Yiliu (Aiden) Li - Personal Website

Education

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

Sep 2023 – Jul 2026

BSc Computer Science

Research & Teaching Experiences

Research Assistant

Carnegie Mellon University Human Computer Interaction Institute (CMU HCII)

Jun 2025 – Sep 2025

Supervisor: Prof. Alexandra Ion

Conducted research in Physical Intelligence and Human-Robot Interaction by integrating VLM and VLA on robotic arms
Conducted research on how embodiment and interaction shape perceptions of robotic collaborators (submitted to CHI 2026)

Research Assistant

Tsinghua University Pervasive HCI Group (Tsinghua PI Lab)

May 2025 – Present

Conducting research in LLM Ideation and LLM Review, by developing a GUI LLM platform, and to enable low-cost collection, organization and synthesization of scientific facets
Designing and developing cross-platform mobile webapp for online AI hemifacial spasm analysis via facial analysis

Research Assistant

UCL Computer Science Multi-Sensory Devices (MSD) Group

Aug 2024 – Apr 2025

Supervisor: Prof. Marianna Obrist

Developed and deployed Virtual Reality (VR) environment, enhanced experience in fabric touch perception
Contributed to research on kinaesthetic illusion through experimental support, and literature review
Supported in preparing presentations and research summaries about pseudo-haptics

Teaching Assistant

UCL Computer Science

Sep 2024 – Present

COMP0016 System Engineering

Sep 2025 – Present

Module Leader: Prof. Dean Mohamedally

Supervised multi-disciplinary, industry-sponsored CS teams (e.g., Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Cisco), owning weekly cadence, stakeholder communication, and risk management to keep projects on track
Delivered deep technical mentorship across AI/ML (LLMs, NLP, RAG/Agentic AI), HCI, CG/AR/VR, computer vision, and cloud/mobile, assisted in system architecture and end-to-end implementation of system

ENGF0034 Design and Professional Skills I (Computer Science)

Sep 2024 – Present

Module Leader: Prof. Martin Benning

Assisted students with Python coding, AI game auto player development, and debugging techniques
Provided support in understanding internet protocols and real-world networking applications

Industrial & Leadership Experiences

AI Product Manager Intern

Ponder AI (ResearchFlow)

Feb 2025 – Present

Actively supporting initiatives such as Keyboard Shortcuts, Mind Map View, and Accuracy Optimization
Proposed, designed, and launched multi-functional AI Chatbox that supports in-contextual quotation
Assisted in structuring product roadmaps, gathering user feedback, and optimizing AI functionalities to enhance usability and user engagement

Head of Nexus Lab

UCL Artificial Intelligence Society

Sep 2025 – Present

Directing Europe's largest student-led AI research lab, overseeing multi-pillar programmes and leading faculty/PhD-mentored teams from ideation to publication
Organized regular academic events to connect students and researchers, designed research roadmaps, and built structured pipelines guiding students from learning to active research participation

Projects

SightLinks – UCL IXN Project

Oct 2024 – Mar 2025

Collaboration with UCL GDI Hub, Wheelchair Alliance, and Soundscape, to enhance accessibility solutions for disabled individuals. Trained machine learning model based on MobileNetV3, YOLO11, and utilized georeference techniques for precise zebra crossing detection and geolocation from satellite imagery, with a precision of >85%.

Project Page

CUDA Accelerated SDOT Kernel Development at UCR Supercomputing Lab

Jun 2023 – Aug 2023

A breakthrough was achieved in creating an innovative algorithm for computing SDOT by optimizing GPU-accelerated kernels, enhancing efficiency, and minimizing data movement through CUDA programming and innovative techniques.

Source code

Supervisor: Prof. Zizhong (Jeffery) Chen

Publications

KiTaFab: Kinaesthetic and Tactile Mid-air Haptics Fabric Experiences

Submitted 2025

Jing Xue, Madhankumar Vasudevan, Aiden Yiliu Li, Zhouyang Shen, James Hardwick, Martin Dechant, Marianna Obrist

This work explores kinaesthetic and tactile mid-air haptics through fabric-based experiences, advancing interaction design and perception for novel non-contact haptic interfaces.

Venue: Submitted to ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI)

Chain of Ground: Improving GUI Grounding via Iterative Reasoning and Reference Feedback

Submitted 2025

Aiden Yiliu Li, Bizhi Yu, Daoan Lei, Tianhe Ren, Shilong Liu

This work proposes a chain-of-thought style approach to GUI grounding that iteratively reasons about interface elements and leverages reference feedback to significantly improve grounding accuracy and robustness across complex screens.

Venue: Submitted to Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR '26)

Events & Activities

YC AI Startup School

June 16-17, 2025

San Francisco, CA

AI Startup Conference Event

Selected to join an exclusive program convening leading AI founders, researchers, and investors (including Sam Altman, Dr. Andrew Ng, Prof. Fei-Fei Li, Prof. Chelsea Finn, Garry Tan and Satya Nadella) to explore frontier developments in AI innovation and entrepreneurship.

Skills

Programming Languages

Python C C++ C# Java JavaScript HTML CSS Haskell SQL

Development Tools

CUDA Unity Arduino PyTorch TensorFlow OpenCV React React Native Node.js Bash Git