Zhiwei Xu

Hi! I am Zhiwei, a third-year Ph.D. candidate in Statistics at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, gratefully advised by Prof. Wei Hu and Prof. Yixin Wang. My research interest is centered around theoretical and scientific understanding of foundation models.

Recently I'm interested in understanding and improving the length & compositional generalization and reasoning abilities of Large Language Models. My ultimate goal of research is to know whether transformer-like models are capable of solving new and (much*N) more challenging math problems. Feel free to reach out if you share the same interests!


Education

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Ph.D. in Statistics
Advisor: Wei Hu & Yixin Wang
2022 - Present

University of Science and Technology of China

Hefei, Anhui, China
B.S. in Statistics
Advisor: Weiping Zhang
2018 - 2022

Preprints/Publications

Gabriel Patron, Zhiwei Xu, Ishan Kapnadak, Felipe Maia Polo

Submitted.

Roey Magen*, Shuning Shang*, Zhiwei Xu, Spencer Frei, Wei Hu, Gal Vardi

Submitted.

Zhiwei Xu*, Zhiyu Ni*, Yixin Wang, Wei Hu

ICLR 2025.

Zhiwei Xu, Yutong Wang, Spencer Frei, Gal Vardi, Wei Hu

ICLR 2024.

Zhiwei Xu, Ziming Gan, Doudou Zhou, Shuting Shen, Junwei Lu*, Tianxi Cai*

Preprint, 2023.

Under review


Teaching

STATS 500: Statistical Learning

UMich
Graded homework and conducted office hours
Fall 2024

STATS 413: Applied Regression Analysis

UMich
Taught weekly lab classes, graded homework, and conducted office hours
Winter 2024

STATS/DATASCI 451: Bayesian Data Analysis

UMich
Graded homework and conducted office hours
FALL 2023

STATS 250: Introduction to Statistics and Data Analysis

UMich
Taught weekly lab classes, graded homework and lab, and conducted office hours
WINTER 2023

Real Analysis

USTC
Taught weekly lab classes and graded homework
SPRING 2021


Service

  • Conference Reviewer @ ICML (2024), ICLR (2025), L4DC (2025)
  • Workshop Reviewer @ W3L (2024)