"He just like me fr fr"
(Source: SpecGram)
Hi! This is Shengqi Zhu.

I am currently a Ph.D. student at Cornell Information Science. My Ph.D. odyssey started in 2023, and I have been supported by my great advisors, David Mimno and Jeff Rzeszotarski.

Before Cornell, I completed an M.Sc. in Computational Linguistics at University of Washington, after obtaining a B.Sc. in Intelligence Sciences at Peking University. I was especially fortunate to have worked with Noah A. Smith, Shane ST, and Yansong Feng.   (Click here to add some weird links)

Cornell InfoSci page (with email address)
Google Scholar Semantic Scholar ACL Anthology ORCID

What am I working on?

Described from a high level, my research is about natural language data. My research uses computational methods to explore how human languages shape the world and get shaped by emerging technologies like Large Language Models at the same time. I seek systematic, data-centered approaches throughout the lifecycle of language data, from how they were collected and annotated in the upstream to how they are forged into downstream social interactions and consensus.

Most recently, my work has focused on natural language as interface. This refers to both contexts of (1) Human-Human Interaction: How has language use led to (in)effective communications between groups, especially in the scientific research context? and (2) Human-AI/LLM Interaction: How do we discover and describe users' behaviors, perception, and interaction modes from (large-scale) real-world user-LLM conversations? You can find more information in my publications.

Recent Publications & Projects (view all )

Show or Tell? Modeling the evolution of request-making in Human-LLM conversations

Shengqi Zhu, Jeffrey M. Rzeszotarski, David Mimno

arXiv Preprint, August 2025

TBD

[Preprint]

Data Paradigms in the Era of LLMs: On the Opportunities and Challenges of Qualitative Data in the WILD

Shengqi Zhu, Jeffrey M. Rzeszotarski, David Mimno

Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI LBW), 2025

TBD (image source: SRF Kultur Sternstunden)

[Paper]

What We Talk About When We Talk About LMs: Implicit Paradigm Shifts and the Ship of Language Models

Shengqi Zhu, Jeffrey M. Rzeszotarski

Proceedings of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (NAACL), 2025

TBD (image source: SRF Kultur Sternstunden)

[Paper] [Code]

All publications

Misc