Welcome to the FLAIR Lab (Frontier Language AI Research Lab). We develop language AI agents and teach them to understand human concepts, speak human languages, and perform logical reasoning. We are actively looking for self-motivated students!

Our recent research directions include:

• Robustness of LLMs and VLMs: Investigating the robustness challenges that lead to unpredictable behaviors in LLMs and VLMs, including vulnerabilities to adversarial inputs, inconsistencies across domains, and sensitivities to semantically irrelevant variations, with the goal of improving their reliability and stability in real-world applications.
• Multimodal Reasoning: Exploring how AI systems can effectively integrate, align, and reason over information from multiple modalities, such as text, images, and videos, to achieve a deeper and more coherent understanding of multimodal concepts and relationships.
• Multilingual Understanding: Studying how models acquire and represent shared knowledge across languages to enhance cross-lingual comprehension, facilitate knowledge transfer, and support equitable language understanding in globally diverse contexts.

The nature of doing research is exploration and understanding, not merely in chasing state-of-the-art (SOTA) results.

Many students new to research tend to equate “doing research” with “achieving SOTA”. They believe that setting a new SOTA is the primary way to demonstrate novelty and getting published. However, this view somewhat mistakes cause for effect.

The goal of research is actually quite simple: to understand what makes an approach work, and why.

Research should aim to explain what works and what doesn’t, identify which design choices are the true driving factors behind improvements, and clarify under what conditions certain methods perform well. These fundamental insights and principles are the truly valuable and meaningful parts of research.

Are cold emails useful? In my opinion, if your resume is strong, a good cold email can definitely be beneficial.

So, what makes a good cold email?

First, you need to clearly understand the primary research focus of the advisor’s lab. For example, my lab is mainly doing NLP-related research, but I often receive emails from students expressing interest in “general AI applications”, “general machine learning”, or even areas like “pure computer vision” or “3D”. Such broad, vague, or misaligned research interests can make your email seem “templated”, and this may negatively affect the advisor’s impression of you. If you are trying to switch research fields, especially to one that differs from your prior experience, it’s important to explain why.

A Good Researcher = Strong Research Skills + Strong Presentation Skills

Presentation skills are crucial for a researcher, but people often overlook their importance.

We often hear complaints about reviewers: “Reviewers don’t understand my paper. The answers to their questions are already mentioned in the paper.” “Why can’t the reviewers get the point of my work? Isn’t it obvious?”

Indeed, the quality of reviewers has decreased in recent years. But on the other hand, could it be that the paper’s structure is not clear enough, and the writing is not sufficient to quickly convey the research contributions to someone with a relevant background?

This is your PhD, and you have to make your own decisions.

Pursuing a PhD is a long journey, requiring several years of training to eventually become an independent researcher.

There was a passage that deeply influenced me: “At the moment you receive your PhD, you and your advisor share the same title and have an equal voice in academia.” Yes! The meaning of a PhD is that you become an expert in a certain field. You will have unique insights and may even be better than your advisor in this field.

So, try not to rely too much on your advisor. This is your PhD, and you need to plan your own future.