Hi, I'm Yimi 👋

I am a PhD student at UC San Diego, advised by Prof. Jingbo Shang. In 2026, I am a Student Researcher at Google DeepMind. I previously interned at TikTok and Microsoft Research Asia.

I build LLM agents that can assess themselves, keep improving, and make scientific discoveries. My work spans three directions:

  • Introspection and agent control: hidden-state signals, self-assessment, and value modeling, used to steer long-horizon tasks.
  • Agent learning and evolution: reusing tools and experience, and revising knowledge over time.
  • Evaluation and scientific discovery: separating task performance from genuine discovery ability, and benchmarking code and data agents.

Selected Publications

* Equal contribution · Full list on Google Scholar

Experience

  • Google DeepMind 2026
    Student Researcher · with Xi Yi · LLM introspection and value modeling for coding agents
  • TikTok
    Research Intern · with Dr. Qian Liu
  • Microsoft Research Asia
    Research Intern · with Dr. Xiao Liu, Dr. Yeyun Gong, and Dr. Weizhu Chen

Awards

  • UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering Fellowship2025
  • USTB Principal Medal (10 out of all undergraduate graduates, highest undergraduate honor)2023
  • Beijing Outstanding Graduate Award (top 1% in academics)2023
  • National Scholarship (top 0.2% nationwide), three times2020–22