Junze (Leo) LI

Hi! I am a Ph.D. candidate at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), supervised by Prof. Xiaojuan Ma. My research focuses on building interactive AI systems that support the scientific research cycle, from information synthesis and sensemaking to inference and communication. Currently, I work on improving the reasoning abilities of large language models (LLMs) for multimodal scientific problems and designing context-aware agents to facilitate research tasks.

Previously, I earned my master degree in Communication Systems from School of Computer and Communication Sciences at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), working with Prof. Pearl Pu and Prof. Hinrich Schütze. I received my undergraduate degree in Communication Engineering from School of Information and Communication Engineering at University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC).

Publications

  • AI for Qualitative User Research: LLM-Mediated Collaborative Sensemaking
    Junze Li
    CHI'26 Doctoral Consortium
    Information Sensemaking
  • InsightBridge: Enhancing Empathizing with Users through Real-Time Information Synthesis and Visual Communication
    Junze Li , Yue Zhang , Chengbo Zheng , Dingdong Liu , Zeyu Huang , Xiaojuan Ma
    CHI'25
    Information SensemakingAI Inference
  • DiaryHelper: Exploring the Use of an Automatic Contextual Information Recording Agent for Elicitation Diary Study
    Junze Li , Changyang He , Jiaxiong Hu , Boyang Jia , Alon Y Halevy , Xiaojuan Ma
    CHI'24
    AI InferenceConversational Agent
  • From Human Pragmatic Language Skills to Conversational Agent Design: A Systematic Review of Transfer Strategies
    Jiaxiong Hu , Xiwen Yao , Zeyu Huang , Danxuan Liang , Dongjie Yang , Dingdong Liu , Junze Li , Yuanhao Zhang , Xiaojuan Ma
    CHI'26
    Information SensemakingConversational Agent
  • Exploring the Grassroots Understanding and Practices of Collective Memory Co-Contribution in a University Community
    Zeyu Huang , Xinyi Cao , Yue Deng , Junze Li , Kangyu Yuan , Xiaojuan Ma
    GROUP'27
    Information Sensemaking
  • ESR-Coach: Leveraging Large Language Models for Training People to Provide Emotionally Supportive Responses
    Gongyao Jiang , Junze Li , Xiaojuan Ma , Qiong Luo
    IUI'26
    AI InferenceConversational Agent
  • AFEC: A Knowledge Graph Capturing Social Intelligence in Casual Conversations
    Yubo Xie , Junze Li , Fahui Miao , Pearl Pu
    Computer Speech & Language
    AI InferenceConversational Agent
  • I Love the Internet Again: Exploring the Interaction Inception of TikTok Refugees Flocking into RedNote
    Kangyu Yuan , Li Zhang , Hanfang Lyu , Ziqi Pan , Yuanhao Zhang , Junze Li , Bingcan Guo , Jiaxiong Hu , Qingyu Guo , Xiaojuan Ma
    CHI'25 Poster
    Information Sensemaking
  • Designing Scaffolding Strategies for Conversational Agents in Dialog Task of Neurocognitive Disorders Screening
    Jiaxiong Hu , Junze Li , Yuhang Zeng , Dongjie Yang , Danxuan Liang , Helen Meng , Xiaojuan Ma
    CHI'24
    Conversational Agent
  • CoArgue : Fostering Lurkers’ Contribution to Collective Arguments in Community-based QA Platforms
    Chengzhong Liu , Shixu Zhou , Dingdong Liu , Junze Li , Zeyu Huang , Xiaojuan Ma
    CHI'23
    Information SensemakingConversational Agent
  • This joke is [MASK]: Recognizing Humor and Offense with Prompting
    Junze Li , Mengjie Zhao , Yubo Xie , Antonis Maronikolakis , Pearl Pu , Hinrich Schütze
    NeurIPS'22 TL4NLP Workshop
    AI InferenceConversational Agent
  • Uncertainty and Surprisal Jointly Deliver the Punchline: Exploiting Incongruity-Based Features for Humor Recognition
    Yubo Xie , Junze Li , Pearl Pu
    ACL'21
    AI InferenceConversational Agent
  • HumorHunter at SemEval-2021 Task 7: Humor and Offense Recognition with Disentangled Attention
    Yubo Xie , Junze Li , Pearl Pu
    SemEval'21
    AI InferenceConversational Agent

Education

2022–present
PhD student in Department of Computer Science and Engineering · HKUST 🇭🇰
2018–2022
Master of Communication Systems, School of Computer and Communication Sciences · EPFL 🇨🇭
2021–2022
Exchange Master Thesis Research, Center for Information and Language Processing · Ludwig Maximilian University Munich (LMU) 🇩🇪
2014–2018
Bachelor of Communication Engineering, School of Information and Communication Engineering · UESTC 🇨🇳

Internship

02/2026-05/2026
02/2021–07/2021
Natural Language Processing Internship · Credit Suisse (now UBS), Lausanne
07/2019–09/2019
Data Scientist Internship · Roche, Shanghai

Awards

Scholarships
05/2026
HKUST RedBird Academic Excellence Award
07/2025
HKUST RedBird Academic Excellence Award
06/2022
HKUST RedBird PhD Recruitment Award
10/2017
Lixin Tang Scholarship
07/2016
UESTC International Exchange Program Excellence Scholarship
02/2016
UESTC Sekorm Scholarship
02/2015
UESTC First Class Scholarship
Honors
06/2018
Outstanding Graduate in UESTC
10/2017
Honorable Student of SICE, UESTC
02/2016
Mathematical Contest In Modeling Meritorious Winner