Lechen Zhang

Hi, I am Lechen! I am a first-year Ph.D. Student in Computer Science at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, advised by Professor Tal August in the Language Interaction Lab. I have broad interests in Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. I am particularly interested in the generalization and robustness of large language models (LLMs), especially their efficient learning and reasoning capabilities in out-of-domain settings. My recent research focuses on evaluating and improving LLM personalization, with the goal of aligning general model behavior more effectively with downstream tasks and user needs.

Previously, I earned my master’s degree from University of Michigan and my bachelor’s degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. During my time at Michigan, I was a member of Blablablab advised by Professor David Jurgens, and also worked with Professor Lu Wang as part of the Launch Lab.

You can find my CV here.