Haodong Zhao 赵皓东

Biography

I am a third-year PhD candidate at School of Computer Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), supervised by Prof. Gongshen Liu and Prof. Zhuosheng Zhang. I am also supervised by Prof. Bingsheng He at School of Computing, National University of Singapore (NUS) and collaborate with Dr. Zhaomin Wu.

I got my bachelor's degree from School of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2021, supervised by Prof. Gongshen Liu.

My general research interest lies in LLM Agent, AI Safety/Security/Privacy (Backdoor attack, Watermark) and Federated Learning.

Prospective collaborators: If you're interested in working with me, feel free to send me an email. 欢迎对我的研究感兴趣的同学邮件/微信联系我合作，尤其欢迎计划选择刘功申/张倬胜教授作为导师的本科生/硕士生。

Education

• 2024 - now, visiting PhD Student, School of Computing (SoC), National University of Singapore
• 2021 - now, PhD Student, School of Computer Science (SCS), Shanghai Jiao Tong University
• 2017 - 2021, Bachelor, School of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering (SEIEE), Shanghai Jiao Tong University

News

• [2026.02] LLM DNA is selected as oral 🏆🏆 .
• [2026.01] Two papers are accepted at ICLR 2026 🎉🎉.
• [2026.01] 🇸🇬🇸🇬 Attend AAAI 2026 @ Singapore. 🎉🎉.
• [2026.01] Three papers are accepted at ICASSP 2026 🎉🎉.
• [2025.12] I am selected for The CAST Youth Science and Technology Talent Cultivation Project (Doctoral Program) 🎉🎉.
• [2025.11] 🇨🇳🇨🇳 Attend EMNLP 2025 @ Suzhou, China. 🎉🎉.
• [2025.09] One paper is accepted at LaMAS@AAAI'26 (Oral) 🎉🎉.
• [2025.09] One paper is accepted at Science China Information Sciences (SCIS) 🎉🎉.
• [2025.05] One paper is accepted at ICML 2025 🎉🎉.
• [2025.04] 🇸🇬🇸🇬 Attend ICLR 2025 @ Singapore. 🎉🎉.
• [2025.02] One paper is published at TNNLS 🎉🎉.

Affiliation

• Xtra Computing Group
  School of Computing, National University of Singapore
• AI Security Lab (Unicorn), belongs to Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Security
  School of Computer Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Internship

• 2024.6 - 2025.6, Tencent Rhino-bird Research Elite Program(腾讯犀牛鸟精英人才计划). Research Intern (WXG, Federated Learning)

Honors & Awards

• 2025 The CAST Youth Science and Technology Talent Cultivation Program (PhD, 中国科协青年科技人才培育工程博士生专项计划)
• 2023 Outstanding Teaching Assistant of Shanghai Jiaotong University
• 2021 Yang Yuanqing Education Fund Outstanding Undergraduate Excellence Scholarship
• 2021 Outstanding Graduate of Shanghai
• 2021 Rongchang Leadership Scholarship

Tutorials and Contributions

《大模型开发全流程》

Organizing and participating.

Course Link

Dive into LLMs《动手学大模型》

Participating.

Course Link

SecretFlow

Contributors.

GitHub Community

LLM-DNA

Extract LLM DNA vectors — low-dimensional representations of model.

PyPI

Selected Publications

Full publication list available on Google Scholar. (* denotes equal contribution, † denotes corresponding author)

