Caiqi Zhang | University of Cambridge

🙋 About Me

I am a first year Ph.D. student at the University of Cambridge, working under the supervision of Prof. Nigel Collier. Previously, I completed my MPhil degree at Cambridge, focusing on fact-checking under the guidance of Prof. Andreas Vlachos. During my undergraduate studies, I completed my capstone project with Prof. Wenjie Li on conversational QA systems and interned at UCLA under the supervision of Dr. Nanyun Peng.

🧐 Research Interests

Factuality in Large Language Models: How can we reduce hallucinations in LLMs?
Uncertainty in Large Language Models: How can we quantify the uncertainty of LLMs for a given question?

📚 Education

2023.10 - Present: University of Cambridge, Ph.D. in Computation, Cognition and Language.
- Fully funded by Amazon Studentship.
2022.10 - 2023.06: University of Cambridge, M.Phil. in Advanced Computer Science.
- Pass with Distinction (Grade: 81%).
2018.09 - 2022.06: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, B.Sc. in Computing.
- Awarded the highest award for undergraduates: Outstanding Student of the Faculty of Engineering 2021/22. (Only one from more than 1000 students.) [News][Sharing][YouTube][Facebook][WeChat]

Scholarships:

• HKSAR Government Scholarship 2020/21 and 2021/22 (HKD 160,000, around USD 20,500)
• Commercial Radio 50th Anniversary Scholarship 2019/20 (HKD 80,000, around USD 10,250)
• The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Scholarship 2019/20 (HKD 40,000, around USD 5,125)
• Wong Tit-shing Student Exchange Scholarship 2020/21 (HKD 20,000, around USD 2,560)
• WKF Foundation Service-Learning Scholarship 2020/21 (HKD 16,600, around USD 2,125)
• Wei Lun Foundation Scholarship 2020/21 (HKD 16,600, around USD 2,125)
• Tellhow Group Scholarship 2018/19 (CNY 10,000, around USD 1,399)
• Rennie's Mill Student Aid Project Alumni Association Scholarship 2019/20 (HKD 10,000, around USD 1,250)
• V.K. Hsu & Sons Foundations Ltd. Scholarship 2019/20 (HKD 10,000, around USD 1,250)
• HKMA IT Management Club Scholarship 2021/22 (HKD 5,000, around USD 640)
• Proof-of-Concept (POC) Funding Scheme 2021/22 (HKD 5,000, around USD 640)

📝 Publications

Uncertainty Quantification in Large Language Models for Long Text Generation.
Preprint
Caiqi Zhang, Fangyu Liu, Marco Basaldella, Nigel Collier.
Do We Need Language-Specific Fact-Checking Models? The Case of Chinese.
Preprint
Caiqi Zhang, Zhijiang Guo, Andreas Vlachos.
Language is All a Graph Needs.
Findings at EACL 2024
Ruosong Ye, Caiqi Zhang, Runhui Wang, Shuyuan Xu, Yongfeng Zhang.
Learning to Infer Action-Condition Dependencies from Instructional Manuals for Structural Instruction Understanding.
Main conference at ACL 2023
Te-Lin Wu, Caiqi Zhang, Carol Hu, Alex Spangher, Nanyun (Violet) Peng.

Other papers:

Hybrid Learning for Mobile Ad-hoc Distancing / Positioning Using Bluetooth Low Energy. Yik Him Ho, Yunfei Liu, Caiqi Zhang, Yerkezhan Sartayeva, Henry C. B. Chan. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, Volume: 10, Issue: 14, 15 July 2023.
BlueTrk+ for Tracking Presence and Position. Yik Him Ho, Yunfei Liu, Caiqi Zhang, Henry C. B. Chan. IEEE Communications Magazine, Volume: 59, Issue: 8, August 2021.
PRUID: Practical User Interface Distribution for Multi-surface Computing. Menglong Cui, Mingsong Lv, Qingqiang He, Caiqi Zhang, Chuancai Gu, Tao Yang, Nan Guan. 58th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference 2021.

👀 More facts about me:

Volunteer Teaching

During term breaks, I volunteered in various teaching trips to rural areas globally, covering Hong Kong, Taiwan, Guilin, Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam), Phnom Penh (Cambodia), and Trà Vinh (Cambodia). I've participated in 10+ voluntary services, accumulating 400+ service hours, benefiting 300+ students. Also, I joined the United Nations' Millennium Fellowship 2021 to promote equal education.

Mandarin Debate

As a member of both the PolyU and Cambridge Mandarin Debate Teams, I participated in competitions across various cities, including Singapore, Shanghai, Suzhou, Nanjing, Wuhan, Changsha, Xi'an, and Chengdu. These experiences refined my communication and critical thinking skills and provided international representation opportunities.

Less is more. -Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe