About Me

I am a first-year Ph.D. student at the Language Technology Institude in Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Prof. Sherry Wu at the WInE Lab🍷.

Previously I was a Master student at the Knowledge Engineering Group in Tsinghua University, advised by Prof. Juanzi Li and work closely with Prof. Zhiyuan Liu. I visited CLIP Lab@UMD in 2024 where I work with Prof. Jordan Boyd-Graber. In 2022, I obtained my Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economy (PPE) in Xinya College at Tsinghua University, while also completing a minor in Psychology. I have a broad interest in social sciences and cognitive sciences, receiving research training in these interdisciplinary fields. You can find my CV here.

As a researcher in AI and NLP, I am dedicated to understanding advanced models from the perspectives of intelligence and cognition, and to developing AI systems and applications that truly benefit humanity and society. Some of the projects I worked on are listed below:

1. Cognitively Understanding and Improving Language Models: Cognitive Diagnostic of LLMs, EmoBench, Arithmetic Learning, KoLA.
2. AI for Education: SimClass, MAIC, Slide2Lecture, LittleMu.

News

• [Jan. 2025] Our paper SimClass is accepted by NAACL 2025. See you in New Mexico!
• [Nov. 2024] Our paper Slide2Lecture is accepted by KDD 2025!!!
• [Sept. 2024] I’m honored to be selected as a Siebel Scholar of Class 2025.
• [July 2024] Our online teaching platform MAIC was deployed at Tsinghua University as the first multi-agent AI education system, offering two courses to over 500 students in the previous semester. Check related works here: SimClass, Slide2Lecture.

Selected Publications

* indicates equal contribution. Please refer to my Google Scholar profile for the full list.

Cognitively Understanding and Improving Language Models:

• Zhang, Z., Li, R., Kabir, T., Boyd-Graber, J. (2025). NAVIG: Natural Language-guided Analysis with Vision Language Models for Image Geo-localization. arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.14638. [pdf]
• Zhang, Z., Yu, J., Li, J., Hou, L. (2023). Exploring the Cognitive Knowledge Structure of Large Language Models: An Educational Diagnostic Assessment Approach. EMNLP 2023 Findings. [pdf]
• Sabour, S., Liu, S., Zhang, Z., Liu, J. M., Zhou, J., … Huang, M. (2024). EmoBench: Evaluating the Emotional Intelligence of Large Language Models. ACL 2024. [pdf]
• Zhang-Li, D., Lin, N., Yu, J., Zhang, Z., Yao, Z., … Li, J. (2024). Reverse That Number! Decoding Order Matters in Arithmetic Learning. arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.05845. [pdf]

AI for Education

• Zhang, Z.*, Zhang-Li, D.*, Yu, J., Gong, L., Zhou, J., Liu, Z., Hou, L., Li, J. (2024). Simulating Classroom Education with LLM-Empowered Agents. NAACL 2025. [pdf]
• Tu, S.*, Zhang, Z.*, Yu, J., Li, C., Zhang, S., Yao, Z., … Li, J. (2023). LittleMu: Deploying an Online Virtual Teaching Assistant via Heterogeneous Sources Integration and Chain of Teach Prompts. CIKM 2023. [pdf]
• Zhang-Li, D.*, Zhang, Z.*, Yu, J., Yin, J. L. J., Tu, S., Gong, L., … Li, J. (2024). Awaking the Slides: A Tuning-free and Knowledge-regulated AI Tutoring System via Language Model Coordination. KDD 2025 [pdf]
• Yu, J., Zhang, Z., Zhang-Li, D., Tu, S., Hao, Z., Li, R. M., … Sun, M. (2024). From MOOC to MAIC: Reshaping Online Teaching and Learning through LLM-driven Agents. arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.03512. [pdf]

Professional Services

• Reviewer: ACL Rolling Review 2024 (Feb., Jun., Aug., Oct., Dec.) & 2025 (Feb.), CIKM 2024, KDD 2025, AAAI 2025

Awards / Honors

• [2024] Siebel Scholar, Class 2025. Top 5 in Tsinghua University, 78 students around the world in Class 2025.
• [2024] Huiyan Talent Comprehensive Scholarship. Comprehensive Scholarship for guaduate students.
• [2022] Outstanding Graduates. Selected as Outstanding Graduates of Tsinghua University, Outstanding Graduates of Beijing.
• [2021] Toyota Scholarship of Tsinghua University. One of the best Comprehensive Scholarships in Tsinghua University.
• [2019, 2020, 2021] Excellent Comprehensive Scholarship of Tsinghua Unversity. Awards for comprehensive performance in academic and others.
• [2019, 2020, 2021] Excellent Scholarship of Tsinghua Unversity. Exceptional performance in Academic (2019, 2020, 2021); Social Work (2020); and Sports (2019, 2020, 2021).

Misc

When I’m not doing research, I’m passionate about sports, especially basketball and track and field. I hold the standing long jump record at Tsinghua University (3.22m). I love music, reading, and movies, which keep me thoughtful, enthusiastic, and fulfilling.