Xiaolei (Alex) Chu

Hi, I’m Xiaolei (Alex), a fifth year Ph.D. candidate at UC Berkeley, advised by Prof. Ziqi Wang.

My research focuses on LLM post training, generative retrieval, diffusion models, reinforcement learning, and 3D vision. I also have a background in mechanics, uncertainty quantification, and statistical physics. I am always happy to connect and discuss potential collaborations.

Email / CV / Scholar / Github / LinkedIn

News

May 2026Joining Google DeepMind as a research intern, working on generative retrieval.
Mar 2026New preprint “Social Amplification Dominates Collective Hazard Response” is now on arXiv. The paper uses mean-field theory from statistical physics to explain how social networks amplify collective panic when communities face hazards, revealing the conditions under which individual fear cascades into a system-wide phase transition.

Publications

	GeoScout: A Generalizable Geometry-Aware Policy for Active 3D Reconstruction Xiaolei Chu, Guanren Zhou, Ziqi Wang, Khalid M. Mosalam coming soon, 2026 code GeoScout conditions a reinforcement-learning next-best-view policy on refined geometry captions, using language as a prior over unobserved shape to reconstruct unseen objects with fewer views than a matched no-caption policy.
	Entity-Guided Expert-Grounded Visual Diagnosis for Structures in the Wild Guanren Zhou, Xiaolei Chu, Khalid M. Mosalam coming soon, 2026 Hierarchical SAM 3 retrieval and DINOv3 specialist classifiers ground a frozen vision-language model’s fine-grained diagnoses in segmentation masks, enabling traceability without new task-specific annotations or model fine-tuning.
Coming soon	Hierarchical Conditional Generative Modeling for Ground Motion Generations Xiaolei Chu, Maijia Su, Ziqi Wang coming soon, 2026
	Social Amplification Dominates Collective Hazard Response Xiaolei Chu, Guanren Zhou, Marco Broccardo, Didier Sornette, Khalid M. Mosalam, Ziqi Wang arXiv preprint, Mar. 2026 arXiv Fine-tuned BERTweet estimates state-level stress prevalence from social-media posts to calibrate an interpretable network model, revealing that social influence outweighed direct exposure in over 80% of U.S. states.
	Maximum entropy-based modeling of community-level hazard responses for civil infrastructures Xiaolei Chu, Ziqi Wang Reliability Engineering & System Safety, Oct. 2024 arXiv
	Multiscale Time Series Decomposition for Structural Dynamic Properties: Long-Term Trend and Ambient Interference Xiaolei Chu, Wei Cui, Shengyi Xu, Lin Zhao, Hua Guan, Yaojun Ge Structural Control and Health Monitoring, Feb. 2023 paper
	Bayesian inference based parametric identification of vortex-excited force using on-site measured vibration data on a long-span bridge Peng Liu, Xiaolei Chu, Wei Cui, Lin Zhao, Yaojun Ge Engineering Structures, Sep. 2022 paper
	Life-Cycle Assessment of Long-Span Bridge's Wind Resistant Performance Considering Multisource Time-Variant Effects and Uncertainties Xiaolei Chu, Wei Cui, Lin Zhao, Yaojun Ge Journal of Structural Engineering, May 2022 paper
	Bayesian spectral density approach for identification of bridge section's flutter derivatives operated in turbulent flow Xiaolei Chu, Wei Cui, Peng Liu, Lin Zhao, Yaojun Ge Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, May 2022 paper
	Probabilistic flutter analysis of a long-span bridge in typhoon-prone regions considering climate change and structural deterioration Xiaolei Chu, Wei Cui, Lin Zhao, Shuyang Cao, Yaojun Ge Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, Aug. 2021 paper

Awards & Honors

May 20252nd Place, Objective Resilience Student Paper/Presentation Competition at EMI 2025, Anaheim, CA
Aug 2024Professor Alex & Georgia Scordelis Fellowship, UC Berkeley
Oct 2022Excellent Master's Thesis, Tongji University
Jun 2022Excellent Graduate, Tongji University
Oct 2021China National Scholarship
Aug 2019Citation for Outstanding College Graduate (Summa Cum Laude), China Civil Engineering Society
Jun 2019Excellent Undergraduate of Sichuan Province
Jan 20191st International Engineering Mechanics Competition: 1st Prize (Individual) & 2nd Prize (Team)
Apr 2018ASCE Steel Bridge Competition: 5th Overall & Best Display Medal (Group Leader), Sacramento, CA
Oct 20171st Prize, 9th Chinese Mathematics Competition (CMC)
Jul 20171st Prize, 11th Zhou Peiyuan National Mechanics Competition
Oct 20161st Prize, 8th Chinese Mathematics Competition (CMC)
2016–18Railway Alumni Scholarship, Chengdu

Academic Services

Journal Reviewer

Journal of Structural Engineering, ASCE
Journal of Engineering
Advanced Engineering Informatics
Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing
Engineering Structures
Measurement
Journal of Building Engineering
Automation in Construction
Reliability Engineering & System Safety
Information Processing and Management
Structural Safety

Professional Membership

Student Member of ASCE (2016–present)

Visitor Map

Website source from Jon Barron.