Gaotang Li

Gaotang Li

Ph.D. candidate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

About Me

I’m a second-year Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, working under the supervision of Hanghang Tong. Prior to this, I earned my bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan.

My current research interests center on scaling foundation models toward stronger reasoning and agentic capabilities. My past work spans a broad spectrum of post-training, including learning (SFT-loss), judging (RM-R1), and inferencing (JuICE). I am especially drawn to two complementary research styles: (1) conducting deep analysis to uncover new insights that challenge established conventions, and (2) training larger and more capable models through heavy engineering. More recently, I have also become interested in language modeling and new paradigms for model reasoning.

Email: gaotang3 [at] illinois [dot] edu

You can call me as Oliver. If you would like to chat with me about anything (e.g. research, internship opportunities, grad school application, mentorship etc.), feel free to fill out this form. Students from underrepresented groups are especially encouraged to reach out.

Selected Papers

(* denotes equal contribution)