Xinliang (Frederick) Zhang | 张心亮

Hi there, I am Xinliang (Frederick) Zhang. I am from Hangzhou. My Chinese name is 张心亮. Usually, I go by Frederick.

Currently, I am a Research Engineer at Google DeepMind in the Gemini team, working on Gemini Personalization.

I am a recent CSE Ph.D. graduate from University of Michigan (UM), where I was advised by Lu Wang. I was a member of LAUNCH Lab and affiliated with Michigan AI Lab. I received my B.S. degrees from The Ohio State University (OSU) in CSE and ISE, and a minor in Math. I also obtianed my B.Eng. degree from Sichuan University (SCU) in IE. I was fortunate to have Huan Sun as my advisor at OSU and proud of being part of SunLab. I was also privileged to work closely with Marie-Catherine de Marneffe.

I spent some fun time as a reserach scientist intern at Google DeepMind (Gemini/GenAI) (2025), Adobe Research (2024) and Bloomberg AI (2023).

My reserch interests lie in the fields of Natural Language Processing (NLP), Large Language Model (LLM) and Machine Learning (ML). I am also a regular reviewer for NLP venues.

• I am actively investigating LLM Personalization (via memory mechanisms), System-2 Thinking and Efficient LLMs. I am also interested in Code Models.
• During the first half of my PhD tenure, I focused on Structured Learning and Multi-granularity Information Extraction, as well as Narrative Understanding.
• I used to work on Natural Language Inference, Information Retrieval, and Question Answering & Generation as an undergraduate researcher.

My work received Best Paper Award at BIBM 2021. I was awarded Outstanding Reviewer at EMNLP 2024 and NAACL 2022.

More about me:

• I am passionate about language learning, especially East Asian languages. I am almost always fascinated with the stunning beauty of languages.
• I am amazed by the Brushtalk in ancient times, and I hope the NLP advancements I am dedicted to will help realize a new form of Brushtalk across all nations in modern times. While pseudo-Chinese might be a starting point, what would be the next chapter to be more inclusive?
• Outside work, I enjoy J-Pop. I am a longtime fan of 乃木坂46/Nogizaka 46. If you are interested in both AI and Idols/アイドル, let's connect!

I am looking for one/two self-motivated (PhD) student to work with on topics like LLM personalization and LLM thinking (GPUs are available for use). Please contact me directly, if interested. Warning: This is not an internship opportunity with GDM.

You may reach out to me at xlfzhang@{google.com,umich.edu}.

Alert: My homepage will be hosted at a different domain due to my recent graduation from UMich. The migration is expected to complete by the end of 2026 Summer. Stay tuned!