Hi! I’m Yixin Dong, a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University, fortunate to be advised by Prof. Tianqi Chen. I hold a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Technology from the ACM Honors Class at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

I am building efficient and verifiable AI agents. I regard it as a crucial pathway to AGI.

I am generally interested in ML systems and ML compilers. I am a dedicated advocate of open source and have built several adopted projects, including MLC-LLM and Apache TVM Unity, where I serve as an Apache TVM Committer. I had the privilege of spending a wonderful time at the University of Washington, working with Prof. Luis Ceze.

From 2025 to 2026, I worked at xAI (now SpaceXAI) and am the main contributor to xAI's structured generation effort. xAI adopted XGrammar for its structured generation library.

We have been driving the XGrammar project forward. It is a zero-overhead LLM constrained generation engine and has already been adopted by several well-known LLM frameworks.

We are also currently pushing agent-driven kernel generation, including datasets and environments, competition, agent workflow, compilers and DSLs, and post-training.

Feel free to explore my CV to learn more. I’m always open to collaborating with passionate, like-minded individuals.

I am open to advising CMU undergrads and master’s students with backgrounds or interests in ML systems and agents for coding. In particular, I am looking for 1-2 students interested in contributing to XGrammar. Experience in parser and system efficiency optimization would be a plus. I’m also happy to chat about research and PhD applications with students from underrepresented groups. Please reach out by email.

Beyond research, I’m a cinephile and a lover of contemporary dance. My favorite movies are Hiroshima mon amour and Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo. If you share similar interests, let’s grab a coffee and chat!