- I am a second-year MPhil student in the Department of Artificial Intelligence at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, supervised by Prof. Hao LIU and Prof. Hui Xiong. Prior to my MPhil, I received a Bachelor’s degree from the Department of Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua University.
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My research interests are focused on foundation models. Specifically, my current work revolves around the development of reliable, trustworthy Large Models (LLMs, LVMs) and their applications in real-world scenarios (e.g., smart cities).
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I am seeking a Ph.D. opportunity starting in Fall 2025 or Spring/Fall 2026, as well as RA positions beginning in 2025. If my research interests align with yours and you are open to considering me as a potential advisee, please feel free to contact me via WeChat at Bill2998 or email at [email protected]. I am eager to explore potential collaborations and opportunities with you!
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I am also searching for a research internship for the winter, spring, or summer of 2025. I am available from February to August 2025 and am particularly interested in projects related to Trustworthy AI and Foundation Models. I would greatly appreciate any information or opportunities you could share. Feel free to reach out to me.
Acknowledgment
- I used to suffer from severe lumbar and heart disease from 2020 to 2022. Despite facing severe health issues, I persevered with the support of my family, friends, and supervisors, including Prof. Yong Li and Prof. Minghua Chen, as well as Dr. Junbo Zhang, Dr. Jie Feng, Dr. Yuanwei Fang, and Kai Zhao. I am deeply grateful for their help.
- After recovery, I am now determined and motivated to move on and make the best of each day.
Let’s Connect!
- Feel free to reach out—whether it’s a quick question or something more in-depth! I’m always open to connecting and typically respond within 24 hours unless I’m on a tight deadline. You can reach me by email or on [Twitter/WeChat/LinkedIn—see the icons on the left]. If you’d like to schedule a quick call, you can simply click here to book a time on my Calendly. Looking forward to connecting!
Genius only means hard-working all one's life. (Mendeleev)
🔥 News
- 2024.11: 🎉 I received the research internship offer from Shanghai AI Lab. I am excited to work with Dr. Jing Shao and her team. I am grateful for the opportunity provided by Dr. Shao and the support from my supervisors, Prof. Hao Liu and Prof. Hui Xiong.
- 2024.11: 🎉 Our paper, LLMLight, was accepted by KDD 2025! This work is the result of countless efforts and fruitful collaboration, and I want to extend my heartfelt congratulations to my good friend Siqi for his outstanding contributions!!
- 2024.09: 🎉🎉 Our paper has been accepted at NeurIPS 2024! More details, including the project homepage and leaderboard, are coming soon.
- 2024.09: 🎉 I’m excited to announce that I will be serving as a reviewer for ICLR 2025. I look forward to contributing to the community and learning from the latest research. I am committed to adhering to all relevant ethical guidelines and will put forth my best effort to ensure a thorough and fair review process.
- 2024.08: I’m participating in the KDD 2024 conference in Barcelona. I’m looking forward to meeting you there! If you’re interested in my research, please feel free to contact me via Whova or WeChat (Bill2998).
- 2024.07: 🎉 I start my summer internship at the University of Chicago, collaborating with Prof. Bo Li and Prof. Hao Liu on the project related to LLM Agents. I am excited to learn from and contribute to this experience. I am grateful for the opportunity provided by Prof. Bo Li and the support from Prof. Hao Liu!
- 2024.05: Our paper was accepted by KDD 2024! It is a great honor to present our work at the conference. See you in Barcelona!
- 2024.01: We have conducted a comprehensive review of Urban Foundation Models, offering insightful perspectives and findings. Access our detailed paper and repository HERE.
- 2023.12: Our latest work applies Large Language Models (LLMs) to Traffic Signal Control (TSC) tasks. Discover our paper, code, and demo HERE. We are currently preparing further studies for submission to KDD 2024.
- 2023.08: 🎉 I accepted the MPhil offer from HKUST, and it was my pleasure to join USAIL group.
- 2022.12: 🎉🎉 I recovered from severe Spinal Disc Herniation thanks to rehabilitation training and swimming!
📖 Educational and Professional Background
- 2024.08 - Present, The University of Chicago
Research Intern, Department of Computer Science
Supervisor: Prof. Bo Li - 2025 (Anticipated), The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Master of Philosophy, Department of Artificial Intelligence
Supervisor: Prof. Hao Liu Co-supervisor: Prof. Hui Xiong - 2022, Tsinghua University
Bachelor, Department of Electronic Engineering
Supervisor: Prof. Yong Li - 2019.07 - 2019.10, Pennsylvania State University
Undergraduate Visiting Researcher, School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science
📝 Projects and Publications
* indicates equal contribution, † indicates corresponding author.
