Xiaoxiao Saxon Li

AI researcher, forever learner and traveler. My first name is pronounced as "Shau-Shau".

prof_pic.jpg

3110-2332 Main Mall

Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4

I am an Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and an Associate Member in the Computer Science Department at the University of British Columbia (UBC). I am also faculty member at Vector Institue and an adjunct Assistant Professor at School of Medicine, Yale University. I am honored to be named as a Canada CIFAR AI Chair and a Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Responsible AI.

Before joining UBC, I was a postdoc working with Prof. Kai Li and Prof. Olga Troyanskaya at Princeton University. I obtained my Ph.D. degree from Yale University, where I was fortunate to be advised by Prof. James Duncan. I obtained my B.S. (honors degree) from Chu Kochen College, Zhejiang University, China, in June 2015.

My current research lies in improving trustworthiness and efficiency in machine learning algrithms and foundation models. I am also into novel Agentic AI systems. I aim to narrow the gap between AI research and its applications by developing the next-generation trustworthy AI systems.

Please visit our group website Trusted and Efficient AI (TEA) Lab to learn about our up-to-date research projects and meet with my students.

news

Oct 6, 2024 Dr. Li is serving as a member of Award Committee, a panelist of AI and Healthcare debate, and delivering a keynote on foundation model fairness at MICCAI 2024.
Sep 1, 2024 Dr. Li is serving as an Area Chair at ICLR 2025.
May 20, 2024 Dr. Li is serving as an Area Chair at NeurIPS 2024.
Feb 26, 2024 Dr. Li was invited to give talks at AAAI deployable AI workshop and at FDA.
Oct 10, 2023 Dr. Li was invited to join the Editorial Board of journal Medical Image Analysis.
Aug 28, 2023 I received Canada Foundation for Innovation Grant as a PI.
Jul 25, 2023 I received UBC Green Lab Fund as a PI.
May 1, 2023 I received New Frontiers in Research Fund - Exploration as a Co-PI with Dr. Russ Algar and Dr. Gang Wang.

selected publications [view all]

  1. ICLR
    Gmvaluator: Similarity-based data valuation for generative models
    Jiaxi Yang, Wenglong Deng, Benlin Liu, Yangsibo Huang, James Zou, and Xiaoxiao Li
    International Conference on Learning Representations, 2025
  2. ICLR
    Can Textual Gradient Work in Federated Learning?
    Minghui Chen, Ruinan Jin, Wenlong Deng, Yuanyuan Chen, Zhi Huang, Han Yu, and Xiaoxiao Li
    International Conference on Learning Representations, 2025
  3. ICLR
    S4M: S4 for multivariate time series forecasting with Missing values
    Peng Jing, Meiqi Yang, Qiong Zhang, and Xiaoxiao Li
    International Conference on Learning Representations, 2025
  4. NeurIPS
    FairMedFM: fairness benchmarking for medical imaging foundation models
    Ruinan Jin, Zikang Xu, Yuan Zhong, Qiongsong Yao, Qi Dou, S Kevin Zhou, and Xiaoxiao Li
    Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 2024
  5. CVPR
    Unlocking the Potential of Prompt-Tuning in Bridging Generalized and Personalized Federated Learning
    Wenlong Deng, Christos Thrampoulidis, and Xiaoxiao Li
    Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2024
  6. Nature Methods
    BUDDY: molecular formula discovery via bottom-up MS/MS interrogation
    Shipei Xing, Sam Shen, Banghua Xu, Xiaoxiao Li, and Tao Huan
    Nature Methods, 2023
  7. TMI
    GATE: graph CCA for temporal SElf-supervised learning for label-efficient fMRI analysis
    Liang Peng, Nan Wang, Jie Xu, Xiaofeng Zhu, and Xiaoxiao Li
    IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 2022
  8. ICLR
    FedBN: Federated learning on non-iid features via local batch normalization
    Xiaoxiao Li, Meirui Jiang, Xiaofei Zhang, Michael Kamp, and Qi Dou
    International Conference on Learning Representations, 2021
  9. ICML
    Fl-NTK: A neural tangent kernel-based framework for federated learning analysis
    Baihe Huang, Xiaoxiao Li, Zhao Song, and Xin Yang
    In International Conference on Machine Learning, 2021
  10. MedIA
    BrainGNN: Interpretable brain graph neural network for fmri analysis
    Xiaoxiao Li, Yuan Zhou, Nicha Dvornek, Muhan Zhang, Siyuan Gao, Juntang Zhuang, Dustin Scheinost, Lawrence H Staib, Pamela Ventola, and James S Duncan
    Medical Image Analysis, 2021