popular research topic
Why isn't XGBoost a more popular research topic? • /r/MachineLearning
These are well understood models. They are gradient boosted trees with some optimizations. The theory has been around for decades, so there is not much to be uncovered, the library is actually application of established research. Also, there is a lull in new research ideas related to trees. Perhaps you can come up with some new techniques to improve trees further, and welcome in a new era of tree-based model research?