Xinglang Zhang

About

Hi, I'm Xinglang (Norman) Zhang, a sophomore undergraduate majoring in Cyber Science and Engineering at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), supervised by Zikai Song. I'm interested in AI reasoning and logic, and I enjoy exploring how structured thinking and human insight can work together.

I'm naturally proactive and collaborative—I like initiating ideas, working with others, and turning abstract concepts into practical work. Beyond research, I value communication, responsibility, and long-term growth.

I'm still learning, but highly motivated, open to feedback, and always excited by meaningful challenges.

News

• May 2026: 🎉 Our paper "Semantic-Aware Logical Reasoning via a Semiotic Framework" has been selected as an oral presentation at ACL 2026!
• Apr 2026: My TOEFL score is out--5.5/6. Congratulations to Xinglang!
• Apr 2026: 🎉 Two papers were accepted to ACL 2026 Main Conference. Congratulations to Yunyao and our team!
• Mar 2026: ACL meta scores are out—3.5 and 4. Looking forward to good news ahead!
• Mar 2026: 🎉 Congratulations to Xinglang for receiving the Jin Yugang Lan-Ying Scholarship (5000 RMB), the only recipient from the School of Cyber Science and Engineering!
• Mar 2026: Secured a summer internship at UIUC in 2026—looking forward to the research experience there!
• Jan 2026: Preprint for "Logical Phase Transitions" available on arXiv.
• Sept 2025: LogicAgent preprint released on arXiv.
• Sept 2025: Received the National Scholarship (Top 3.2%).

Publications

IntervenSim: Intervention-Aware Social Network Simulation for Opinion Dynamics

Yunyao Zhang, Zuocheng Ying, Xinglang Zhang, et al. (Corresponding author: Zikai Song)

arXiv preprint, 2026. Also on arXiv:2604.06600

Introduces an intervention-aware closed-loop simulation framework that jointly models source-side interventions and crowd feedback to better capture evolving opinion dynamics in online social networks.

Paper

Logical Phase Transitions: Understanding Collapse in LLM Logical Reasoning Accepted to ACL 2026

Xinglang Zhang*, Yunyao Zhang*, et al. (Corresponding author: Zikai Song)

ACL 2026 Main Conference, 2026. Also on arXiv:2601.02902

Identifies critical logical complexity thresholds in LLMs and proposes a model-agnostic Logical Complexity Metric (LoCM) alongside a neuro-symbolic curriculum tuning framework.

Paper Code

Semantic-Aware Logical Reasoning via a Semiotic Framework ACL 2026 Oral

Yunyao Zhang, Xinglang Zhang, et al. (Corresponding author: Zikai Song)

ACL 2026 Main Conference (Oral), 2026. Also on arXiv:2509.24765

Introduces LogicAgent, a multi-perspective reasoning framework grounded in semiotics, and RepublicQA, a philosophy-inspired benchmark.

Paper Code

Research Interests

Neural-Symbolic AI, LLM Reasoning, LLM Agents, Computational Social Science, Logical Reasoning, AI safety

Honors & Awards

• Jin Yugang Lan-Ying Scholarship (School-level, only recipient from School of Cyber Science and Engineering), 2025 – 2026
• National Scholarship (Top 3.2%), 2024 – 2025
• Triple-A ("Sanhao") Student Scholarship (Top 5.5%), 2024 – 2025
• Outstanding Undergraduate Student, Qiming College (Top 1.85%), 2025 – 2027
• Outstanding Communist Youth League Member (Top 4.1%), 2024 – 2025
• Academic Excellence Scholarship & Self-improvement Scholarship, 2024 – 2025

Technical Skills

PyTorch, Transformers, LoRA, SFT, RLHF, vLLM, Deep Learning

Miscellaneous

Music: I'm a huge fan of Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey, and I enjoy collecting their vinyl albums.

Favorite Character: Hachi from Chiikawa. He's cute, positive, hardworking, and kind to everyone around him.

Favorite Sport: Ultimate Frisbee 🥏