Time is the enemy.

About Me

Hey there! I’m Haohang Li, a Ph.D. student at the Cognition Lab and the Explainable and Controllable Artificial Intelligence Lab at Stevens Institute of Technology. I’m lucky to be advised by Prof. Jordan W. Suchow and Prof. Zining Zhu.

My research explores how language models (LMs) work—whether by studying their behavior or digging into their inner workings—and how we can make them more controllable and safer to use. If you’re working on anything related or just want to chat about LMs, feel free to email me at research at haohang.io or reach out on other places. I’m always open to collaborations or good conversations!

Outside of research, I’m into flying FPV drones and playing video games. My two all-time favorites are Death Stranding and Elden Ring—I love games that feel like a blend of storytelling and interactive art.

Research Interests

My research focuses are in two-fold:

• Interpretability: I’m interested in understanding the behavior of language models through the lens of cognitive science, as well as from a mechanistically interpretable perspective. Gaining insight into how these models work is essential for building trust and ensuring their safe and scalable deployment.

• LLM Agents: LLM Agents: I believe LLM agents represent the future of how we interact with general-purpose foundation models. In my previous work, I’ve explored designing LLM agents with memory mechanisms inspired by human cognitive structures, as well as developing multi-agent systems. Broadly, I’m interested in the cognitive design of agents and how they can communicate and collaborate to solve decision-making tasks or operate in open-ended environments.

Updates

• [04/2025] I will join the research team @ Kensho for the summer as a research scientist intern!

• [01/2025] Passed Qualifying Exam! Take a look at my responses if you’re interested in the process.

• [09/2024] Two papers accepted by NeurIPS 2024!

Publications

(★: First author / Co-first author)

Papers

• <Pre-print> FinAudio: A Benchmark for Audio Large Language Models in Financial Applications: Yupeng Cao, Haohang Li, Yangyang Yu, Shashidhar Reddy Javaji, et al.

• ★ <Pre-print> INVESTORBENCH: A Benchmark for Financial Decision-Making Tasks with LLM-based Agent: Haohang Li (*), Yupeng Cao (*), Yangyang Yu (*), Shashidhar Reddy Javaji, et al.

• <NeurIPS 2024> FinBen: A Holistic Financial Benchmark for Large Language Models: Qianqian Xie, …, Haohang Li, et al.

• ★ <NeurIPS 2024> Fincon: A synthesized llm multi-agent system with conceptual verbal reinforcement for enhanced financial decision making: Yangyang Yu (*), Zhiyuan Yao (*), Haohang Li (*), Zhiyang Deng (*), et al.

• <Pre-print> Open-FinLLMs: Open Multimodal Large Language Models for Financial Applications: Qianqian Xie, …, Haohang Li, et al.

• ★ <LLM Agent @ ICLR 2024> FinMem: A Performance-Enhanced LLM Trading Agent with Layered Memory and Character Design: Haohang Li (*), Yangyang Yu (*), Zhi Chen (*), Yuechen Jiang (*), et al.

• ★ <Pre-print> TradingGPT: Multi-agent system with layered memory and distinct characters for enhanced financial trading performance: Yang Li (*), Yangyang Yu (*), Haohang Li (*), Zhi Chen (*), Khaldoun Khashanah.

• ★ <CIFEr> Impact of false information from spoofing strategies: An abm model of market dynamics: Haohang Li, Steve Y. Yang.

Competition / Workshop Reports

• <FinNLP-FNP-LLMFinLegal> Capybara at the Financial Misinformation Detection Challenge Task: Chain-of-Thought Enhanced Financial Misinformation Detection: Yupeng Cao, Haohang Li, Yangyang Yu, Shashidhar Reddy Javaji.

• <Agent-based Single Cryptocurrency Trading @ COLING-2025> FinNLP-FNP-LLMFinLegal@ COLING 2025 Shared Task: Agent-Based Single Cryptocurrency Trading Challenge: Yangyang Yu, Haohang Li, Yupeng Cao, Keyi Wang, et al.

• <FinNLP-AgentScen @ IJCAI2024> FinNLP-AgentScen-2024 Shared Task: Financial Challenges in Large Language Models-FinLLMs: Qianqian Xie, …, Haohang Li, et al.

Honors and Awards

• [2022] Fellowships Funded by Jefferies Financial Group.
• [2022 - 2026] Provost Fellowship.
• [2021] Outstanding Academic Achievement Award.
• [2019] Graduate Admission Scholarship.

Professional Services

• Conference Reviewer: NeurIPS(2024), ICLR (2025), ICML(2025), COLM (2025), ACL ARR (2025), KDD (2024, 2025), ECML (2024).

• Workshop / Challenge Organizer:

  • FinNLP-AgentScen @ IJCAI2024.
  • Agent-based Single Cryptocurrency Trading @ COLING-2025.

• PC Member:

  • FinNLP-FNP-LLMFinLegal @ COLING-2025.
  • Workshop on Data Science @ INFORMS-2024.