Hengchang Lu

Research Profile

About

Welcome to my research profile. I focus on building inherently aligned, natively steerable systems attuned to dynamic human preferences.

Research Projects

Active Preference Alignment

A theoretically grounded, training-free alignment method based on Sequential Monte Carlo sampling and Feynman-Kac Correctors that integrates online preference signals directly into the latent generative process.

To be submitted to ICML 2026

Cross-Domain AI Semantic Recognition Framework

A context-aware embedding pipeline that transforms unstructured clinical narratives into structured, quantifiable behavioral ontologies. Treats clinical event extraction as a dense vector retrieval problem, establishing a scalable protocol for computational phenotyping.

Dynamic Cognition Lab, WashU | Supervised by Prof. Jeffrey M. Zacks