[1] SLM-Mod: Small Language Models Surpass LLMs at Content Moderation [PDF]
Xianyang Zhan*, Agam Goyal*, Yilun Chen, Eshwar Chandrasekharan, Koustuv Saha.
Accepted to NAACL 2025 Main Conference (Top 1.5% of the submission, Oral Presentation)

[2] MoMoE: Mixture of Moderation Experts Framework for AI-Assisted Online Governance [PDF]
Agam Goyal, Xianyang Zhan, Yilun Chen, Koustuv Saha, Eshwar Chandrasekharan
Under Review

[3] MAGIC: Multi-Armed Bandit Guided Iterative Code Generation
Yaowenqi Liu, Xianyang Zhan, Yanli Wang, Kaidi Xu, Haohan Wang.
Under Review

[4] Large Language Model-based Data Science Agent: A Survey
Peiran Wang, Yaoning Yu, Ke Chen, Xianyang Zhan, Haohan Wang.
Under Review

[5] Simulation Framework for Embodied Conversational Agents in Psychological Counseling [PDF]
Lixiu Wu*, Yuanrong Tang*, Qisen Pan, Xianyang Zhan, Yuchen Han, Lanxi Xiao, Tianhong Wang, Chen Zhong, Jiangtao Gong.
Under Review

Acknowledgement

I had the privilege of getting into formal research early during my undergraduate degree, which gave me the opportunity to explore and understand what research truly is—and why we pursue it. I want to sincerely thank Weijiang Li (Harvard), without her guidance and encouragement, I wouldn’t have even considered stepping into the world of research.

Speding three semesters in Champaign and one semester in Chicago allowed me to grow both academically and personally. I’m deeply grateful to Prof. Koustuv Saha (UIUC), Prof. Eshwar Chandrasekharan (UIUC), and Prof. Haohan Wang (UIUC, NCSA) for their mentorship, trust, and collaboration. Their support helped shape my research direction and gave me the confidence to aim high. Also, I want to say thanks to my collaborators and friends—especially Melissa Shi (UIUC), Agam Goyal (UIUC), Yilun Chen (UIUC), and others who made the long hours and late nights worthwhile.

Later this summer, I’ll be joining Uber Freight as a Software Engineer II, focusing on algorithm, strategy and machine learning engineering for freight pricing. While I’m no longer a college student, I will stay engaged with research and continue learning and contributing.

This isn’t the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.

Xianyang Zhan
Seattle, May 2025