🙋♀️ About Me
I am Xinshu Li, a Lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor in North America) in the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI), Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University. I am also a member of the Environmental Informatics Hub (EIH), where I conduct interdisciplinary research at the intersection of artificial intelligence and environmental sustainability. Before joining Monash, I was a Lecturer in the School of Computing Technologies at RMIT University. I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of New South Wales under the supervision of Prof. Lina Yao. Prior to that, I obtained my Master’s degree from Fudan University and Bachelor’s degree from Zhejiang University.
My research focuses on causal inference, trustworthy AI, and foundation models, with applications spanning environmental sustainability, embodied AI, healthcare, and other real-world domains. My goal is to develop trustworthy, interpretable, and generalizable AI systems that can reliably support decision-making in complex and dynamic environments. I am always happy to discuss potential collaborations and welcome opportunities to work on research related to causal inference, trustworthy AI, foundation models, and AI for environmental sustainability.
I am always looking for highly self-motivated students with strong mathematical and/or programming backgrounds. If you are interested in working with me, please email me with your CV, transcripts, and any previous research papers.
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To Prospective PhD/MPhil students. I welcome PhD and MPhil students interested in pursuing research in Trustworthy AI, AI for Environmental Sustainability, and Embodied AI for their thesis. Competitive scholarships (government, university, project, and industry-funded) are available for outstanding PhD applicants.
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To Monash Master by Coursework students. I welcome Master’s students interested in my research areas for their research component, particularly those considering a research career or a PhD.
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To Honours students. I welcome outstanding Honours students interested in research projects related to my research areas.
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To Visiting students and scholars. If your research interests overlap with mine, please feel free to get in touch.
🔥 News
- 2026.07: 🎉 I join Monash University as a Lecturer in the Department of DSAI, Faculty of Information Technology!
- 2026.06: 🎉 I’ve been invited to serve as a Workflow Chair at ACML 2026!
- 2026.06: 🎉 I’ve been invited to serve as a Session Chair at The Web Conference 2026!
- 2026.05: 🎉 One paper is accepted by KDD 2026.
- 2026.02: 🔥 Fully funded PhD position available! Please email your CV and academic transcripts if you are interested. (positions filled)
- 2026.01: 🎉 It's a pleasure to be appointed the Honorary Lecturer with Macquarie University!
- 2026.01: 🎉 One paper is accepted by WebConf 2026.
- 2025.12: 🎉 I join RMIT University as a Lecturer in the School of Computing Technologies!
- 2025.08: 🎉 One paper is accepted by IEEE ICDM 2025.
- 2025.07: 🎉 One paper is accepted by ACM MM 2025.
- 2025.05: 🎉 I receive my Ph.D. in Computer Science from UNSW Sydney!
- 2025.03: 🎉 I join Macquarie University as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow!
- 2024.05: 🎉 One paper is accepted by KDD 2024.
- 2024.01: 🎉 One paper is accepted by AAAI 2024.
📝 Selected Publications
🔍 For a full list, please visit my Google Scholar.
Causal Abstraction Learning for Multi-Modal Grounded Planning
Xinshu Li, Shiyi Yang, Ziqi Xu, Feng Xia, Quan Z. Sheng, Lina Yao
Causality-aligned Prompt Learning via Diffusion-based Counterfactual Generation
Xinshu Li, Ruoyu Wang, Erdun Gao, Mingming Gong, Lina Yao
Self-Distilled Disentangled Learning for Counterfactual Prediction
Xinshu Li, Mingming Gong, Lina Yao
🎖 Honors and Awards
- 2025 KDD 2025 Excellent Reviewers.
- 2024 KDD 2024 Student Travel Grant.
- 2021 Outstanding Graduate of Fudan University.
- 2020 Zonglin Lu Scholarship of Fudan University.
- 2019 First-class Scholarship for Postgraduate Students of Fudan University.
- 2019 Outstanding Student Leader of Fudan University.
- 2017 Member of Zhejiang University’s Engineering Excellence Program.
💼 Work Experience
- 2026.07 - Present, Lecturer, Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Melbourne.
- 2025.12 - 2026.07, Lecturer, School of Computing Technologies, RMIT University, Melbourne.
- 2025.03 - 2025.12, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Computing, Macquarie University, Sydney.
📖 Educations
- 2021.08 - 2025.05, PhD, UNSW, Sydney.
- 2018.09 - 2021.01, Master, Fudan University, Shanghai.
- 2014.09 - 2018.07, Bachelor, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou.
💬 Invited Talks
- 2024.08, “Self-Distilled Disentangled Learning for Counterfactual Prediction.” KDD 2024, Barcelona, Spain.
- 2022.11, “Contrastive individual treatment effects estimation.” IEEE ICDM 2022, Orlando, Florida, USA.
🤝 Professional Services
- Conference Service: Workflow Chair (ACML 2026); Session Chair (The Web Conference 2026); Reviewer (NeurIPS, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, KDD, AAAI, WWW, ICDM, CIKM, etc.).
- Journal Service: Reviewer (TKDE, TAI, TOSN, TALLIP, TOIS, etc.).
💻 Teaching
RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
- Further Programming (Undergraduate) Course Coordinator & Lecturer 2026S1
The University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia
- Coding for Business (Postgraduate) Teaching Assistant
- Business Analytics Methods (Postgraduate) Teaching Assistant
- Programming for Data Analytics (Undergraduate) Teaching Assistant
Fudan University, Shanghai, China
- Algorithm Design and Analysis (Undergraduate) Teaching Assistant
- Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics (Undergraduate) Teaching Assistant
- C++ Programming (Undergraduate) Teaching Assistant
🎓 Supervision
Current PhD Students
- Ziyu Yang (Since 2026)
- Shekhar Sharma (Since 2026)
- Cong Nguyen (Since 2026)
- Si Wang (Since 2026)