Yunze (Lorenzo) Xiao

I am an incoming master student in LTI at Carnegie Mellon University where I am advised by Prof.Mona Diab I also work close with Prof. Dakuo Wang.

Previously,I have been advised by Prof. Houda Bouamor and Prof. Kemal Oflazer in Carengie Mellon University in Qatar. I also had the amazing opportunities to work with Dr. Firoj Alam at QCRI and Prof. Roy Ka-Wei Lee at SUTD.

Broadly, I aim to develop large language models that move beyond surface-level fluency toward genuine human-like intelligence- systems that can think, remember, feel, and interact in socially and cognitively coherent ways. This goal connects three intersecting research directions across NLP, Computational Social Science, and HCI:

1. Anthropomorphism as a Modeling Dimension: How do training objectives, architectural decisions, and interface designs shape the emergence of human-like traits in LLMs? I study anthropomorphism not just as a risk or illusion, but as a controllable and analyzable design space.

2. Anthropomorphism for Applictaions: How can human-like attributes—such as emotional resonance, persona consistency, or contextual memory—be used to improve LLM performance in real-world applications like education, therapy, and collaborative writing?

3. Architectures for Synthetic Human-Likeness: What design innovations (e.g., memory modules, affective simulation, multi-modal grounding) are needed to support truly interactive and situated AI agents? I seek to build systems that engage users as intuitive, emotionally-aware collaborators.

In the end, we are looking for applying these research for authentic AI companion as a potential solution to the global lonliness and disconnection

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