Hang Li (Alex)

I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in IELab within the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Queensland, Australia. During my Ph.D, I worked closely with Prof. Guido Zuccon, A/Prof. Bevan Koopman, and Dr. Ahmed Mourad (Read My Thesis). Prior to Ph.D, I received my Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science at the University of Minnesota Twin-Cities in United States, 2016.

My research interests include Information Retrieval (IR), Large Language Models (LLMs), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Agentic Search, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and Machine Learning (ML). In particular, I am interested in developing intelligent search and information-access systems that combine effective retrieval with the reasoning and generation capabilities of LLMs. My research explores topics including neural and dense retrieval, retrieval enhancement and feedback, LLM-based relevance assessment, agentic and conversational search, RAG system design and evaluation, and the efficient and reliable integration of LLMs into real-world information retrieval pipelines.

I publish at premier academic venues in IR (e.g. SIGIR, ECIR, WSDM, WWW, TOIS, IJDL). During my Ph.D, my work was supported by Grains Research and Development Corporation, through the AgAsk Project.