Jingcheng Yang

B.S. Computer Science + Philosophy

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Class of 2028

jy95 [at] illinois [dot] edu

I am an undergraduate CS + Philosophy student at UIUC, where I am fortunate to be advised by Prof. Klara Nahrstedt at the MONET research group. My research focuses on LLM/VLM reasoning, interpretability, and inference-time scaling.

Research

* denotes equal contribution

VTool-R1: VLMs Learn to Think with Images via Reinforcement Learning on Multimodal Tool Use

Mingyuan Wu*, Jingcheng Yang*, Jize Jiang, Meitang Li, Kaizhuo Yan, Hanchao Yu, Minjia Zhang, Chengxiang Zhai, Klara Nahrstedt

arXiv preprint

[PDF] [Code] [Project Page]

Aha Moment Revisited: Are VLMs Truly Capable of Self Verification in Inference-time Scaling?

Mingyuan Wu*, Meitang Li*, Jingcheng Yang*, Jize Jiang, Kaizhuo Yan, Zhaoheng Li, Minjia Zhang, Klara Nahrstedt

arXiv preprint

[PDF]

Eduation & Awards

UIUC, B.S. in Computer Science + Philosophy (2024 - 2028)

2024 | Dean's List

SCIE, Highschool (2020 - 2024)

2023 | International Mathematical Modeling Challenge - Outstanding (Greater China) | Problem A, Problem D

2023 | S.-T. Yau High School Science Award - Global Bronze in CS - (Amodal Instance Segmentation)

2023 | Shortlisted (Philosophy) - John Locke Institute 2023 Global Essay Prize - Paper on Identity Continuity

2022 | USACO Platinum Division

Game Development

I am an indie developer, I have 6+ years of experience with Unity.

Full-Stack

I am experienced in database management, RESTful APIs, S3 storage and payment systems, as well as CSS/HTML, React and MAUI for front-end development.

My primary tech stack is ASP.NET + mySQL + React/Javascript + .NET MAUI/Xamarin.

Portfolio[s]

Digital Media & Design Technical Art & Game Design Software Development