Preprint

• IAG: Input-aware Backdoor Attack on VLM-based Visual Grounding
  Junxian Li^*, Beining Xu^*, Simin Chen, Jiatong Li, Jingdi Lei, Haodong Zhao^†, Di Zhang^†
• Patronus: Identifying and Mitigating Transferable Backdoors in Pre-trained Language Models
  Tianhang Zhao^*, Wei Du^*, Haodong Zhao^*, Sufeng Duan^†, Gongshen Liu^†
• Security of Large Model-based Agents: A Survey on Adversarial, Poisoning, and Backdoor Attacks
  Xinyun Liu, Zelei Cheng, Haodong Zhao, Ronghua Xu
• When Disagreements Elicit Robustness: Investigating Self-Repair Capabilities under LLM Multi-Agent Disagreements
  Tianjie Ju, Bowen Wang, Hao Fei, Mong-Li Lee, Wynne Hsu, Yun Li, Qianren Wang, Pengzhou Cheng, Zongru Wu, Haodong Zhao, Zhuosheng Zhang, Gongshen Liu
• Vertical Federated Learning in Practice: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
  Zhaomin Wu, Zhen Qin, Junyi Hou, Haodong Zhao, Qinbin Li, Bingsheng He, Lixin Fan
• TrojanRAG: Retrieval-Augmented Generation Can Be Backdoor Driver in Large Language Models
  Pengzhou Cheng, Yidong Ding, Tianjie Ju, Zongru Wu, Wei Du, Haodong Zhao, Haiyang Yu, Ping Yi, Zhuosheng Zhang, Gongshen Liu

2026

• Disagreements in Reasoning: How a Model's Thinking Process Dictates Persuasion in Multi-Agent Systems
  Haodong Zhao^*, Jidong Li^*, Zhaomin Wu^†, Tianjie Ju, Zhuosheng Zhang, Bingsheng He, Gongshen Liu^†
  LaMAS@AAAI'26 (Oral 🏆🏆🏆)
  Workshop Website
• Revisiting Backdoor Threat in Federated Instruction Tuning from a Signal Aggregation Perspective
  Haodong Zhao, Jinming Hu, Gongshen Liu
  ICASSP 2026
• Thinking in a Crowd: How Auxiliary Information Shapes LLM Reasoning
  Haodong Zhao^*, Chenyan Zhao^*, Yansi Li, Zhuosheng Zhang^†, Gongshen Liu^†
  ICASSP 2026
  Dataset
• LLM DNA: Tracing Model Evolution via Functional Representations
  Zhaomin Wu, Haodong Zhao, Ziyang Wang, Jizhou Guo, Qian Wang, Bingsheng He
  ICLR 2026 (Oral 🏆🏆🏆, top 1%)
  Website Code
• GhostEI-Bench: Do Mobile Agents Resilience to Environmental Injection in Dynamic On-Device Environments?
  Chiyu Chen, Xinhao Song, Yunkai Chai, Yang Yao, Haodong Zhao, Lijun Li, Jie Li, Yan Teng, Gongshen Liu, Yingchun Wang
  ICLR 2026
• Judge Before Answer: Can MLLM Discern the False Premise in Question?
  Jidong Li, Lingyong Fang, Haodong Zhao, Sufeng Duan, Gongshen Liu
  ICASSP 2026
  Code

2025

• FedRS-Bench: Realistic Federated Learning Datasets and Benchmarks in Remote Sensing
  Haodong Zhao^*, Peng Peng^*, Chiyu Chen, Linqing Huang^†, Gongshen Liu^†
  KDD 2025 workshop: FedKDD
  Website
• NSmark: Null Space Based Black-box Watermarking Defense Framework for Language Models
  Haodong Zhao, Jinming Hu, Peixuan Li, Fangqi Li, Jinrui Sha, Tianjie Ju, Peixuan Chen, Zhuosheng Zhang^†, Gongshen Liu^†
  ICLR 1st GenAI Watermarking Workshop, 2025
  Code
• Flooding Spread of Manipulated Knowledge in LLM-Based Multi-Agent Communities
  Tianjie Ju, Yiting Wang, Xinbei Ma, Pengzhou Cheng, Haodong Zhao, Yulong Wang, Lifeng Liu, Jian Xie, Zhuosheng Zhang, Gongshen Liu
  Science China Information Sciences (SCIS)
  Code
• Watch Out Your Album! On the Inadvertent Privacy Memorization in Multi-Modal Large Language Models
  Tianjie Ju, Yi Hua, Hao Fei, Zhenyu Shao, Yubin Zheng, Haodong Zhao, Mong-Li Lee, Wynne Hsu, Zhuosheng Zhang, Gongshen Liu
  ICML 2025
  Code
• Backdoor Attacks and Countermeasures in Natural Language Processing Models: A Comprehensive Security Review
  Pengzhou Cheng, Zongru Wu, Wei Du, Haodong Zhao, Wei Lu, Gongshen Liu
  TNNLS

