Profile Picture

Xi Li (李溪)

she/her/hers

Assistant Professor, Ph.D.

University of Alabama - Birmingham

Bio

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from Penn State University under the guidance of Dr. George Kesidis and Dr. David Miller. I obtained my M.S. degree in Computer Science from Penn State University in 2018 and my B.S. degree from the School of Information Science and Engineering at Southeast University in Nanjing, China, in 2016.

Research Interests: My research broadly focuses on trustworthy AI. Recently, we have been exploring the following topics:

Check my resume here (Last updated: May 2025).

Publications

Towards Safe Multi-Modal Learning: Unique Challenges and Future Directions

Xi Li, Manling Li, Muchao Ye

ICCV Tutorial, 2025

Paper Website

Exploitation and Mitigation: Understanding Large-Scale Machine Learning Robustness under Paradigm Shift

Xi Li, Ruixiang Tang, Muchao Ye

SDM Tutorial, 2025

Paper Slides

Chain-of-Scrutiny: Detecting Backdoor Attacks for Large Language Models

Xi Li, Ruofan Mao, Yusen Zhang, Renze Lou, Chen Wu, Jiaqi Wang

ACL(Findings) 2025

Paper Code

PeerGuard: Defending Multi-Agent Systems Against Backdoor Attacks Through Mutual Reasoning

Falong Fan, Xi Li

Best Paper Award, IEEE IRI 2025

Paper

Securing Federated Learning Against Novel and Classic Backdoor Threats During Foundation Model Integration

Xiaohuan Bi, Xi Li

IEEE IRI 2025

Paper

AAAR-1.0: Assessing AI’s Potential to Assist Research

Renze Lou, Hanzi Xu, Sijia Wang, Jiangshu Du, Ryo Kamoi, Xiaoxin Lu, Jian Xie, Yuxuan Sun, Yusen Zhang, Jihyun Janice Ahn, Hongchao Fang, Zhuoyang Zou, Wenchao Ma, Xi Li, Kai Zhang, Congying Xia, Lifu Huang, Wenpeng Yin

ICML, 2025

Paper

Mitigating Image Captioning Hallucinations in Vision-Language Models

Fei Zhao, Chengcui Zhang, Runlin Zhang, Tianyang Wang, Xi Li

IEEE MIPR, 2025

Paper

Backdoor Inversion in Neural-Activation Space

Guangmingmei Yang, Xi Li, Hang Wang, David Miller, George Kesidis

IEEE MLSP, 2025

Foundation Models in Federated Learning: Assessing Backdoor Vulnerabilities

Xi Li, Chen Wu, Jiaqi Wang

IJCNN, 2025

Paper

Unveiling Backdoor Risks Brought by Foundation Models in Heterogeneous Federated Learning

Xi Li, Chen Wu, Jiaqi Wang

PAKDD, 2024

Paper Poster Code

Temporal-Distributed Backdoor Attack Against Video-Based Action Recognition

Xi Li, Songhe Wang, Ruiquan Huang, Mahanth Gowda, George Kesidis

AAAI, 2024

Paper Poster Code

A BIC-based Mixture Model Defense against Data Poisoning Attacks on Classifiers

Xi Li, David Miller, Zhen Xiang, George Kesidis

IEEE MLSP, 2023

Test-Time Detection of Backdoor Triggers of Poisoned Deep Neural Networks

Xi Li, David Miller, Zhen Xiang, George Kesidis

ICASSP, 2022

Paper Poster

Detecting Backdoor Attacks Against Point Cloud Classifiers

Zhen Xiang, David Miller, Siheng Chen, Xi Li, George Kesidis

ICASSP, 2022

Paper

A Backdoor Attack against 3D Point Cloud Classifiers

Zhen Xiang, David Miller, Siheng Chen, Xi Li, George Kesidis

ICCV, 2021

Paper

Correcting the distribution of batch normalization signals for Trojan mitigation

Xi Li, Zhen Xiang, David Miller, George Kesidis

Neurocomputing, 2024

Paper

BIC-based Mixture Model Defense against Data Poisoning Attacks on Classifiers: A Comprehensive Study

Xi Li, David Miller, Zhen Xiang, George Kesidis

IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE), 2024

Paper Code

Rethinking the Safety Landscape for Foundation Models: A Multi-Modal Perspective

Xi Li, Shu Zhao, Fei Zhao, Runlong Yu

ICCV 2025 T2FM Workshop

Paper

Position Paper: Assessing Robustness, Privacy, and Fairness in Federated Learning Integrated with Foundation Models

Xi Li, Jiaqi Wang

ICCV 2025 T2FM Workshop

Paper

Backdoor Threats from Compromised Foundation Models to Federated Learning

Xi Li, Songhe Wang, Chen Wu, Hao Zhou, Jiaqi Wang

FL@FM-NeurIPS'23

Paper Poster Code

NeuroGen: Neural Network Parameter Generation via Large Language Models

Jiaqi Wang, Yusen Zhang, Xi Li

Under review

Paper

Highlights

Teaching

Instructor UAB

Teaching Assistant PSU

Experience

Meta, NYC | Summer 2024

  • Modern Recommendation System Team
  • Machine Learning Engineer Intern
  • Explored early fusion architecture for multimodal understanding.
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Service

Xi Li (李溪)
TrustBrew Lab