Lizhe Zhang

Lizhe Zhang

Ph.D. Student in Computer Science
UC Santa Cruz

CV

About Me

I am a first-year Ph.D. student in Computer Science at UC Santa Cruz, advised by Prof. Chenguang Wang. My current research interests are agent safety and security and LLM evaluation, with the goal of understanding and improving the reliability of language models and the agents built around them.

Previously, I studied Computer Science at UC San Diego, advised by Prof. Jingbo Shang. I have also worked with Prof. Xia Hu and Prof. Thomas Plötz. My prior work spans LLM memorization and generalization, uncertainty-based model routing, and language-based synthetic data generation for wearable sensing.

News

Education

UC Santa Cruz
Ph.D. in Computer Science
2026.09–Present
UC San Diego
M.S. in Computer Science (GPA: 4.0/4.0)
2024.09-2026.03
Georgia Institute of Technology
B.S. in Computer Engineering (GPA: 3.96/4.0)
2022.05-2023.12
Emory University
B.S. in Physics, Minor in Applied Mathematics (GPA: 3.90/4.0)
2019.08-2023.12

Selected Publications

Lizhe Zhang - LLM Code Generation Workflow Diagram
Evaluating Harmful Memorization in LLM Code Generation Lizhe Zhang*, Wentao Chen*, Li Zhong, Letian Peng, Zilong Wang, Jingbo Shang
Findings of EMNLP 2026
Paper
Uncertainty-Based Small LM Routing - Lizhe Zhang
Confident or Seek Stronger: Exploring Uncertainty-Based Small LM Routing From Benchmarking to Generalization Yu-Neng Chuang*, Leisheng Yu*, Guanchu Wang, Lizhe Zhang, Hongyi Liu, Zirui Liu, Xuanting Cai, Yang Sui, Vladimir Braverman, Xia Hu
NeurIPS 2025 LLM Evaluation Workshop
Paper
IMUGPT 2.0 Methodology
IMUGPT 2.0: Language-Based Cross Modality Transfer for Sensor-Based Human Activity Recognition Zikang Leng, Amitrajit Bhattacharjee, Hrudhai Rajasekhar, Lizhe Zhang, Elizabeth Bruda, Hyeokhyen Kwon, Thomas Plötz
IMWUT 2024
Paper
emotion_recognition
Emotion Recognition on the Go: Utilizing Wearable IMUs for Personalized Emotion Recognition Zikang Leng*, Myeongul Jung*, Sungjin Hwang, Seungwoo Oh, Lizhe Zhang, Thomas Plötz, Kwanguk Kim
UbiComp/ISWC 2024
Paper

Honors & Awards

US Patent Language-based Cross-modality Transfer System for Generating Virtual IMU Data
Sigma Pi Sigma National Physics Honor Society • Emory University (2023)
Faculty Honors Georgia Institute of Technology (2022-2023)

Selected Projects

Virtual Reality Gesture Gloves

Arduino-based multi-sensor glove for 3D gesture mapping and obstacle alerts.

  • Designed and built an Arduino-based, multi-sensor glove that captures finger motions using rotary potentiometers.
  • Implemented firmware to map continuous resistance changes to 3D hand gestures in virtual space.
  • Integrated an ultrasonic distance sensor to provide real-world obstacle alerts for user safety.
Video Demo GitHub
Lizhe Zhang - VR Gesture Gloves Project

Find Your Spot: A Bluetooth Low Energy-based Parking Navigation System

An intelligent parking deck navigation system using ultra-low-power sensors and cloud computation to improve parking-space utilization.

  • Engineered an end-to-end parking navigation system utilizing Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons.
  • Leveraged RSSI values and path loss models to enable precise location detection and vehicle routing.
  • Optimized parking space allocation with a custom server-side routing algorithm.
Video Demo
Project Visual