Welcome to Zhuang Li’s Personal Website
Welcome!
Hello! My name is Zhuang Li, and I am a Lecturer at RMIT University and formerly a Research Fellow at Monash University. My research focuses on large language model safety, evaluation, and structured NLP, with an emphasis on building trustworthy and inspectable AI systems. I am particularly interested in making LLMs safer, more reliable, and easier to evaluate in real-world settings.
About Me
I earned my PhD from Monash University, where I was mentored by Dr. Lizhen Qu, Prof. Gholamreza Haffari, and ACL Fellow Phil Cohen. I am currently a Lecturer at RMIT University.
My recent work has appeared in leading venues such as ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, NeurIPS, and ICLR. I was a recipient of the EMNLP 2025 Outstanding Paper Award, and I am serving as Senior Area Chair for EMNLP 2026.
I have also collaborated with industry partners on LLM safety evaluation and red teaming, including Ant International (Singapore), which led to publications at ACL and NeurIPS.
I also contribute to the research community through service roles including Senior Area Chair for EMNLP 2026, Area Chair for ARR, NeurIPS, and NLPCC, and Publication Chair for ALTA 2026.
I am dedicated to developing trustworthy NLP systems and welcome collaboration in LLM safety, evaluation, and structured approaches to language understanding.
News
03/2026: I am part of the Wellcome Trust AI4You(th) project on safe clinical LLMs for youth mental health, a ~$6M AUD grant jointly secured by Orygen, the University of Melbourne, and RMIT University, in partnership with Google Health. PhD and postdoc positions will be available through the project.
03/2026: Serving as Senior Area Chair for EMNLP 2026.
11/2025: Our paper DiscoSG: Towards Discourse-Level Text Scene Graph Parsing through Iterative Graph Refinement received the EMNLP 2025 Outstanding Paper Award. Built on our previous FACTUAL work and integrated into FactualSceneGraph, which now has 171,000+ PyPI downloads and 600,000+ model downloads on Hugging Face. Links: Official repo · FactualSceneGraph toolkit
10/2025: One paper on LLM safety was accepted to NeurIPS 2025, and our workshop proposal PersonaLLM was also accepted. Link: PersonaNLP workshop
09/2025: Two EMNLP 2025 papers were accepted, including one Main paper and one Findings paper.
05/2025: Six papers were accepted to ACL 2025 main track.
05/2025: Served as an Area Chair for ACL Rolling Review.
02/2025: Served as an Area Chair for ACL Rolling Review.
- 02/2024: I joined RMIT University as a Lecturer.
I will be recruiting 1 PhD student in the 2025 cycle to work on low-resource languages and culturally-aligned large language models (LLMs).(filled)I may collaborate with researchers from RMIT University and Monash University to recruit another PhD student focusing on multimodal NLP.(filled)- If you are interested in joining, feel free to reach out.
- 04/2024: Co-organised the ALTA Shared Task: Overview of the 2024 ALTA Shared Task: Detect Automatic AI-Generated Sentences for Human-AI Hybrid Articles.
Research Interests
- Large language model safety and evaluation
- Structured NLP and semantic parsing
- Efficient adaptation and data synthesis
Collaboration and Supervision
I am eager to collaborate on innovative NLP and machine learning projects, particularly in LLM safety, evaluation, red teaming, structured NLP, and trustworthy AI systems.
I welcome:
- Remote interns with strong research backgrounds for collaborative projects
- Industry partners interested in practical challenges in LLM safety and trustworthy language technologies
For PhD supervision at RMIT, I collaborate with senior faculty members at RMIT as part of the supervision team. I welcome applications for:
- Grant-based students (subject to grant availability)
- University scholarship applicants (highly competitive)
Interested? Feel free to reach out by sending your CV and research interests to zhuang.li@rmit.edu.au!
Australian PhD Application Tips
Here’s a helpful overview for those considering doctoral studies in Australia and aren’t familiar with the application process:
Click to learn about Supervisor-Supported PhD Positions
- If your research interests match a supervisor's work, they may support your enrollment directly. The entry requirements are quite flexible and largely depend on the supervisor's discretion.
- Enrollment through this path can happen at any time throughout the year, though supervisor grant availability varies.
- English Language Requirements: While specific requirements vary by supervisor, typical English benchmarks include:
- IELTS overall band score of 6.5 or higher
- Equivalent scores in PTE or TOEFL
Click to learn about University Scholarship Opportunities
For International Applicants:
- For AI-related students in particular, these scholarships have become increasingly competitive due to limited positions and growing enthusiasm in the field. The competition has intensified as more students pursue AI research.
- Applications for university scholarships are only accepted during specific periods. For example, RMIT's 2026 scholarship round opens in April 2025. Plan ahead and prepare your application early!
- Recent successful applicants have typically had:
- A Master's degree from a prestigious university
- Strong transcript grades (High Distinction or equivalent grades across different systems, for example 70+ in British universities or 85+ in Chinese universities)
- Research experience, demonstrated through a first-authored publication in respected venues such as CORE A or A* conferences
- English proficiency test scores such as IELTS overall band 6.5 or equivalent in TOEFL/PTE
For Australian Residents:
- The Australian government provides Research Training Program (RTP) scholarships for domestic students
- Universities usually offer additional stipends for RTP recipients
- Typical requirements include a minimum overall grade of 75
- Still, exact eligibility criteria and funding amounts vary by program and supervisor availability.
Personal Interests
Outside of academia, I enjoy hobbies that inspire creativity and relaxation, such as gaming, movies, and reading.
Click to learn more about my favourite books, movies, and games
Gaming: AAA games like Elden Ring, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Diablo II, III, IV, Black Myth: Wukong, Red Dead Redemption, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Cyberpunk 2077, God of War series, etc.
Movies: Sci-fi and fantasy classics like Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and Batman: The Dark Knight. Other popular favourites include the Indiana Jones series, The Shawshank Redemption, The Silence of the Lambs, Forrest Gump, the Harry Potter series, and The Chronicles of Narnia series.
Books: Works on history and economics, including Les Misérables and The Intelligent Investor.
I’m also active on Zhihu (@Alpaca).