Zheyuan Zhang

Zheyuan Zhang

Master Student at Tsinghua University, KEG

About Me

I am a third-year master student at the Knowledge Engineering Group, Department of Computer Science and Technology in Tsinghua University. I’m fortunately advised by Prof. Juanzi Li and work closely with Prof. Zhiyuan Liu. I’m currently visiting CLIP Lab@UMD 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.