Me
Weikai Li (李伟楷)
CS PhD Student @ UCLA

About

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.

My recent research focuses on AI for chip design, using Large Language Model (LLM) agents, flow matching models, and Graph Neural Networks (GNNs). I also research on the interpretability of AI models. Besides, I have broad research interests in agents and LLM development.

Education

Ph.D.
Sep. 2023 - Jun. 2028 (expected)
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

Internship Experiences

Software Engineer PhD Intern
Jun. 2026 - Sep. 2026, Google (Google Cloud, AI & Infrastructure).
Built a GNN explanation system, a related agent skill, and application tools, and proposed a framework to iteratively improve GNN models based on explanation results
Hosts: Elan Markowitz, Zubo Gu
Google
Applied Scientist Intern
Jun. 2025 - Sep. 2025, Amazon Web Services (Graph Machine Learning Team).
Proposed an LLM workflow to generate global explanations of GNN models' decision patterns
Manager: Xiang Song; Mentor: Han Xie
AWS
Undergrad Research Intern
Jul. 2022 - Dec. 2022, UCLA.
Published a paper on the efficient approximation of node influence on GNN predictions
Advisor: Prof. Yizhou Sun
UCLA

Publications and Manuscripts

How well do LLMs understand code?
Jade Xu, Renliang Sun, Zijian Ding, Weikai Li, Kaiqiao Han, Han Zhang, Chengyue Wang, Haixin Wang, Wei Wang, Yizhou Sun, Jason Cong
Communications AI & Computing 2026
[Paper] [Code]
Choosing How to Remember: Adaptive Memory Structures for LLM Agents
Mingfei Lu, Mengjia Wu, Feng Liu, Jiawei Xu, Weikai Li, Haoyang Wang, Zhengdong Hu, Ying Ding, Yizhou Sun, Jie Lu, Yi Zhang
arXiv preprint, 2026
[Paper]
Training Recipes for Agentic Reinforcement Learning in LLMs: A Survey
Ching Chang, Yijia Xiao, Jade Xu, Fred Xu, Chenchen Ye, Ruoyan Li, Junkai Zhang, Yihe Deng, Kyle Zheng, Ethan Ji, Alexander K Taylor, Weikai Li, Maryam Haghifam, Anthony Cuturrufo, Renliang Sun, Jiahang Sha, Yidan Shi, Wen-Chih Peng, Yizhou Sun, Wei Wang
TechRxiv preprint, 2026
[Paper] [Curated paper list]
Report for NSF Workshop on AI for Electronic Design Automation
Deming Chen, Vijay Ganesh, Weikai Li, Yingyan Celine Lin, Yong Liu, Subhasish Mitra, David Z. Pan, Ruchir Puri, Jason Cong, Yizhou Sun
IEEE CAS Magazine 2026
[Paper] [Workshop website]
From Newborn to Impact: Bias-Aware Citation Prediction
Mingfei Lu, Mengjia Wu, Jiawei Xu, Weikai Li, Feng Liu, Ying Ding, Yizhou Sun, Jie Lu, Yi Zhang
WWW 2026
[Paper]
Multimodal LLM with Hierarchical Mixture-of-Experts for VQA on 3D Brain MRI
Arvind Murari Vepa, Yannan Yu, Jingru Gan, Anthony Cuturrufo, Michael F. Romano, Weikai Li, Fabien Scalzo, Wei Wang, Yizhou Sun
KDD 2026 (AI for Science Track)
[Paper]
Iceberg: Enhancing HLS Modeling with Synthetic Data
Zijian Ding, Tung Nguyen, Weikai Li, Aditya Grover, Yizhou Sun, Jason Cong
ICLAD 2025
[Paper] [Code]
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
COLM 2025; Outstanding Paper Award at the New England NLP Symposium (NENLP) 2025
[Paper] [Code]
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]
Efficient Task Transfer for HLS DSE
Zijian Ding, Atefeh Sohrabizadeh, Weikai Li, Zongyue Qin, Yizhou Sun, Jason Cong
ICCAD 2024
[Paper]
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]
Fast Inference of Removal-Based Node Influence
Weikai Li, Zhiping Xiao, Xiao Luo, Yizhou Sun
WWW 2024
[Paper] [Code]
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]
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]
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]
(* Equal contributions)

Selected Awards & Honors

  • Amazon Trainium Fellowship, 2025
  • Outstanding Paper Award, New England NLP Symposium (NENLP), 2025
  • 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

Teaching

  • Teaching Assistant of CS 31: Introduction to Computer Science I, UCLA (2024 fall, 2025 winter, 2025 spring)
  • Teaching Assistant of CS 97: Introduction to Data Science, UCLA summer school for high school students (2024 summer)

Miscellaneous

  • I love badminton, singing, traveling, and enjoying beautiful landscapes.
  • 🎤 I have been a member of Tsinghua University's choir and UCLA's choir.
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