Jingcheng Yang  杨景程

B.S. Computer Science + Philosophy

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Class of 2028

jy95 [at] illinois [dot] edu

I'm a second-year undergraduate student studying CS and Philosophy at UIUC, where I'm grateful to be advised by Prof. Klara Nahrstedt in the MONET research group.
I am broadly interested in large models (LLMs/VLMs), with an emphasis on interpretability and understanding their internal mechanisms.
I'm also a CS Student Ambassador/Research Scholar (CS STARS) at UIUC.

Updates

Jan 2026 | Selected as an honorable mention for the 2025-2026 CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award.
Nov 2025 | Honored to receive the Roy H. Campbell Scholarship from the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Publications & Preprints

SELECTED

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ALL

* denotes equal contribution

Circuit Tracing in Vision-Language Models: Understanding the Internal Mechanisms of Multimodal Thinking

Jingcheng Yang*, Tianhu Xiong*, Shengyi Qian, Klara Nahrstedt, Mingyuan Wu

Under review, 2026

SVR-R1: Bootstrapping Multi-modal Reasoning with Self-verification in Reinforcement Learning

Mingyuan Wu, Jingcheng Yang, Shengyi Qian, Xudong Wang, Jize Jiang, Qifan Wang, Aashu Singh, Khoi Pham, Fei Liu, Zhaolun Su, Zhuokai Zhao, Klara Nahrstedt, Jianyu Wang, Hanchao Yu

Under review, 2026

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

ICLR 2026 (International Conference on Learning Representations)

[PDF] [GitHub ★ 100+] [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

NeurIPS Workshop on Multimodal Algorithmic Reasoning, 2025 (Oral Presentation)

[PDF]

AquaVLM: Improving Underwater Situation Awareness with Mobile Vision Language Models

Beitong Tian*, Lingzhi Zhao*, Bo Chen, Haozhen Zheng, Jingcheng Yang, Mingyuan Wu, Deepak Vasisht, Klara Nahrstedt

arXiv preprint, 2025

[PDF]

AnyLoc: Energy-efficient Visual Localization in Dynamic and Large-Scale Scenes without Pain

Beitong Tian*, Jingcheng Yang*, Jionghao Wei, Zhenggang Tang, Yuheng Wang, Hongwen Xiao, Haozhen Zheng, Mingyuan Wu, Shiv Trivedi, Klara Nahrstedt

preprint

Awards & Honors

2026 | Celebration of Excellence

Siebel School of Computing and Data Science · University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

(To Be) Featured in the 2026 Celebration of Excellence for accomplishments in research.

2026 | CS STARS · Student Ambassador / Research Scholar

Siebel School of Computing and Data Science · University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Undergraduate CS research scholar and ambassador for the University of Illinois.

2026 | Honorable Mention · CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award

Computing Research Association

This award program recognizes undergraduate students in North American colleges and universities who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research.

2025 | Roy H. Campbell Scholarship

Siebel School of Computing and Data Science · University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Recognized as the highest-ranked nominee representing UIUC for the 2026 CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award.

2024-2026 | Dean's List - All Semesters

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences · University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Education

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign B.S. Computer Science + Philosophy (2024 - 2028)

Shenzhen College of International Education Highschool Diploma (2020 - 2024)

Shen Wai International School Primary and Secondary, IB PYP/MYP (2014 - 2020)

Philosophy

I'm interested in the philosophy of mind, and broadly - metaphysics & epistemology.

Game Development

I am an indie developer. I have been making games since I was 12 (checkout my first game CubeKiller).

Portfolio[s]

Technical Art & Game Design Software Development
“For where the cause is not known, the effect cannot be produced.”
— Francis Bacon, Novum Organum (Book I, Aphorism III)