people

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layout: about title: About permalink: / subtitle: Hi there! You can call me Jiayi Zhang (张嘉怡) or Eleanor!

profile: align: right image: prof_pic.jpg image_circular: false # crops the image to make it circular # more_info: > # <p>555 your office number</p> # <p>123 your address street</p> # <p>Your City, State 12345</p>

selected_papers: true # includes a list of papers marked as “selected={true}” social: true # includes social icons at the bottom of the page

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latest_posts: enabled: true scrollable: true # adds a vertical scroll bar if there are more than 3 new posts items limit: 3 # leave blank to include all the blog posts —

I am a first second-year PhD student in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University advised by Prof. Weiyan Shi. I am also a member of the CHATS Lab.

Previously, I was an undergraduate student at University of Michigan (UMich), with a honors major in Computer Science and two minors in Mathmatics and Linguistics. I was fortunate to be advised by Prof. Lu Wang at LAUNCH Lab. I was also privileged to work closely with Prof. Zhijing Jin and Prof. Rada Mihalcea.

My research interest lies on building robust and socially responsible NLP systems that align with human needs and preferences. Currently, I’m particularly interested in:

• Social Simulation: Understanding LLMs’ behavioral patterns and social reasoning in complex, open-ended scenarios and comparing them with human behavior;
• LLM as User Simulator: Building human-like LLM-based user simulators to bridge RL training with real-world interaction;
• I am also quite interested in multi-modal modeling and reasoning and LLMs for Scientific Discovery.

I am seeking a research internship for Summer 2026. Please feel free to contact me if you believe there is a potential fit.

---

layout: about title: About permalink: / subtitle: Hi there! You can call me Jiayi Zhang (张嘉怡) or Eleanor!

profile: align: right image: prof_pic.jpg image_circular: false # crops the image to make it circular # more_info: > # <p>555 your office number</p> # <p>123 your address street</p> # <p>Your City, State 12345</p>

selected_papers: true # includes a list of papers marked as “selected={true}” social: true # includes social icons at the bottom of the page

announcements: enabled: true # includes a list of news items scrollable: true # adds a vertical scroll bar if there are more than 3 news items limit: 4 # leave blank to include all the news in the _news folder

latest_posts: enabled: true scrollable: true # adds a vertical scroll bar if there are more than 3 new posts items limit: 3 # leave blank to include all the blog posts —

I am a first second-year PhD student in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University advised by Prof. Weiyan Shi. I am also a member of the CHATS Lab.

Previously, I was an undergraduate student at University of Michigan (UMich), with a honors major in Computer Science and two minors in Mathmatics and Linguistics. I was fortunate to be advised by Prof. Lu Wang at LAUNCH Lab. I was also privileged to work closely with Prof. Zhijing Jin and Prof. Rada Mihalcea.

My research interest lies on building robust and socially responsible NLP systems that align with human needs and preferences. Currently, I’m particularly interested in:

• Social Simulation: Understanding LLMs’ behavioral patterns and social reasoning in complex, open-ended scenarios and comparing them with human behavior;
• LLM as User Simulator: Building human-like LLM-based user simulators to bridge RL training with real-world interaction;
• I am also quite interested in multi-modal modeling and reasoning and LLMs for Scientific Discovery.

I am seeking a research internship for Summer 2026. Please feel free to contact me if you believe there is a potential fit.