Vic Shihang Li

I build agents that autonomously design and operate systems end-to-end, and the systems that run those agents quickly, reliably, and securely.

I'm Vic, a third-year CS PhD student at the University of Washington. I am advised by Simon Peter and Tom Anderson, and affiliated with SysLab, FOCI and SyFI.

I co-lead the Self-Defining Systems initiative, which asks how systems should be built when agents drive the end-to-end work: specification, design, implementation, and operation. This builds on my prior work across the datacenter system stack, spanning hardware abstractions, OS, and application runtimes. More in my research page and resume.

Before UW, I worked with Malte Schwarzkopf as an MS student at the ETOS group at Brown. Before that, I studied Finance and CS as an undergraduate at NYU Stern School of Business.