PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Gavin Li

Gavin Li is a Stanford researcher whose work spans internet security, language-model collaboration and biomedical AI. He coauthored CERTainty in 2023; in 2024, he helped build the STaRK retrieval interface and taught Stanford's CS111 course. In 2025, he coauthored a study of government security guidance and CollabLLM, a multi-turn framework whose paper won an ICML Outstanding Paper Award and reported gains in task performance and interactivity. In July 2026, he was a graduate student contributing to Biomni, Stanford's AI agent for biomedical research.

Timeline

  1. 2023

    CERTainty and DNS manipulation

    In 2023, he coauthors CERTainty, a study that uses TLS certificates to detect DNS manipulation.

  2. 2024

    Building STaRK's interface

    In 2024, he helps build the interactive interface for STaRK, an LLM retrieval benchmark for textual and relational knowledge bases.

  3. 2024

    Teaching Stanford's CS111

    During Stanford's Winter 2024 quarter, he serves as a teaching assistant for CS111 Operating Systems Principles.

  4. 2025

    Government security guidance

    In 2025, he coauthors a USENIX Security study that analyzes enterprise security guidance across 41 countries, comparing its availability, coverage and consistency.

  5. 2025

    CollabLLM for multi-turn collaboration

    In 2025, he coauthors CollabLLM, a training framework for multi-turn human–LLM collaboration that uses collaborative simulation and multiturn-aware rewards.

  6. 2025

    An ICML Outstanding Paper Award

    His CollabLLM paper wins an Outstanding Paper Award at ICML 2025. The study reports 18.5% higher task performance and 46.3% improved interactivity than the baselines.

  7. July 2026

    A graduate student on Biomni

    In July 2026, he is a graduate student contributing to Biomni, a Stanford AI agent for biomedical research.

  1. 20% of people at companies who shape AI also hold a university role, led by Google and Stanford UniversityIncludes Stanford University. We estimate that 539 of the 6,766 people with a known current organization (8%) hold both a university role and a company role, including 20% of people at companies and 13% of people at universities.
  2. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Includes Stanford University. Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI each year from 1955 to 2025, tracing the shift from university labs to companies.
  3. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Stanford University. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  4. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Stanford University. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Gavin Li yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. PoPETs Proceedings — CERTainty: Detecting DNS Manipulation at Scale using TLS Certificates crysp.petsymposium.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. STaRK: Benchmarking LLM Retrieval on Textual and Relational Knowledge Bases arxiv.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. CS111 Operating Systems Principles web.stanford.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. A First Look at Governments' Enterprise Security Guidance usenix.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. [2502.00640] CollabLLM: From Passive Responders to Active Collaborators arxiv.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. ICML 2025 Awards icml.cc. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. Meet Biomni – an AI-powered biomedical co-scientist | EurekAlert! eurekalert.org. Checked 22 October 2026.