Linyi Li

Linyi Li is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University, where they direct the TAI (Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence) Lab. Their research focuses on advancing the trustworthiness of artificial intelligence, particularly deep learning models that power state-of-the-art generative AI systems like language models.

Dr. Li received their PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2023, advised by Bo Li and Tao Xie. Prior to that, they earned their bachelor's degree from the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Tsinghua University in 2018, where they conducted research on Web API Automated Testing under the supervision of Xiaoying Bai. Between 2023 and 2024, Dr. Li worked as a senior research scientist at ByteDance.

Dr. Li's research centers on trustworthy deep learning, with a focus on certifiably trustworthy deep learning and trustworthy foundation models. They aim to enable certifiable and verifiable trustworthiness guarantees such as robustness, fairness, and numerical reliability for large-scale deep learning systems. Their work spans both machine learning and computer security domains, seeking to understand and analyze the mechanisms of deep learning and foundation models, particularly their root causes of trustworthiness issues. Dr. Li also works on scientifically and comprehensively evaluating foundation models.

Dr. Li has published over 30 papers in flagship machine learning and computer security conferences including ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, IEEE S&P, and ACM CCS. Their research output shows a consistent focus on certified trustworthiness in machine learning systems, with particular emphasis on robustness certification, fairness guarantees, numerical reliability, and verification techniques. Recent work has expanded to include evaluation frameworks for code large language models, reflecting the growing importance of trustworthy foundation models in practical applications.

• Rising Stars in Data Science
• AdvML Rising Star Award
• Wing Kai Cheng Fellowship
• 4th International Verification of Neural Networks Competition (VNN-COMP'23)
• 2022 Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (Finalist)
• 2022 Two Sigma PhD Fellowship (Finalist)

Dr. Li serves as a Principal Investigator of the TAI Lab at SFU, which is actively recruiting PhD students. They have received an NSERC Discovery Grant with Launch Supplement. Dr. Li also serves on program committees for major conferences, including as an Area Chair for NeurIPS 2025 and ICLR 2026, and has been involved in conference organization such as co-organizing the workshop on Trustworthy and Socially Responsible Machine Learning at NeurIPS 2022.

The TAI Lab, located on the beautiful Burnaby campus of Simon Fraser University in the greater Vancouver area, conducts research aimed at delivering AI technologies that are reliably aligned with human values to minimize negative impacts of powerful AI systems. The lab's research specifically focuses on understanding AI in a principled way through scientific benchmarks and theoretical frameworks, and delivering certifiable mitigations for deep learning models to provide practical guarantees of trustworthiness.