People / PhD StudentsPhD Students: S - Z

Abir Saha
Student Track: TSB
Advisor(s): Piper, Anne Marie
Cohort: September 2018
Email
Abir

Roberto Carlos Salas Damian
Student Track: Artificial Intelligence
Research Area: Qualitative Reasoning
Advisor(s): Forbus, Kenneth
Cohort: June 2021
Expected Graduation Date: June 2026
Research Statement: Expanding knowledge in artificial intelligence systems is one of the fundamental requirements to improve dialog or reasoning systems. Previous research has demonstrated that a system can learn new information by reading analogies in instructional texts. Based on this insight, my current research lies in exploring how a system can identify analogies to acquire new knowledge during a conversation in a spoken dialog system.
Roberto Carlos' Website
Email
Roberto Carlos

Abhraneel Sarma
Student Track: Interfaces
Research Area: HCI
Advisor(s): Hullman, Jessica; Kay, Matt
Cohort: September 2019
Expected Graduation Date: June 2024
Research Statement: Broadly, I am interested in studying how people make sense of uncertainty information which arise in a typical data analysis pipeline. This includes developing tools which surfaces uncertainty in the data analysis process itself, such as the multiverse R library, or studying how users interpret uncertainty visualisations in missing data contexts or multiple comparisons scenarios.
Abhraneel's Website
Email
Abhraneel

Florian Andreas Schiffers
Student Track: Graphics
Research Area: Computational Imaging and Display
Advisor(s): Cossairt, Oliver Strides
Cohort: September 2018
Expected Graduation Date: December 2023
Research Statement: My work focuses on computational photography and display, which combines expertise in physics/optics, image processing, computer vision, machine learning, and computer graphics. I design, model, and build end-to-end systems that combine sensors, displays, and novel optical elements. Current applications of my research are found in medicine, VR/AR/MR, robotics, industrial inspection, remote sensing, biology, and cultural heritage preservation. For my Ph.D. thesis, I investigate novel algorithms for Computer Generated Holography that will enable the next-generation Near-Eye Display (VR/AR) with the ultimate goal of passing the "Visual Turing Test." In other words, I want to make the metaverse a reality by creating a display where - to the human eye - the virtual world becomes indistinguishable from the real world.
Florian Andreas' Website
Email
Florian Andreas

Connor Selna
Student Track: Computer Engineering
Advisor(s): Hardavellas, Nikos
Cohort: September 2022
Email
Connor

Sergio Servantez
Student Track: Artificial Intelligence
Research Area: AI and Law, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing
Advisor(s): Hammond, Kristian
Cohort: September 2019
Expected Graduation Date: December 2023
Research Statement: Sergio's research is primarily focused on the intersection of machine learning and law. Specifically, his work explores how large language models can be used to extract information and reason over legal documents.
Sergio's Website
Email
Sergio

Leesha Shah
Student Track: TSB
Advisor(s): Zhang, Haoqi
Cohort: September 2016
Email
Leesha

Anant Shah
Student Track: Theory
Advisor(s): Hartline, Jason
Cohort: September 2021
Email
Anant

Farzad Shahabi
Student Track: Graphics and Interactive Media
Research Area: Mobile Health
Advisor(s): Nabil Alshurafa
Cohort: September 2020
Email
Farzad

Liren Shan
Student Track: Theory
Advisor(s): Makarychev, Konstantin
Cohort: September 2018
Expected Graduation Date: August 2023
Research Statement: My research interests include approximation algorithms, graph theory, and algorithmic game theory. The aim of my research is to design algorithms for data analysis and decision-making in real-world problems. I currently work on many clustering and graph partitioning problems.
Liren's Website
Email
Liren

Xiangmin Shen
Student Track: Systems
Research Area: Security and Privacy
Advisor(s): Chen, Yan
Cohort: September 2019
Expected Graduation Date: June 2024
Research Statement: My research focuses on end-point detection of Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) on Linux systems. Specifically, I study threat modeling of APTs and using machine learning in threat detection.
Xiangmin's Website
Email
Xiangmin

Wenxuan Shi
Student Track: Security and Privacy
Advisor(s): Xing, Xinyu
Cohort: September 2022
Email
Wenxuan

Alexis Shuping
Student Track: Computer Engineering
Research Area: Energy Harvesting
Advisor(s): Hester, Josiah
Cohort: September 2021
Expected Graduation Date: June 2026
Research Statement: The fundamental goal of my research is to use technology to do the most good for people, and in particular, for the marginalized communities that the STEM fields and the people who control them have failed and exploited throughout history. I focus on designing robust and accessible systems that empower these groups to monitor their homes and communities for environmental pollution. This data can be used to hold corporations to account for the damage they cause, and also to target mitigation strategies where they will be most effective.
Alexis' Website
Email
Alexis

