

• Ranger Road Fire, Beaver County: 145,000 acres combined in Oklahoma and Kansas
• Stevens Fire, Texas County: 5,000 acres
• Side Road Fire, Texas County: 3,300 acres
• 43 Road Fire, Woodward County: 2,000 acres

The Side Road Fire started as the result of a seven-vehicle crash on U.S. Route 54, the Forestry Service said.

Wildfire weather continues as alerts blanket High Plains states

The National Weather Service said extremely dry conditions and gusty winds were continuing in the High Plains region on Feb. 18. Red flag warnings blanketed parts of western Oklahoma, northwest Texas, southwest Kansas, parts of Colorado and much of New Mexico.