Ayoung Lee

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Ayoung Lee (이아영)

Ph.D. Candidate
Computer Science & Engineering
University of Michigan

Hi, I am a 3rd-year Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science and Engineering at University of Michigan. I am fortunate to be advised by Prof. Lu Wang.
My research focuses on evaluation and post-training of LLMs on nuanced, non-verifiable tasks: I have designed a structure that makes decision-making in dilemma situations verifiable [2], and introduced rubrics to assess and improve culture-aware moral decision-making [5] and coding agents [6]. I am also interested in multi-agent and human-AI collaboration: I aim to build high-fidelity simulations and interaction strategies that enable LLM agents to work effectively and safely in teams.
Feel free to contact me for collaboration or questions!

(Last updated on Aug 27th)

Recent News

  • (07/2026) MET accepted to COLM 2026. See you in SF!
  • (05/2026) Started internship at Proximal. Looking forward to work on coding agents!
  • (01/2026) CLASH accepted to ICLR 2026! See you in Brazil!
  • Education

    University of Michigan (08/2024 ~ Present)

    Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering (Advisor: Prof. Lu Wang)

    Seoul National University (03/2020 ~ 02/2024)

    B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering
    GPA: 4.18/4.3, Summa Cum Laude, Rank: 1st in the department

    Seoul Science High School (03/2017 ~ 02/2020)

    The school for gifted students in mathematics and science, teaching college-level math and science
    GPA: 4.18/4.3

    Publications

    [6] Rubrics as Test Cases: Test-Grounded Execution-Free Verification of Coding Agents
    Ayoung Lee, Justus Mattern
    In preparation (submitting to ARR October 2026)

    [5] MET: Theory-Grounded and Culture-Aware Multilingual Moral Reasoning
    Ayoung Lee, Ryan Sungmo Kwon, Yunxiang Zhang, Yuxuan Liu, Peter Railton, Lu Wang
    COLM 2026 [paper]

    [4] LiveOIBench: Can Large Language Models Outperform Human Contestants in Informatics Olympiads?
    Kaijian Zou, Aaron Xiong, Yunxiang Zhang, Xinliang Frederick Zhang, Yueqi Ren, Jirong Yang, Ayoung Lee, Shitanshu Bhushan, Lu Wang
    ICML 2026 [paper]

    [3] Logit Arithmetic Elicits Long Reasoning Capabilities Without Training
    Yunxiang Zhang, Muhammad Khalifa, Lechen Zhang, Xin Liu, Ayoung Lee, Xinliang Frederick Zhang, Farima Fatahi Bayat, Lu Wang
    Findings of ACL 2026 [paper]

    [2] CLASH: Evaluating Language Models on Judging High-Stakes Dilemmas from Multiple Perspectives
    Ayoung Lee, Ryan Sungmo Kwon, Peter Railton, Lu Wang
    ICLR 2026 [paper]

    [1] On Consistency Training for Language-Based Image Editing Interface
    Youngwon Lee*, Ayoung Lee*, Yeonjoon Jung, Seung-won Hwang (* denotes equal contribution)
    IJCNLP-AACL 2023, Second Workshop on Natural Language Interfaces (Oral) [paper] [code]

    Honors and Awards (Selected)

    Best Presentation Award, NLP @ Michigan Day (03/2025)

    Kwanjeong Educational Foundation Scholarship (08/2024 ~ Present)

    Excellent Bachelor's Thesis Presentation Award (02/2024)

    Outstanding Tutor Award (08/2021)

    Presidential Science Scholarship (03/2020 ~ 02/2024)

    Work Experience

    Proximal (05/2026 ~ 08/2026)

    Research Intern (Host: Justus Mattern)

    Naver Cloud HealthCare AI (03/2024 ~ 06/2024)

    Research Intern (Host: Heeyoung Kwak)

    Language and Data Intelligence Lab (03/2023 ~ 02/2024)

    Undergraduate Research Intern (Advisor: Prof. Seung-won Hwang)

    DeepMetrics (06/2022 ~ 01/2023)

    Machine Learning Engineering Intern (Advisor: Prof. Hyun Oh Song)

    Samsung Device Solutions Memory (07/2021 ~ 08/2021)

    Software Intern

    Talks

    Injecting Math Reasoning Abilities in Language Models @ Deepest, Seoul National University (06/2024)

    Study Abroad Presentation for Students @ Seoul Science High School (05/2024)

    Teaching

    (EECS 497) Human-Centered Software Design and Development @ University of Michigan (01/2026 ~ 04/2026)

    Graduate Student Instructor

    (M1522.000700) Logic Design @ Seoul National University (09/2021 ~ 12/2021)

    Teaching Assistant

    (034.005) Foundation of Physics 1 @ Seoul National University (03/2021 ~ 08/2021)

    Peer Tutor

    (M1522.000700) Logic Design @ Seoul National University (03/2021 ~ 08/2021)

    Tutor