Michael Smith
Student Track: CSLS
Research Area: Sports, Technology, and Learning
Advisor(s): Worsley, Marcelo
Cohort: September 2020
Expected Graduation Date: June 2025
Research Statement: Michael Smith is a Computer Science and Learning Sciences PhD student at Northwestern University, and a National GEM Consortium PhD Fellow. Some of his research and project interests include exploring the intersections of technology & education, formal and informal learning, computing culture, new media and community, and games.
Michael's Website
Email
Michael

Donghyun Sohn
Student Track: Systems and Networking
Advisor(s): Rogers, Jennie
Cohort: September 2022
Email
Donghyun

Lirika Sola
Student Track: Artificial Intelligence
Advisor(s): Subrahmanian, VS
Cohort: September 2022
Email
Lirika

Federico Sossai
Student Track: Systems and Networking
Advisor(s): Campanoni, Simone
Cohort: September 2022
Email
Federico

Vaidehi Srinivas
Student Track: Theory
Research Area: Algorithms
Advisor(s): Vijayaraghavan, Aravindan
Cohort: September 2021
Expected Graduation Date: Unknown
Research Statement: Vaidehi is a Ph.D. student in the theory group, advised by Aravindan Vijayaraghavan. She is interested in designing and analyzing simple algorithms that are practical for real-world input. She has worked on designing prediction algorithms that use significantly less memory than the previous state of the art [in STOC '22], and analyzing the Burer-Monteiro method, a practical and popular heuristic used in many machine learning applications. Before Northwestern, she earned her B.S. in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, and was a Fulbright visiting student at the University of Vienna in the Theory and Applications of Algorithms group. Sie spricht auch gerne Deutsch!
Vaidehi's Website
Email
Vaidehi

Marko Sterbentz
Student Track: Artificial Intelligence
Research Area: Natural Language Processing
Advisor(s): Hammond, Kristian
Cohort: September 2019
Expected Graduation Date: June 2024
Research Statement: My field of research is natural language processing, with a focus on language understanding, question answering, and information retrieval. In particular, I work on building systems that can effectively break a question down into its logical parts and use that in order to automatically perform the required data retrieval and analysis against heterogeneous data sources including unstructured text, knowledge graphs, and relational databases. My ultimate goal is to develop methods that enable non-technical users to better interact with the ever growing body of data that is at their fingertips, but which is not always easily accessible due to the time constraints required to search through this data and the technical expertise required to write database queries. Rather, these systems should be able to meet the users on their terms and have the rich information contained within the data be accessible via a natural language interface that any person can interact with.
Marko's Website
Email
Marko

Yian Su
Student Track: Systems
Research Area: Compilers
Advisor(s): Campanoni, Simone
Cohort: September 2021
Expected Graduation Date: June 2026
Research Statement: My research interest focuses on compiler optimizations and automatic parallelization. My work on automatic parallelization through parallelizing compilers targets to free programmers' hands while also generating performant code leveraging the advance of the underlying multi-core architectures. I study parallelization, program analysis, and various program abstractions for making powerful optimizations.
Yian's Website
Email
Yian

Pattara Sukprasert
Student Track: Theory
Research Area: Algorithms
Advisor(s): Khuller, Samir
Cohort: June 2019
Expected Graduation Date: Fall 2023
Research Statement: I have broad interests in topics related to graph theory. Most of my works are related to graphs in one way or another. I worked and am interested in working on topics related to graph algorithms, approximation algorithms, dynamic algorithms, online algorithms, clustering, fairness, and stability. While most of my works focus on the theoretical side, I am delighted that I have a paper on cancer research, which is arguably closer to practical usage.
Pattara's Website
Email
Pattara

Jipeng Sun
Student Track: Graphics and Interactive Media
Research Area: Computational Photography
Advisor(s): Cossairt, Oliver Strides
Cohort: January 2021
Expected Graduation Date: June 2027
Research Statement: Jipeng Sun is a Ph.D. student in the CS Department working in the Computational Photography Lab at Northwestern University. He is interested in building machines that enhance the human visual system and empowering machine intelligence with biological-inspired neural networks. His research interests include light-field microscopy, computer-generated holography display, and AR system. Jipeng is currently working on imaging live zebrafish brain neuron firing patterns using programmable 3D light-field microscopy. He received his Master degree in Computer Science from Northwestern University, US, and Bachelor degree with honor in Software Engineering from Shandong University, China. Before coming to Northwestern, Jipeng worked full-time in the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CASIA) on brain-inspired robotics bodily-self model project during 2019-2021.
Jipeng's Website
Email
Jipeng

Yunqing Sun
Student Track: Systems
Research Area: Security and Privacy
Advisor(s): Wang, Xiao
Cohort: June 2021
Expected Graduation Date: 2026
Research Statement: My research interests mainly focus on security and privacy. I am working on oblivious transfer, multi-party computation, and zero-knowledge proof to propel them into practical use in systems.
Yunqing's Website
Email
Yunqing

