About Me

I am Ph.D. candicate in Computer Science at Virginia Tech, advised by Professor Dawei Zhou. I received my M.S. in Statistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2024, where I was luckily advised by Professor Yun Li, and my B.S. in Statistics and B.A. in English Literature and Linguistics from Zhejiang University in 2022.

My research focuses on LLM Reasoning and Inference, with an emphasis on developing statistically grounded, computationally efficient frameworks to address challenges in open-world learning. I am particularly interested in advancing the theoretical and empirical understanding of LLMs to improve their reliability and generalization in real-world applications.

What I'm Focusing

  • Open-world LLM:

    Developed advanced methods to enhance large language models with robust adaptability and precision in open-world settings. [LensLLM, HalluGuard, Plan‑and‑Budget]

  • Ai4Science:

    Applied ML and statistical modeling to biological data for structure prediction, biomarker discovery, and disease analysis. [DISPROTBENCH, Epic-Unmix]

  • Exploring other areas and welcome collaborations!

Latest News

  • 🎉 [Mar 2026] Honored to receive Tier One Financial Travel Award by ICLR'26.

  • 🎉 [Feb 2026] Honored to be selected as Student Spotlight by Sanghani Center for AI & Data Analytics.

  • 🎉 [Feb 2026] Honored to be selected as a recipient of the CAPWIC Travel Scholarship awarded to 20 scholars nationwide by CAPWIC.

  • 🎉 [Jan 2026] Glad my research about foundational LLM reasoning was accepted by ACM CAPWIC'26, see you in Alexandria on Mar 27 - 28!

  • 🎉 [Jan 2026] Two first-author papers (one leading-author:HalluGuard, one co-first:Plan‑and‑Budget) were accepted by ICLR'26! See you in Brazil this April!

  • 🎉 [Nov 2025] One paper Epic-Unmix was accepted by Genome Biology!

  • 🎉 [Aug 2025] Glad my research about foundational LLM fine-tuning was accepted by ICDM'25 PhD forum, see you in D.C. on Nov 12 - 15!

  • 🎉 [July 2025] Honored to receive GPSS Travel Grant from Virginia Tech!

  • 🎉 [June 2025] Honored to receive Student Travel Award from CS Department at Virginia Tech!

  • 🎉 [May 2025] My first leading paper LensLLM has been accepted as poster at ICML'25 main conference!

Resume

Education

  1. Virginia Tech

    2024 — Present

    College of Engineering
    PhD candidate in Computer Science

  2. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

    2022 — 2024

    Gillings School of Public Health
    Master of Science in Biostatistics

  3. Zhejiang University

    2018 — 2022

    School of Mathematical Sciences
    Bachelor of Science in Statistics
    &&
    School of International Studies
    Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Linguistics

Experience

  1. Graduate Research Assistant

    July 2024 — Present

    Computer Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, USA

    • • Applied rigorous statistical methods and core computer science principles to investigate large language model (LLM) behavior, bridging the gap between theoretical guarantees and real-world performance in open-world settings.

  2. Graduate Research Assistant

    Aug 2022 — May 2024

    Biostatistics, UNC-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, USA

    • • Architected scalable AI/ML frameworks that unify heterogeneous biomedical data (single-cell & bulk RNA-seq, EHRs) to generate precise patient-level insights and streamline large-scale comparative analyses.

  3. Student Researcher

    Oct 2019 — May 2024

    Statistics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    • • Applied advanced ML/DL techniques to both quantitative finance and computational biology, delivering state-of-the-art market-forecasting/trading systems and precision RNA-seq & biomarker pipelines that markedly boost predictive accuracy and operational efficiency.

  4. Software Design Engineer Intern

    July 2021 — Sep 2021

    Alibaba, Hangzhou, China

    • • Replaced a legacy static-path system with a Java-based Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) algorithm, embedding a node-energy score that raised end-to-end packet delivery from 88 % to 97 % and cut average latency by 30 % during 500-node stress tests under highly dynamic traffic.

  5. Quantitative Research Intern

    Jan 2021 — Feb 2021

    Tenbagger Capital Management, Hangzhou, China

    • • Built and maintained a web-scraped financial warehouse (5 M+ records across 1,000 equities) capturing key metrics—transaction rate, gross-profit margin, leverage ratio, etc.—to enable rapid factor research.
    • • Developed an automated Python long-short strategy driven by those factors, delivering ≈15 % annualized alpha and Sharpe 1.3 in 3-year walk-forward tests.

