Welcome! I will be joining the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) as a PhD student in September, jointly supervised by Prof. Maksym Andriushchenko and Prof. Rediet Abebe. I recently completed my master’s in computer science at ETH Zurich majoring in machine intelligence and minoring in theoretical computer science. I have previously worked with Prof. Zhijing Jin, Prof. Joni Pajarinen, and Prof. Pulkit Agrawal on various projects. I obtained my B.A. degrees in computer science and physics with a concentration in astrophysics at Colby College where I was fortunate to work with Prof. Ying Li. I am also a UWC alumnus.

🔥 News

📝 Publications

Preprint 2026AI Safety

Decomposing and Measuring Evaluation Awareness

Changling Li, Terry Jingchen Zhang, Jie Zhang, Zhijing Jin, Sahar Abdelnabi, Maksym Andriushchenko

arXiv preprint, 2026

Code / HuggingFace / arXiv

ICML 2026AI Governance

Position: Safe Models Do Not Guarantee Safe Societies: The Case for Sociopolitical Risk

David Guzman Piedrahita, Changling Li, Dave Banerjee, Terry Zhang, Kevin Blin, Samuel Simko, Punya Pandey, Irene Strauss, Rada Mihalcea, Bernhard Schölkopf, Zhijing Jin

International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML Spotlight 🏆), 2026

EMNLP 2025Multi-Agent Systems

Agent-to-Agent Theory of Mind: Testing Interlocutor Awareness among Large Language Models

Ethan Choi*, Changling Li*, Yongjin Yang, Zhijing Jin

Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP Main), 2025

Code / Poster / Presentation / arXiv

RLC 2024

ROER: Regularized Optimal Experience Replay

Changling Li, Zhang-Wei Hong, Pulkit Agrawal, Divyansh Garg, Joni Pajarinen

Reinforcement Learning Conference (RLC), 2024

Code / Poster / Presentation / arXiv

IoT-J 2024Multi-Agent Systems

Scaling Up Energy-Aware Multiagent Reinforcement Learning for Mission-Oriented Drone Networks With Individual Reward (Bachelor Honors Thesis)

Changling Li, Ying Li

Internet of Things Journal (IoT-J), 2024

Code / arXiv

ICCCN 2022Multi-Agent Systems

Energy-Aware Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Collaborative Execution in Mission-Oriented Drone Networks

Ying Li, Changling Li, Jiyao Chen, Christine Roinou

International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN), 2022

Code / arXiv

🎖 Honors & Scholarships

Honors: Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Pi Sigma, UWC Davis Scholar, Magna Cum Laude (top 5%), Dean’s List, Distinction in both majors (Computer Science & Physics)

Scholarships: UWC National Committee Scholarship, UWC Davis Scholarship, Colby College Institutional Grant

🎓 Academic Service

Workshop Organization

• Co-organizer, AI4GOOD Workshop at ICML, 2026

Reviewer

• European Workshop on Reinforcement Learning (EWRL), 2026
• Reinforcement Learning Conference (RLC), 2025, 2026

📖 Teaching

Teaching Assistant, Department of Computer Science, Colby College, 2019 - 2022

• CS 353 Interactive System
• CS 251 Data Analysis and Visualization
• CS 231 Data Structure and Algorithm
• CS 152 Computational Thinking: Science
• CS 151 Computational Thinking: Visual Media

Teaching Assistant, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Colby College, 2019 - 2021

• PH 241 Modern Physics I
• PH 242 Modern Physics II

🎨 Beyond Research

Outside research, I enjoy watching films (particularly horrors), playing squash, and rowing.

Before I got into machine learning, I was an art student. You can find my artwork here:

• Portfolio 1
• Portfolio 2
• Comparative Studies
• Architecture Essay