Arxiv 2024
JAILJUDGE: A Comprehensive Jailbreak Judge Benchmark with Multi-Agent Enhanced Explanation Evaluation Framework
[Github] , Project Page
Fan Liu, Yue Feng†, Zhao Xu, Lixin Su, Xinyu Ma, Dawei Yin, Hao Liu†
- “Bag of Tricks: Benchmarking of Jailbreak Attacks on LLMs”
[Github] [Media Coverage (🔥8k+ reads)] [1], [2], [3]
Zhao Xu, Fan Liu, Hao Liu†
Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), Vancouver, Canada, 2024
- “Adversarial Tuning: Defending Against Jailbreak Attacks for LLMs”
[Github] (Coming soon)
Fan Liu, Zhao Xu, Hao Liu†
arXiv:2406.06622 [cs.CL]
- “Towards Urban General Intelligence: A Review and Outlook of Urban Foundation Models”
[Github] , [Media Coverage (2k+ reads)]
Weijia Zhang, Jindong Han, Zhao Xu, Hang Ni, Hao Liu†, Hui Xiong
ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD), Barcelona, Spain, 2024
- “Large Language Models as Traffic Signal Control Agents: Capacity and Opportunity”
[Github] , [Project Page], [Demo], [Media Coverage (🔥14k+ reads)]
Siqi Lai, Zhao Xu, Weijia Zhang, Hao Liu†, Hui Xiong
ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD), Toronto, Canada, 2025
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TMC 2020
“DeepMM: Deep learning based map matching with data augmentation” (Extension of SIGSPATIAL 2019 Paper)
Jie Feng, Yong Li†, Kai Zhao, Zhao Xu, Tong Xia, Lin Chen, Depeng Jin
IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (CCF A) -
SIGSPATIAL 2019
“DeepMM: Deep learning based map matching with data augmentation”
Kai Zhao, Jie Feng, Zhao Xu, Tong Xia, Lin Chen, Funing Sun, Diansheng Guo, Depeng Jin, Yong Li†
Proceedings of the 27th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (CORE Rank A, Acceptance Rate: 21%)
🎖 Honors and Awards
- Travel Grant for KDD 2024, HKUST
- Postgraduate Scholarship, HKUST
- Scholarship for Outstanding Freshman, Tsinghua University (Top 1%, 30 out of 3000)
- Undergraduate Overseas Summer Research Scholarship, Tsinghua University
- Outstanding Student in Work-Study Assistance, Tsinghua University
🍀 Services
- Reviewer: COLING’25, ICLR’25, SafeGenAi@NeurIPS’24, LLMAgents@ICLR’24
- Secondary Reviewer: NeurIPS’24, KDD’24, NeurIPS’23
- Volunteer: KDD2024
💻 Work Experience
- 2025 (TBD), Research Intern, OpenTrustLab, Shanghai AI Lab .
- 2024.08 - Present, Research Assistant, Department of Computer Science, The University of Chicago .
- 2023.05 - Present, Research Assistant, AI Thrust, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology .
- 2021.01 - 2021.05, Research Intern, Computing Technology Lab, Alibaba DAMO Academy .
- 2018.05 - 2020.10, Research Assistant, Future Intelligence laB (FIB), Tsinghua University .
- 2019.07 - 2019.10, Research Assistant, School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science .
🎤 Invited Talks
- 2024.11: I’ll be presenting our latest work on benchmarking LLM jailbreaks at the AI Time Forum (in Chinese). If you’re interested in the topic, please join us at 3:30 PM on November 13. I will also serve as session chair for the afternoon session on November 19.
🎁 Quick Facts
Q: What motivates me to pursue research?
- Seeking novel and engaging challenges, rather than settling for a monotonous routine.
- Past experiences with disease, driving my desire to make impactful contributions to society.
- Personal fulfillment in pursuing my own research interests.
Q: What type of research am I interested in?
- Honest, intriguing, and impactful studies.
- Research with practical, real-world applications.
- Access to ample resources, including computational tools and expert collaborations.
Q: What are my expectations for PhD life?
- A productive, smart, and hard-working, yet joyful experience.
- Supportive mentoring with patience and constructive feedback.
- Annual research internships at top-tier industry labs to connect research with real-world needs.
- Access to adequate GPUs, to facilitate research.
- Contribute and attend to top-tier conferences annually, striving to publish my works and broaden professional network.
As a proud member of the data mining community and an enthusiastic data miner, here are some interesting data points about me:
- Most GPUs used for a single project: 82 A100-80G GPUs
- Largest dataset analyzed: 10 TB
- Collaboration experience with other researchers: 6
- Number of top-tier research conferences attended: 2
- Working timetable: Currently, 7 days a week, 10-14 hours per day; Ideally 6 days a week, 10-14 hours per day. Life is worth taking seriously too, especially after overcoming illness.
💬 To Prospective Advisor
Details
English Version
I plan to apply for Ph.D. programs for Fall 2025. Here are a few expectations I have for my future advisor and collaborators:
- Interest: My motivation is fueled by my passions, and working on projects that don’t spark my interest is a challenge I prefer to avoid. It’s crucial for me to find a research group where our interests align, as this is a fundamental requirement for me.
- Qualities: I strive to uphold values of integrity, diligence, and responsibility, and I seek to work alongside individuals who share these commendable traits.
- Atmosphere: A positive team environment significantly boosts my motivation and productivity. This is a key reason why I chose to join USAIL. The importance of the above factors is ranked as follows: 1 = 2 > 3 > > others.
Recently, I wrote a blog in Chinese, detailing my expectations for Ph.D. applications, future research, and life. You’re welcome to read it: 24#00 Before Applying
Thank you for taking the time to learn more about me. If you have any feedback or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me via email ([email protected])or WeChat (Bill2998).
Chinese Version
我计划申请 25Fall 入学的 Ph.D. 项目,以下几点是我对未来的导师与合作者的期待:
- 兴趣:我一直是一个兴趣导向的人,我无法忍受做完全不感兴趣的事情,相近的研究兴趣是必要条件。
- 品质:我以诚信、勤奋、责任心等准则要求自己,所以我也希望能与具有类似优秀品质的人合作。
- 氛围:在拥有一个良好氛围的团队中,我会有更高的自我驱动和执行力 (这是我加入 USAIL 的一个重要原因)。 以上几点的重要程度:1 = 2 > 3 > > 其他
最近我写了一篇中文博客,更详细地介绍了我对 PhD 申请、未来的研究与生活的期待,欢迎阅读:24#00 写在申请前
最后,感谢您愿意花时间来了解我,如果您对我有任何意见和建议,欢迎通过邮件 ([email protected]) 或微信 (Bill2998) 联系我。
Last update: December 4, 2024