Publications

Publications

  1. HalluGuard: Demystifying Data-Driven and Reasoning-Driven Hallucinations in LLMs

    2026

    Xinyue Zeng, Junhong Lin, Yujun Yan, Feng Gao, Liang Shi, Jun Wu, Dawei Zhou
    ICLR'26

  2. Plan and Budget: Effective and Efficient Test-Time Scaling on Large Language Model Reasoning

    2026

    Junhong Lin*, Xinyue Zeng*, Jie Zhu, Song Wang, Julian Shun, Jun Wu, Dawei Zhou (*Equal Contribution)
    ICLR'26

  3. LENSLLM: Unveiling Fine-Tuning Dynamics for LLM Selection

    2025

    Xinyue Zeng, Haohui Wang, Junhong Lin, Jun Wu, Tyler Cody, Dawei Zhou
    International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2025

  4. DISPROTBENCH: A Disorder-Aware, Task-Rich Benchmark for Evaluating Protein Structure Prediction in Realistic Biological Contexts

    2025

    Xinyue Zeng, Tuo Wang, Adithya Kulkarni, Alexander Lu, Alexandra Ni, Phoebe Xing, Junhan Zhao, Siwei Chen, Dawei Zhou
    Preprint'25

  5. DiagnoLLM: A Hybrid Bayesian Neural Language Framework for Interpretable Disease Diagnosis

    2025

    Bowen Xu*, Xinyue Zeng*, Jiazhen Hu, Tuo Wang, Adithya Kulkarni (*Equal Contribution)
    Preprint'25

  6. Scientific Hypothesis Generation and Validation: Methods, Datasets, and Future Directions

    2025

    Adithya Kulkarni, Fatimah Alotaibi, Xinyue Zeng, Longfeng Wu, Tong Zeng, Barry Menglong Yao, Minqian Liu, Shuaicheng Zhang, Lifu Huang, Dawei Zhou

  7. Cell-type specific inference from bulk RNA-sequencing data by integrating single cell reference profiles via EPIC-unmix

    2024

    Chenwei Tang, Quan Sun, Xinyue Zeng, Xiaoyu Yang, Fei Liu, Jinying Zhao, Yin Shen, Bixiang Liu, Jia Wen, Yun Li
    Genome Biology

  8. Development of stock investment system based on big data analysis and statistical optimization

    2022

    Xinyue Zeng, Yuting Fu, Haiyun Zou, Peng Zhang
    National Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program at Zhejiang University

Portfolio

Awards & Honors

  1. Financial Travel Award

    2025 — 2026

    ICLR'26

  2. Student Spotlight

    2025 — 2026

    Sanghani Center for AI & Data Analytics

  3. Sanghani Center Travel Grant

    2025 — 2026

    Sanghani Center for AI & Data Analytics

  4. CAPWIC Travel Scholarship

    2025 — 2026

    CAPWIC

  5. GPSS Travel Grant

    2024 — 2025

    Virginia Tech Graduate School

  6. CS Travel Award

    2024 — 2025

    Virginia Tech CS Department

  7. Biostatistics Travel Award

    2023 — 2024

    UNC-Chapel Hill

  8. Undergraduate Innovation and Entrepreneurship Award

    2021 — 2022

    Zhejiang University

Presentations

  1. HalluGuard: Demystifying Data-Driven and Reasoning-Driven Hallucinations in LLMs

    2026

    Fourteenth International Conference on Learning Representations(ICLR 2026)

  2. Plan and Budget: Effective and Efficient Test-Time Scaling on Large Language Model Reasoning

    2026

    Fourteenth International Conference on Learning Representations(ICLR 2026)

  3. Foundational LLM Reasoning and Inference

    2026

    ACM CAPWIC 2026

  4. Foundational LLM Fine-tuning

    2025

    International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM) PhD Forum 2025

  5. LENSLLM: Unveiling Fine-Tuning Dynamics for LLM Selection

    2025

    Forty-Second International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2025)

  6. Gaussian-Process-Based Cell Type Specific Unmixing of Bulk Expression Profiles

    2024

    ENAR 2024 Spring Meeting

  7. Wildlife recognition based on deep learning

    2022

    Dissertation Defense for Undergraduate Thesis at Zhejiang University

Invited Talks

  1. Invited Talk for LensLLM

    Oct 2025

    Cerebras AI

  2. Invited Talk for LensLLM

    Oct 2025

    PLOUTOS AI

  3. Guest Lecture: CS 4824

    March 2025

    Virginia Tech

Services

  1. Reviewer

    ICLR 2026, ICLR 2026 workshop, ICML 2026, KDD 2026

Copyrights

  1. Statistical Analysis Platform

    2023

    Software Copyright in China

Contact

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