{"id":1411,"date":"2021-10-28T14:31:50","date_gmt":"2021-10-28T14:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yingzhenli.net\/home\/en\/?page_id=1411"},"modified":"2026-09-30T09:55:03","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T09:55:03","slug":"group","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/yingzhenli.net\/home\/en\/?page_id=1411","title":{"rendered":"Group"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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nice summer together (June 2025) -- we miss you Wenlong and Naoki!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Members<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Wuhao Chen
<\/strong>PhD student (Imperial, Computing)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wuhao obtained a BSc in Computer Science from UCL and MSc in Advanced Computing from Imperial. He joined the group as a Computing PhD candidate in May 2024. Wuhao's research interests include generative models, especially on non-textual data. In his spare time, he enjoys photography, reading, and various sports.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Riccardo El Hassanin
<\/strong>PhD student (Imperial, Computing, AI4Health CDT<\/a>, with Oliver Ratmann<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Riccardo graduated with a Master of Engineering in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Imperial College London. He joined the group in January 2026 as a PhD candidate in the AI4Health CDT programme. His research interests lie in probabilistic machine learning for deep sequence modelling and uncertainty-aware inference. Outside of his research, he enjoys travelling, music, cooking and sports.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Isuru Shavindra Jayasekera<\/a><\/strong>
PhD student (Imperial, Math, StatML CDT<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shavindra studied his undergraduate and master's in mathematics at the University of Cambridge, specialising in statistics. Following this, he completed a master's in computational statistics and machine learning at UCL. He joined the group in Oct 2023 as a PhD student in the Modern Statistics and Statistical Machine Learning CDT programme. His research interests include techniques to improve explainability, interpretability and reliability of foundational models as well as applications in the field of chemistry. In his spare time, Shavindra enjoys amongst other things going to music concerts, photography, hiking and trying out new sports.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Naoki Kiyohara<\/a>
<\/strong>PhD student (Imperial, Computing, with Edward Johns<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naoki is from Tokyo, Japan. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in Physics at Tokyo University of Science and a master\u2019s degree in Advanced Materials Science at the University of Tokyo. Subsequently, he joined Canon Inc. (Tokyo) and started in Oct 2023 at Imperial College London as a PhD student, sponsored through the company's corporate study abroad program. His research is centered around model-based reinforcement learning, with a particular focus on sequential generative models. Moving forward, he aims to significantly enhance exploration efficiency by utilizing models that can capture uncertainties, such as Bayesian models. In his free time, he enjoys playing and listening to classical piano music.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Yingzhen Li<\/strong>
Faculty (Imperial, NTU)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I lead my group's research and do my best to help with other members' great work. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Xixi Liu<\/strong>
WASP postdoctoral fellow (Imperial)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Xixi Liu is currently a postdoctoral research fellow, funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, at the Department of Computing at Imperial College London. Her research focuses on developing reliable foundation models through the lens of out-of-distribution detection, model calibration, and hallucination mitigation. Before joining Imperial, she was part of the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP) as a PhD student. She earned both her PhD and Master\u2019s degrees from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden.She enjoys swimming, visiting museums, photography, hiking, and live music in her spare time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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James Myles
<\/strong>PhD student (Imperial, Computing, with Bernhard Kainz<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James graduated with a BSc from King\u2019s College London in Mathematics with Statistics and an MSc in Artificial Intelligence at Imperial College London. He joined the group in October 2025 as a PhD student. His research interests include multi-modal and generative modelling, information theory, reinforcement learning and quality-diversity optimisation, with a particular emphasis on their theoretical foundations. In his spare time, he enjoys a range of bat-and-ball sports and playing the piano.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Yuta Ono<\/a>
<\/strong>PhD student (Imperial, Computing, with F-X Briol<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yuta joined the group as a PhD student in Oct 2026, after receiving his BSc in Engineering and MSc in Computer Science from the University of Tokyo. His recent research interests focus on uncertainty quantification for foundational models and LLM agents. Outside of research, he enjoys travelling, photography, and sports.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Mariya Pavlova<\/strong>
