
About me
Hi! I am Xun Liu, a first-year PhD student majoring in Computer Science at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, advised by Prof. Bo Li. Before that, I developed my interest in Computer Science and Computational thinking in Olympiad in Informatics (OI).
My current research interest lies in Trustworthy Machine Learning, especially in Large Language Models (LLMs) and LLM-based Agent Systems. Surrounding this topic, my research explores adversarial attack, red-teaming and alignment.
Whatever my future endeavors are, I shall steadfastly view the integration of technology and humanities as my life's mission. In a world increasingly dominated by digital advancements, I believe that preserving the essence of human culture and values is paramount. My journey will be dedicated to harmonizing the precision and innovation of technology with the depth and insight of the humanities. Of course, this vision presents a long road ahead, not just for me personally, but also for the academic and industrial worlds.
Education
- Ph.D. in Computer Science
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Aug. 2025-Present
- B.S. in Cybersecurity
School of Cyber Security, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Aug. 2021-Jun. 2025
Industry Experience
- Bytedance
Research Intern, Safety Reasoning Post-training of Large Language Models.
Jun. 2025-Aug. 2025 - Meituan
Research Intern, Post-training on Foundation Language Models.
Jan. 2025-May. 2025
Research Experience
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Student Intern, advised by Prof. Bo Li.
Feb. 2024-Dec. 2024 - University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Research Assistant, advised by Prof. Fei Sun.
Sep. 2023-Feb. 2024
Publications and Preprints
-
RedCode: Risky Code Execution and Generation Benchmark for Code Agents
Chengquan Guo*, Xun Liu*, Chulin Xie*, Andy Zhou, Yi Zeng, Zinan Lin, Dawn Song, Bo Li. NeurIPS 2024.
-
🦋🌪 The Butterfly Effect of Model Editing: Few Edits Can Trigger Large Language Models Collapse
Wanli Yang, Fei Sun, Xinyu Ma, Xun Liu, Dawei Yin, Xueqi Cheng. ACL 2024.
Teaching Experience
- Class 2311 (Cybersecurity Major)
Peer Mentor
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences - Introduction to Computer Science (Spring 2023)
Teaching Assistant
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Instructor: Prof. Zhiwei Xu
Honors and Awards
- First Class Academic Scholarship (5%), 2022
- National Scholarship Nomination (2%), 2022
- Outstanding Student Cadre, 2022,2023,2024
- Merit Student, 2022,2023,2024
- The 2021 ICPC Asia Nanjing Regional Contest, Bronze Medal, 2021
- National Olympiad in Informatics in Provinces (NOIp), First Prize (Senior Group), 2018,2019
Paper Reading Presentations
- AI Scheming: Frontier Models may Pursue Secret Goals and Lie to You, Mar. 2025
- Gradient-based Jailbreaking: Methods and Applications, Jul. 2024
- How Johnny Can Persuade LLMs to Jailbreak Them: Rethinking Persuasion to Challenge AI Safety by Humanizing LLMs, Mar. 2024
- BITE: Textual Backdoor Attacks with Iterative Trigger Injection, Nov. 2023
- Unlearning & Jailbreak, Oct. 2023
Public Affairs
- President of the 10th Undergraduate Student Union of University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2023-2024
- President of the Pin Association (果壳良品社团), 2022-2023
- Cofounder and organizer of the No.2 High School Public Lecture (二中公益讲堂), 2021