Wenzhi Li

Hi there! I am a second-year PhD student in Computer Science at Cornell University. My current research interest is to develop automated ML systems on heterogeneous structured data like information networks and relational databases, as well as their broader societal impacts.

Previously, I obtained my B.S. and M.S. degrees from Jilin University and Sun Yat-sen University respectively, both in computer science. I worked with Professor Hui Xiong from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology on weakly supervised machine learning for graph data during my master's studies.

How to pronounce my name? Wen-Jee Lee.

/ / / wenzhi [at] cs [dot] cornell [dot] edu

News

May 2025: One paper on clustering and graph optimization is accepted by COLT'25.
Aug. 2024: I start my PhD journey at Cornell University. Go Big Red!
June 2023: One paper on graph contrastive learning is accepted by TKDE.
May 2023: Two papers on class imbalanced node classification and graph contrastive learning are accepted by KDD'23.
May 2023: My homepage is launched. Welcome!

Publications

Metric Clustering and Graph Optimization Problems using Weak Comparison Oracles
Rahul Raychaudhury,Wen-Zhi Li, Syamantak Das, Sainyam Galhotra, Stavros Sintos

38th Annual Conference on Learning Theory (COLT'25).

[PMLR] • [BibTeX]

GraphSHA: Synthesizing Harder Samples for Class-Imbalanced Node Classification
Wen-Zhi Li, Chang-Dong Wang*, Hui Xiong*, Jian-Huang Lai

29th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD'23).
[Project Page] • [arXiv] • [ACM Digital Library] • [Code] • [Poster] • [Talk] • [Slides] • [BibTeX]
🌟 Oral Presentation

HomoGCL: Rethinking Homophily in Graph Contrastive Learning
Wen-Zhi Li, Chang-Dong Wang*, Hui Xiong*, Jian-Huang Lai

Towards Effective and Robust Graph Contrastive Learning with Graph Autoencoding
Wen-Zhi Li, Chang-Dong Wang*, Jian-Huang Lai, Philip S. Yu

IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE).

[IEEE Xplore] • [Code] • [BibTeX]

StarGAT: Star-Shaped Hierarchical Graph Attentional Network for Heterogeneous Network Representation Learning
Wen-Zhi Li, Ling Huang, Chang-Dong Wang*, Yuxin Ye

21st IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM'21).

[IEEE Xplore] • [Code] • [Slides] • [BibTeX]

Talks

Oral Presentation @ KDD 2023

Experiences

Cornell University, Aug. 2024-present
PhD student in Computer Science

Sun Yat-sen University, Sept. 2021-June 2024
M.S. in Computer Science

Jilin University, Sept. 2017-June 2021
B.S. in Computer Science

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, May 2022-July 2024
Research Assistant in Artificial Intelligence Thrust

University of Alberta, July 2019-Aug. 2019
Visiting Student in Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences

Professional Services

Conference Reviewer for ICLR'26, ICLR'25, AAAI'26, AAAI'25, AAAI'24, ICDM'23.
Journal Reviewer for Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (TNNLS).