• Sep. 2019–Jun. 2023, Southern University of Science and Technology, BEng, Computer Science and Engineering
• Sep. 2022–Jun. 2024, University of California, Irvine, M.S., Computer Engineering

Academic Projects

Unintended Side Effects of Defense Mechanisms in Large Language Models

Prof. Haizhou Li, CUHK-Shenzhen
PyTorch

• Conducted a comprehensive analysis of 11 defense mechanisms applied to 6 LLMs, evaluating their impact on model performance, over-refusal, and token overhead
• Proposed 9 meta-defenders to systematically analyze trade-offs between safety and utility in model responses
• Provided actionable insights on designing robust LLMs for safety-critical applications

Human-Readable SVG Generation with Vision Language Models

Assistant Prof. Haohan Wang, UIUC
PyTorch

• Developed S²VG², an innovative method integrating vision language models for scalable vector graphics (SVG) generation
• Curated the SVG-SHAPE dataset to benchmark SVG generation and model reasoning capabilities
• Demonstrated state-of-the-art performance in SVG reasoning of LLMs and vision metrics

One-shot Controllable Head Avatar Creation

Prof. Xiaohui Xie, UCI
PyTorch

• Pioneered CVTHead, a framework for point-based neural rendering from monocular images
• Conducted comprehensive benchmarks against leading methods for cross-identity reenactment
• Demonstrated state-of-the-art approaches on VoxCeleb1 and VoxCeleb2, with improved efficiency (Accepted by WACV 2024)

Trajectory Prediction and Driving Video Caption

Assistant Prof. Hao Zhao, THU
PyTorch

• Predicted trajectory on a new interactive motion dataset using AgentFormer and Trajectron++
• Trained a novel end-to-end transformer generating description and explanation of the video
• Demonstrated state-of-the-art performance (co-authored paper accepted to ICRA 2023)

Professional Experience

Image Editing via Reasoning

vivo AI Research
PyTorch

• Developed an energy-based heatmap refinement algorithm for high-fidelity image editing
• Explored VLM + CoT paradigms for multi-round editing via generate–reflect–revise visual reasoning

Lightweight OCR Models for OpenCV

OpenCV @ Google Summer of Code 2022
PyTorch, ONNX, C++

• Implemented the detection part of PP-OCRv2 model in OpenCV Zoo via ONNX
• Developed a high-level C++ API for PP-OCRv2 in OpenCV
• Built evaluation metrics for text detection (AP, Recall, Precision, Hmean) in OpenCV Zoo

Publications

• Tong Zhang, Yiming Chen, Simin Chen, Zexin Li, Xianghu Yue, Cong Liu, Chenyu You, and Haizhou Li, “Unintended Side Effects of Defense Mechanisms in Large Language Models: A Comprehensive Study”, Under Review, 2025.
• Tong Zhang, Haoyang Liu, Peiyan Zhang, Yuxuan Cheng, and Haohan Wang, “Beyond Pixels: Exploring Human-Readable SVG Generation for Simple Images with Vision Language Models”, Preprint, 2024.
• Haoyu Ma, Tong Zhang, Shanlin Sun, Xiangyi Yan, Kun Han, and Xiaohui Xie, “CVTHead: One-shot Controllable Head Avatar with Vertex-feature Transformer”, IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), 2024.
• Bu Jin, Xinyu Liu, Yupeng Zheng, Pengfei Li, Hao Zhao, Tong Zhang, Yuhang Zheng, Guyue Zhou and Jingjing Liu, “ADAPT: Action-aware Driving Caption Transformer”, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2023.

Misc

• Hometown: Wuhan
• Idol: Richard Feynman
• Favorite Book: Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
• I enjoy exploring interesting research topics from active discussions and take pride in my creativity. I also write poems and blogs in my spare time.