Me
Weikai Li (李伟ζ₯·)
CS PHD Student @ UCLA

About (Download CV)

Hi! I am a Computer Science PhD student at UCLA, where I am fortunate to be advised by Prof. Yizhou Sun. I also closely work under Prof. Jason Cong's guidance. I obtained my bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Technology from Tsinghua University. During my undergraduate years, I was fortunate to be advised by Prof. Jie Tang, Prof. Yuxiao Dong, and Prof. Juanzi Li.

I have broad research interests in Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) and Large Language Models (LLMs). My research at UCLA mainly focuses on designing AI models including GNNs and LLMs for Electronic Design Automation (AI for EDA) and improving the models' generalizability. I am also working on a project on LLM's interpretability. During my undergraduate years, I mainly focused on designing general GNN models and benchmarks, and analyzing LLMs' abilities and limitations.

Education

Ph.D.
Sep. 2023 - Present
UCLA, Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Computer Science
UCLA
B.Eng.
Aug. 2019 - Jun. 2023
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Computer Science and Technology
Tsinghua University

Experiences

Undergrad Research Intern
Jul. 2022 - Oct. 2022. UCLA, Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Published a paper on the efficient approximation of node influence based on GNN.
Advisor: Prof. Yizhou Sun
UCLA

Publications and Manuscripts

How Post-Training Reshapes LLMs: A Mechanistic View on Knowledge, Truthfulness, Refusal, and Confidence
Hongzhe Du*, Weikai Li*, Min Cai, Karim Saraipour, Zimin Zhang, Himabindu Lakkaraju, Yizhou Sun, Shichang Zhang
Arxiv preprint, 2025; Outstanding Paper Award at the New England NLP Workshop
[Paper]
Hierarchical Mixture of Experts: Generalizable Learning for High-Level Synthesis
Weikai Li, Ding Wang, Zijian Ding, Atefeh Sohrabizadeh, Zongyue Qin, Jason Cong, Yizhou Sun
AAAI 2025
[Paper] [Code]
Learning to Compare Hardware Designs for High-Level Synthesis
Yunsheng Bai, Atefeh Sohrabizadeh, Zijian Ding, Rongjian Liang, Weikai Li, Ding Wang, Haoxing Ren, Yizhou Sun, Jason Cong
MLCAD 2024
[Paper]
Efficient Task Transfer for HLS DSE
Zijian Ding, Atefeh Sohrabizadeh, Weikai Li, Zongyue Qin, Yizhou Sun, Jason Cong
ICCAD 2024
[Paper]
Fast Inference of Removal-Based Node Influence
Weikai Li, Zhiping Xiao, Xiao Luo, Yizhou Sun
WWW 2024
[Paper] [Code]
When does In-context Learning Fall Short and Why? A Study on Specification-Heavy Tasks
Hao Peng*, Xiaozhi Wang*, Jianhui Chen*, Weikai Li, Yunjia Qi, Zimu Wang, Zhili Wu, Kaisheng Zeng, Bin Xu, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li (*equal contribution)
ArXiv preprint, 2023
[Paper]
KoLA: Carefully Benchmarking World Knowledge of Large Language Models
Jifan Yu*, Xiaozhi Wang*, Shangqing Tu, Shulin Cao, Daniel Zhang-Li, Xin Lv, Hao Peng, Zijun Yao, Xiaohan Zhang, Hanming Li, Chunyang Li, Zheyuan Zhang, Yushi Bai, Yantao Liu, Amy Xin, Nianyi Lin, Kaifeng Yun, Linlu Gong, Jianhui Chen, Zhili Wu, Yunjia Qi, Weikai Li, Yong Guan, Kaisheng Zeng, Ji Qi, Hailong Jin, Jinxin Liu, Yu Gu, Yuan Yao, Ning Ding, Lei Hou, Zhiyuan Liu, Bin Xu, Jie Tang, Juanzi Li (*equal contribution)
ICLR 2024
[Paper] [Code]
Rethinking the Setting of Semi-supervised Learning on Graphs
Ziang Li*, Ming Ding*, Weikai Li, Zihan Wang, Ziyu Zeng, Yukuo Cen, Jie Tang (*equal contribution)
IJCAI 2022
[Paper] [Code]

Selected Awards & Honors

  • NSF Student Travel Award (The Web Conference), 2024
  • Outstanding Graduate of Tsinghua University (top 10%), 2023
  • Comprehensive Excellence Scholarship for junior year (top 10%), 2022
  • Comprehensive Excellence Scholarship for sophomore year (top 10%), 2021
  • Academic Excellence Scholarship for freshman year, 2020
  • Runner-up in Tsinghua Innovation Competition, industry and technology track, freshman group, 2019
  • First Prize in National High School Mathematics League, 2018

Academic Services

  • Conference reviewer: ICLR 2024, ICML 2024, ACMMM 2024, NeurIPS 2024, LoG 2024, AAAI 2025, ICLR 2025, WWW 2025, ICML 2025, ICCV 2025, NeurIPS 2025
  • Journal reviewer: IEEE TBD 2024, PLOS ONE 2024
  • Conference volunteer: NSF AI for EDA Workshop 2024

Teaching

  • 2024 fall & 2024 winter: teaching assistant of CS 31 (Introduction to Computer Science I), UCLA
  • 2024 summer: teaching assistant of CS 97 (Introduction to Data Science), UCLA summer school for high school students

Miscellaneous

  • I love badminton, singing, traveling, and enjoying beautiful landscapes.
  • πŸƒβ€β™€οΈ I have organized several department-level sports events.
  • 🎀 I have been a member of Tsinghua University's choir and UCLA's choir.
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