Zhanli Li

Zhanli Li

Make AI trustworthy

About Zhanli Li (李展利)

👋 Hi, I’m Zhanli Li (李展利), currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Digital Economy (2023-2027) at the Wenlan School of Business, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (ZUEL). During my time at ZUEL, I’ve had the privilege of meeting an amazing group of senior students with incredible insights into deep learning—especially Kaichen Xu (徐恺辰) and Yihang Du (杜艺航), whose work has powerfully proven the potential of ZUEL students in AI research. As of now, my open-source projects have earned GitHub Stars and my publications as first author have received Google Scholar Citations. My first principle in research is to make AI research that helps change the world for the better, and I am currently deeply interested in agentic training, document intelligence, data intelligence, and potential explainability. If you’re interested in these topics, feel free to visit my Paper Radar for daily paper recommendations and updates.

🎓 From 2024 to February 2025, I had the privilege of being mentored by Prof. Zichao Yang (杨子超) at ZUEL, where I conducted research on causal inference. From February 2025 to March 2026, I was an intern supervised by Prof. Yixuan Cao (曹逸轩) at the State Key lab of AI Safety, Institute of Computing Technology and PAI TECH (庖丁科技), working on document intelligence in collaboration with Prof. Ping Luo (罗平)’s team using their advanced PDF parsing model, PDFlux.

💡 I am currently actively seeking CS/AI PhD opportunities of 27 fall. While my background in game theory and causal inference has built my foundational understanding of the world, I am deeply captivated by AI. I am fundamentally driven by the rapid evolution of this field and its unprecedented potential to change the world. AI is a highly verifiable domain where ideas are swiftly implemented into real-world impact, and being part of this progress deeply excites me. I am well aware that transitioning from an undergraduate economics major to a CS PhD is challenging, as the lack of systematic CS training is often questioned. Fortunately, I encountered several senior peers with similar backgrounds and aspirations. They selflessly shared invaluable experiences, helping me avoid many pitfalls. More importantly, their spirit inspired me to persistently pursue my goals, teaching me the profound truth that “Passion is all you need!”

💬 Beyond academic research, I enjoy playing table tennis, running, and cycling in my free time. I am also a big fan of video games, especially Valorant—where I mainly play as a Duelist, frequently locking in Phoenix, Neon, and Omen—as well as MOBA mobile games. I welcome anyone interested in my work or seeking potential collaborations to reach out via email: lizhanli@stu.zuel.edu.cn.

Selected Publications 📓

Before introducing my selected publications, I would like to share a few thoughts on how I think about research. In the future, I hope to lead only one paper each year. For each work, I want to start from a problem that I find both interesting and meaningful, spend time understanding its principles and foundations, and then work on it seriously. If the problem is solved, that would be wonderful—a piece of good work. If not, that is also fine; it may still lead to an incremental paper. What truly matters is my own growth and the fact that I have helped push the boundary of the problem forward.

News 📧

Vistor 🗺️