PhD student (Imperial, Computing, with Elizaveta Semenova<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mariya joins the group in Aug 2024, her research interest is on machine learning methods for climate science. Previously, Mariya was a Director at Sustainable Fitch (part of Fitch Group) responsible for product development. Prior to that, she spent a number of years at top firms in asset management. She also is a DeepMind scholar, Forbes speaker, ITU (United Nations) member, member of AI 4 Climate Lab at Imperial College London, frequent guest speaker, and a start-up mentor. Mariya is recognised as one of Women of the Future: 50 Rising Stars in ESG.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Lapo Rastrelli<\/strong>
PhD student (Imperial, Computing)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lapo obtained an MEng degree in Biomedical Engineering (Computational stream) at Imperial College London. He joined the group previously as an MRes student and now as a PhD student starting Oct 2023.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Jacob Yoke Hong Si<\/strong> <\/a>
PhD student (Imperial, Computing)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jacob earned a Master of Engineering degree specializing in AI and ML from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an Honours Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science, Statistics, and Economics at the University of Toronto. He is also fortunate to have been advised by Prof. Jonathan Kao at UCLA and Prof. Rahul Krishnan at the Vector Institute where he researched novel machine learning architectures through deep generative modeling. Jacob joined the group in Jan 2024. His current research interests include the improvement of generative AI and applying them to various domains including images, sequential modeling and tabular data. During his spare time, he enjoys playing and watching sports such as football, rugby and golf.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Xavier Sumba Toral<\/a><\/strong>
PhD student (Imperial, Computing)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Xavier obtained his MSc at Concordia and McGill University in Canada. Before that, he did his BEng. at the University of Cuenca in Ecuador. He also worked at the University of Cuenca and Heyday (now acquired by Hootsuite). He joined the group as a Ph.D. candidate in Computing in Feb 2023. These days, he is interested in Bayesian models and approximate inference. In his spare time, he loves running and discovering new places.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Yuval Weiss<\/strong>
PhD student (Imperial, Math, StatML CDT<\/a>, with Oliver Ratmann<\/a> and Richard Houlston<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yuval was born and raised in London and studied Computer Science at Jesus College, Cambridge. He joined the group in September 2026 as a PhD candidate in the StatML program. He plans to explore Machine Learning for Cancer Susceptibility Genetics, in collaboration with Cancer Research UK. In his spare time, Yuval loves to cook, bake, read and play water polo.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Zhengrui Xiang<\/a>
<\/strong>PhD student (Imperial, Computing)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zhengrui hails from Sichuan, China. He completed his BSc degree in Information and Computing Science at the Beijing Institute of Technology, followed by an MSc in Statistics at Imperial College London. Later, he earned another MSc in data science and machine Learning from University College London. In April 2024, he joined the group as a PhD candidate. His current research interests lie in a variety kind of generative models, interpretable AI and their applications. Outside of his research, Zhengrui loves to draw digital illustrations, play the piano, play soccer, watch animations, and play video games.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Wenxuan Yuan<\/a>
<\/strong>PhD student (NTU, CCDS)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wenxuan obtained an MSc in Applied Computational Science and Engineering (ACSE) at Imperial College London. He joined the group as a PhD candidate in the College of Computing and Data Science (CCDS) at NTU in Aug 2026. Currently, Wenxuan is increasingly interested in how latent dynamics, causal inference, and reinforcement learning can interact to enable machines to predict, reason about, and act in complex environments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Alumni <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

PostDoc<\/strong>
Federico Ottomano<\/a> (Imperial, Chemistry, with Alex Ganose<\/a>, 2024 - 2026) -> Senior Machine Learning Scientist @ Nxera Pharma
Xinzhe Luo<\/a> (Imperial, EEE, with Chen Qin<\/a>, 2024 - 2026) -> Startup<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PhD<\/strong>
Zijing Ou<\/a> (Imperial, Computing, 2022 - 2026) -> Research Scientist @ Apple Machine Learning Research
Carles Balsells Rodas<\/a> (Imperial, Computing, 2021 - 2026) -> Research Scientist @ UiPath
Wenlong Chen<\/a> (Imperial, Computing, 2021 - 2025) -> Research Scientist @ Isomorphic Labs
Harrison Zhu<\/a> (Imperial, Math, StatML CDT<\/a>, with Seth Flaxman<\/a>, 2021 - 2024) -> Assistant Professor @ University of Copenhagen<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MRes (Imperial)<\/strong>
Zhaodong Guo (2025\/26)
<\/strong>Lapo Rastrelli (2021\/22) -> PhD @ Imperial Computing
Jiaming Zhang (2022\/23) -> PhD @ University of Glasgow
Pengyang Xie (2022\/23) -> Alibaba
Ze Zhang (2022\/23) -> Tencent
Xiaoyao Qiu (2023\/24) -> Alibaba<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Visitors
<\/strong>Junyu Xuan<\/a> (Jan - Mar 2025)
Xue Yan<\/a> (Apr - Sept 2025) -> Postdoc @ NTU Singapore<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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