2024

• Revisiting the Information Capacity of Neural Network Watermarks: Upper Bound Estimation and Beyond
  Fangqi Li, Haodong Zhao, Wei Du, Shilin Wang
  AAAI 2024
• UOR: Universal Backdoor Attacks on Pre-trained Language Models
  Wei Du, Peixuan Li, Haodong Zhao, Tianjie Ju, Ge Ren, Gongshen Liu
  ACL findings 2024
  Code
• NWS: NATURAL TEXTUAL BACKDOOR ATTACKS VIA WORD SUBSTITUTION
  Wei Du, Tongxin Yuan, Haodong Zhao, Gongshen Liu
  ICASSP 2024

2023

• FedPrompt: Communication-Efficient and Privacy Preserving Prompt Tuning in Federated Learning
  Haodong Zhao, Wei Du, Fangqi Li, Peixuan Li, Gongshen Liu
  ICASSP 2023
• PLMmark: A Secure and Robust Black-box Watermarking Framework for Pre-trained Language Models
  Peixuan Li, Pengzhou Cheng, Fangqi Li, Wei Du, Haodong Zhao, Gongshen Liu
  AAAI 2023
• Is Continuous Prompt a Combination of Discrete Prompts? Towards a Novel View for Interpreting Continuous Prompts
  Tianjie Ju, Yubin Zheng, Hanyi Wang, Haodong Zhao , Gongshen Liu
  ACL findings 2023
• A Universal Identity Backdoor Attack against Speaker Verification based on Siamese Network
  Haodong Zhao^*, Wei Du^*, Junjie Guo, Gongshen Liu^†
  Interspeech 2022

Talks

• [2026.02] Host Talk "给大模型做“亲子鉴定”：LLM 的 DNA 与模型演化图谱" at NICE. Speaker: Zhaomin Wu.
• [2026.02] Host Talk "PaperDebugger：将 Agent 能力带入 Overleaf" at NICE. Speaker: Junyi Hou.
• [2026.01] Host talk "ColorAgent：构建稳健、个性化、交互式的OS智能体" at NICE. Speaker: Ning Li. [video]
• [2023.09] Talk "Privacy computing in the era of large models" at Inclusion 2023. [slides]

Mentorship

It is my honor to work with many talented students!

PhD Students

• Chiyu Chen (2025-), Bachelor's Thesis and co-authored 2 papers

Master Students

• Jidong Li (2025-), co-authored 2 papers
• Tianhang Zhao (2025-), co-authored 1 paper

Undergraduate Students

• Jinming Hu (2024-), co-authored 5 papers
• Chenyan Zhao (2025-), co-authored 1 paper
• Peng Peng (2025), co-authored 1 paper
• Ziwu Liu (2025-)
• Tianyi Xu, 2025-, Summer Internship

Services

Professional Services

• Journal Reviewer: TDSC, TIFS, TNNLS, TKDE, TKDD, TMM, SCIS, Neurocomputing
• Conference Reviewer: ICLR, ICML, NeurIPS, CVPR, AAAI, ARR, KDD, IJCAI, ICME, AISTATS, IJCNN
• Teaching Assistant for "Introduction to AI", Fall 2023; "Operating System" , Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2024; "Principles of Computer Viruses" , Spring 2022; "Computer Programming Practice" , Summer 2022, Summer 2023.

Community Services

• Chair of CCF Student Chapter of Shanghai Jiaotong University.
• Committe member of NICE, an NLP Academic Exchange Platform.
• Part-time Counselor in SJTU.