Wei Xu

I am an Associate Professor in the College of Computing (School of Interactive Computing) and the Machine Learning Center at Georgia Institute of Technology. My research focuses on natural language processing, machine learning, and large language models, with interests in multilingual and cross-cultural LLMs, reinforcement learning and post-training, reasoning, long-context and interactive evaluation, and interdisciplinary AI applications.

My group studies how to build language technologies that are robust, useful, and accessible across languages, cultures, domains, and users. Our research is supported by NSF, NIH, DARPA, IARPA, Google, Sony, and other sponsors.

multilingual NLP · LLM reasoning · evaluation · user simulation · interdisciplinary AI+X research

I typically recruit one or two new Ph.D. students each year, along with several research-oriented M.S. students and motivated undergraduates. My lab also host visiting students and research interns. If you apply to Georgia Tech and are interested in working with me, feel free to reach out.

Research

We work on language models, evaluation, and AI systems that interact with people and complex real-world information.

• Multilingual and multicultural large language models (CARE, EMNLP 2025; LRPO, 2026)
• Reinforcement learning and post-training for LLMs (DAR, 2026; LRPO, ICML 2026)
• Evaluation of long-context, multi-turn, and agentic systems (SimulatorArena, EMNLP 2025; GAVEL, 2026)
• Learning and reasoning over evolving knowledge and probabilistic inference (NeoBench; BRANCH, NeurIPS 2025)
• AI applications in education, privacy, law, healthcare, and science (MedReadMe ;GeoPrivacy, ICLR 2026)

News

• [Ongoing] Co-organizing the Workshop on Natural User-generated Text at EMNLP 2026.
• [2026-05] 🏆 Received the Sony Faculty Innovation Award.
• [2026-05] Jonathan to start summer intern at Bloomberg; Tarek to start summer intern at Google Research.
• [2026-04] Human-centered Evaluation and Auditing of LLMs (AI Agents in the Loop) Workshop at CHI 2026.
• [2026-04] Talk at Oracle's Distinguished Lecture Series.
• [2025-12] Talk at NeurIPS 2025 Workshop on Efficient Reasoning.
• [2025-08] Talk at Apple ML research.
• [2025-07] Talk at JPMorgan AI Research.

Selected Publications

Students

Group photos with Alan Ritter's lab.

Alumni: Chao Jiang (Ph.D. '25, Apple), Yang Chen (Ph.D. '23, NVIDIA), Mounica Maddela (Ph.D. '23, Bloomberg), Wuwei Lan (Ph.D. '21, Meta), Julie Young (M.S. '26, Microsoft), Xiaofeng Wu (M.S. '25, Baidu), Marcus Ma (M.S. '24, PhD student at USC), Anton Lavrouk (M.S. '24, IMC Trading), David Heineman (B.S. '24, PhD student at Stanford · CoC Outstanding Undergrad Research Award), Jonathan Zheng (B.S. '23, PhD student at Georgia Tech), Michael Ryan (B.S. '23, PhD student at Stanford), Zirui Shao (visiting PhD student from Zhejiang University '25)

Teaching

• CS 4650 / 7650: Natural Language Processing
• CS 8803: Large Language Models
• Advanced topics in NLP, LLMs, and human-centered AI

Service & Awards

Program Co-Chair for EMNLP (2027). Senior Area Chair for ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, and related conferences. Executive Board Member of NAACL (2023–2024). Best Paper Award Committee for ACL (2026) and EMNLP (2024, 2022). Co-organizer of workshops on text generation, evaluation, and user-centered NLP.

Miscellaneous

When I have spare time, I enjoy visiting art museums, attending live performances, hiking, biking, and snowboarding.

Back in 2017, I wrote a biography of my Ph.D. advisor Ralph Grishman along with some early history of Information Extraction research. Ralph was named an ACL Fellow and later received the ACL Lifetime Achievement Award in 2024.