Reforming the Mechanism: Editing Reasoning Patterns in LLMs with Circuit Reshaping
Ph.D. Student · ECE · University of Virginia
Zhenyu (Fischer) Lei
E-mail: vjd5zr [at] virginia [dot] edu
Address: Charlottesville, VA, USA
About
About me
I am a Ph.D. student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Virginia, advised by Prof. Jundong Li. Before that, I received my B.S. in Physics from Xi'an Jiaotong University, where I was lucky to join the LUD Lab. I have also interned at AT&T as an Applied Scientist.
My research centers on LLM reasoning, memory, and distillation — how models reason, remember, and compress what they know — with brain-disorder prediction and AI for science as secondary interests. I am open to collaborations and discussions — feel free to reach out via email!
News & notices
News
Jan 2026One paper accepted at ICLR 2026.
Jan 2026One paper accepted at ISBI 2026.
Oct 2025One paper accepted at WSDM 2026. See you in Idaho (maybe)!
Aug 2025Two papers accepted at EMNLP 2025. See you in Suzhou (maybe)!
Nov 2024Two papers accepted at AAAI 2025 Main (Oral) — ST-FiT and BrainMAP. See you in Philadelphia!
Publications
All publications →
Selected Research
BrainTAP: Brain Disorder Prediction with Adaptive Distill and Selective Prior Integration
* equal contribution
Background
Education & Experience
UVA
University of Virginia, USAPh.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering · Advisor: Prof. Jundong Li
2023.08 – present
XJTU
Xi'an Jiaotong University, ChinaB.S. in Physics (Honor) · GPA 89.5/100 · Advisor: Prof. Minnan Luo
2019.08 – 2023.07
AT&T
AT&T, Bedminster, NJApplied Scientist Intern · Host: Dr. Qiong Wu
2025.06 – 2025.08
Recognition
Selected Honors & Awards
Capital One PhD Fellowship, 2025–26Presidential Fellowship in Collaborative Neuroscience, UVAAAAI 2025 Oral × 2 (ST-FiT, BrainMAP)Presidential Fellowship in Collaborative Neuroscience, UVAAAAI 2025 Oral × 2 (ST-FiT, BrainMAP)
Community
Service
Reviewer: CIKM (2025), COLM (2024, 2025), KDD (2024, 2025), ARR (Dec 2023–), NeurIPS (2023)Volunteer: ACL 2023 (virtual)
Off the clock
Misc
- I play badminton — William & Mary Open Group C Men's Doubles champion.
- I also love singing and volleyball. Favorite singers: Adele and Coldplay.
- Grateful to have learned from inspiring mentors including Shangbin Feng, Yushun Dong, Song Wang, and Zhen Tan. If I can help with your research journey, feel free to reach out.