Portrait of Jingcheng Yang, taken in Hong Kong with the background being the Victoria Harbor in blue tint.

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 2nd-year undergraduate student studying CS and Philosophy at UIUC, advised by Prof. Klara Nahrstedt in the MONET research group. I'm also working on interpretability with Prof. Ari Holtzman.
I am interested in large language models, with a focus in two directions: interpretability and multimodal representations.

Publications & Preprints

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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

CVPR 2026 Findings

[PDF] [Code]

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

[PDF] [GitHub ★ 100+] [Project Page]

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

Spreadsheet Gym: Advancing Large Language Model Agents on Realistic Spreadsheet Tasks via Reinforcement Learning

Mingyuan Wu*, Banghao Chi*, Yining Xie*, Jingcheng Yang, Jize Jiang, Zhaoheng Li, Shengyi Qian, Minjia Zhang, Klara Nahrstedt, Rui Hou, Hanchao Yu

Under review, 2026

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 2025 Workshop on Multimodal Algorithmic Reasoning (Oral Presentation)

[PDF] [Oral Talk]

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]

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

Seal of the University of Illinois

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

Seal of the high school Shenzhen College of International Education

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

Seal of Shen Wai International School

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

My passion for computers developed from creating games, which I've been doing since I was 12 (checkout my first game CubeKiller).

Portfolio[s]

Technical Art & Game Design