Emre Can Acikgoz

PhD Student · UIUC NLP

I am a second-year PhD student in Computer Science at UIUC, advised by Gokhan Tur and Dilek Hakkani-Tur. My research focuses on self-evolving LLM agents and agentic learning, with broader interests in reinforcement learning, self-play, and test-time training. I received an MSc in Computer Science from Koc University and a BSc in Electrical and Electronics Engineering (AI focus) from the same institution. My work has been published in top-tier venues including but not limited to NeurIPS, ICLR, ACL, and EMNLP - representative works include ToolRL, TT-SI, and Tool-R0. I am the co-founding organizer of The First Workshop on Lifelong Agents: Learning, Aligning, and Evolving at ICLR 2026, as part of Project Lifelong Agent.