Ph.D. student
UC Berkeley
xinyanhu [at] berkeley [dot] edu
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Xinyan Hu
Xinyan Hu
Hi! I am a CS PhD student at UC Berkeley, where I am a member of the Berkeley AI Research (BAIR) Lab, advised by Michael I. Jordan and Jacob Steinhardt. I'm also an Anthropic AI Safety Research Fellow. My research aims to maximize human benefit from AI, with a primary focus on improving model reliability through a deeper understanding of inference procedures and training dynamics. I am also interested in how AI can support augmentation of human intelligence. My work draws on tools from mechanistic interpretability, algorithmic game theory, and machine learning theory.
Before coming to Berkeley, I received my B.S. in CS at Peking University, where I was fortunate to work with Xiaotie Deng on algorithmic game theory, auction theory and online learning. I also had the pleasure of working with Zhiwei Steven Wu (CMU) and Aleksandrs Slivkins (MSR) on multi-armed bandits and aligning online learning algorithms with human incentives.
Papers
Papers
- Preprints
Understanding In-context Learning of Addition via Activation Subspaces
Xinyan Hu, Kayo Yin, Michael I Jordan, Jacob Steinhardt*, Lijie Chen*
First Workshop on the Interplay of Model Behavior and Model Internals @ COLM 2025
[arXiv][twitter]Search Arena: Analyzing Search-Augmented LLMs
Mihran Miroyan*, Tsung-Han Wu*, Logan King, Tianle Li, Jiayi Pan, Xinyan Hu, Wei-Lin Chiang, Anastasios N. Angelopoulos, Trevor Darrell, Narges Norouzi, Joseph E. Gonzalez
[arXiv][twitter]Incentivizing High-Quality Content in Online Recommender Systems
Xinyan Hu*, Meena Jagadeesan*, Michael I. Jordan, Jacob Steinhardt
[arXiv]
- Publications
Incentivizing Combinatorial Bandit Exploration
Xinyan Hu, Dung Daniel Ngo, Aleksandrs Slivkins, Zhiwei Steven Wu (in alphabetical order)
NeurIPS 2022
[arXiv]
Nash Convergence of Mean-Based Learning Algorithms in First Price Auctions
Xiaotie Deng, Xinyan Hu, Tao Lin, Weiqiang Zheng (in alphabetical order)
The Web Conference (WWW) 2022
[arXiv][2-min video]
Teaching
Teaching
Teaching Assistant, CS 33400 Discrete Mathematics and Structures (Honor track), PKU, 2020 Fall
Selected Awards & Fellowship
Selected Awards & Fellowship
Anthropic AI Safety Research Fellow, 2025
Leo KoGuan scholarship, 2021
Yang Fuqing & Wang Yangyuan Academician Scholarship, 2020
Chinese Girls' Mathematical Olympiad (CGMO), Gold Medal, 2017
Miscellaneous
Miscellaneous
I have a deep passion for the outdoors—hiking and biking to immerse myself in nature—and love photographing to capture the fleeting beauty in everyday life and nature. In my spare time, I enjoy listening to music and playing various sports, particularly tennis. Novak Djokovic has been my idol and a significant inspiration in my personal growth since I was 11 years old. In a memorable adventure, I was fortunate enough to meet him in person, securing his autograph and capturing a selfie with him at BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells in 2024!
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