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General Information

Full Name Charlie (Chao) Li
Languages English, Mandarin (Chinese)

Education

  • 2022-
    PhD, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
    • Advisor: Prof. Dina Katabi
    • Doctoral candidate since June 2026
    • Concentration in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
  • 2022-2024
    MS, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
    • Thesis: Automatic Sleep Assessment from Nocturnal Breathing and Its Applications for Contactless Monitoring
    • Coursework
      • Computer Vision
      • Natural Language Processing
      • Computer Networks
      • Theory of Computation
  • 2019-2022
    BS, Electrical and Computer Engineering
    Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
    • Coursework
      • Deep Learning
      • Computer Graphics
      • Advanced Digital Signal Processing
      • Electromagnetism

Experience

  • 2026-
    Research Scientist Intern
    FAIR, Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), Menlo Park, CA
  • 2025
    Research Scientist Intern
    Meta Recommendation Systems (MRS), Menlo Park, CA
    • Unified representation learning and text-to-image generation in a single pretraining framework (DREAM, NeurIPS 2026)
  • 2022-
    PhD Candidate
    MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)
  • 2021-2022
    Wireless Technology Research Assistant
    Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
  • 2019-2022
    Robotics Research Assistant
    Carnegie Mellon University, Robotics Institute
  • 2020-2021
    Deep Learning Research Intern
    Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), A*STAR, Singapore
  • 2020
    Embedded Systems Intern
    National University of Singapore, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
  • 2019
    Magnetic Storage Research Intern
    Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), A*STAR, Singapore

Honors and Awards

  • 2026
    • MIT HEALS Graduate Fellow (2026-2027)
  • 2023
    • Wellcome Trust Fellow, MIT Jameel Clinic
  • 2022
    • E.M. Williams Award, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, CMU
    • Honors in Research, College of Engineering, CMU
    • College Honors and University Honors, CMU
    • Dean's List (All Semesters)
  • 2021
    • Finalist, Best Interactive Paper Award (IEEE-RAS Humanoids 2020)
    • Highest Scorer in Engineering Category (Meeting of the Minds, Sigma Xi Poster Competition, CMU)
    • Small Undergraduate Research Grant (SURG)
    • Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF)

Leadership

  • 2021-2022
    President, Eta Kappa Nu (HKN), Sigma Chapter
    Carnegie Mellon University (Electrical and Computer Engineering Honor Society)

Talks

  • 2026
    Guest Lecture: DREAM: Unifying Contrastive and Generative Objectives for Visual Understanding and Text-to-Image Generation
    CAP 6938: Special Topics (AI Knowledge Systems), University of Central Florida
  • 2026
    Poster: Physiology as Language: Translating Respiration to EEG during Sleep
    International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2026), Seoul, South Korea
  • 2022
    SoftTouch: A Sensor Placement Framework for Soft Robotic Hands
    Meeting of the Minds, Carnegie Mellon University
  • 2021
    The Elliott and Connolly Benchmark: A Test for Evaluating the In-Hand Dexterity of Robot Hands
    Meeting of the Minds, Carnegie Mellon University
  • 2021
    Stabilization of Zero-Field Skyrmions in Synthetic Antiferromagnetic Multilayers
    APS March Meeting

Research Interests

  • Generative modeling
    • Unifying representation learning and text-to-image generation
    • Cross-modality generation between physiological signals
  • AI for health
    • Contactless, long-term health monitoring
    • Sleep and neurological biomarkers from physiological signals

Other Interests

  • Hobbies: Hiking, Road Trips, Sitcoms