Madhav Suresh
Student Track: Systems
Research Area: Databases
Advisor(s): Hartline, Jason D; Naughton, Jeffrey
Cohort: September 2016
Email
Madhav

Vsevolod Sushchevskii
Student Track: TSB
Research Area: Computational Social Science; Human-AI teams
Advisor(s): Contractor, Noshir
Cohort: June 2022
Vsevolod's Website
Email
Vsevolod

Aravind Reddy Talla
Student Track: Theory
Research Area: Algorithms and Machine Learning
Advisor(s): Makarychev, Konstantin; Vijayaraghavan, Aravindan
Cohort: September 2018
Expected Graduation Date: June 2023
Research Statement: My research interests are mainly in the design and analysis of algorithms for computationally hard problems, especially those which arise in the context of large scale machine learning.
Aravind Reddy's Website
Email
Aravind Reddy

Alex Tang
Student Track: Theory
Advisor(s): Vijayaraghavan, Aravindan
Cohort: September 2019
Email
Alex

Kedar Thiagarajan
Student Track: Systems and Networking
Advisor(s): Bustamante, Fabian
Cohort: September 2022
Email
Kedar

Mattson Thieme
Student Track: Artificial Intelligence
Research Area: Graph Structure Learning
Advisor(s): Liu, Han
Cohort: September 2019
Expected Graduation Date: March 2024
Research Statement: My research looks at how we can learn interpretable graph structures directly from data without relying on heuristics that simplify (or, in most cases, obfuscate) the structure-learning signal. I'm currently working on GNN-based methods with applications in drug discovery.
Mattson's Website
Email
Mattson

Jacoya Thompson
Student Track: Graphics and Interactive Media
Research Area: HCI
Advisor(s): Worsley, Marcelo
Cohort: September 2016
Expected Graduation Date: June 2023
Research Statement: My research interests lie at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Data Science, and Education. My research seeks to understand how to design tools and activities to support learners in developing data science skills.
Jacoya's Website
Email
Jacoya

Mara Ulloa
Student Track: Interfaces
Research Area: HCI
Advisor(s): Jacobs, Maia
Cohort: September 2021
Expected Graduation Date: June 2026
Research Statement: My research focuses on designing novel strategies and interventions that support youths' mental wellbeing within computer science education environments. The objective of my work is to build digital mental health interventions that are co-designed with youth and address their unique support needs. I also aim to provide CS educators with tools to better support the wellbeing of students, with a particular focus on supporting underrepresented students.
Another of my research interests focuses on studying the sociotechnical challenges machine learning tools face when being embedded into real-world, medical settings. My goal is to co-design solutions to these challanges with the intended user, so that their ideas and needs are valued and a key component of the tool's development.
Mara's Website
Email
Mara

Deniz Ulusel
Student Track: Computer Engineering
Advisor(s): Memik, Gokhan
Cohort: September 2020
Email
Deniz

Gustavo Umbelino
Student Track: TSB
Advisor(s): Gerber, Elizabeth; Easterday, Matthew
Expected Graduation Date: September 2019
Email
Gustavo

Soroush Shahi Vernousfaderani
Student Track: Graphics and Interactive Media
Research Area: Applied Machine Learning
Advisor(s): Alshurafa, Nabil
Cohort: March 2021
Expected Graduation Date: N/A
Research Statement: Soroush’s research is focused on human activity recognition using wearable devices such as wearable cameras. Specifically, he is interested in detecting activities that has implications for human health such as eating and smoking. Recently, he worked on addressing privacy aspects of wearable cameras using image obfuscation techniques. Prior to joining Northwestern University, Soroush got a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Tehran.
Soroush Shahi's Website
Email
Soroush Shahi

Nicholas Vincent
Student Track: TSB
Research Area: Human-Centered Machine Learning
Advisor(s): Hecht, Brent
Cohort: September 2017
Expected Graduation Date: August 2022
Research Statement: My research focuses on studying the dependence of modern computing technologies, including the broad set of systems called "AI", on human-generated data, with the goal of mitigating negative impacts of these technologies. I am especially interested in research that (1) makes people aware of the value of their data and (2) helps people leverage the value of their data. My work relates to concepts such as "data dignity", "data as labor", "data leverage", and"data dividends". My research is rooted in the hypothesis that, with better-designed systems, AI can mitigate inequalities in wealth and power rather than exacerbate them.
Nicholas' Website
Email
Nicholas

Matthew vonAllmen
Student Track: Theory
Advisor(s): Hartline, Jason
Cohort: January 2021
Email
Matthew

Izaiah Wallace
Student Track: Interfaces
Advisor(s): Horn, Michael
Cohort: September 2016
Email
Izaiah

Adia Wallace
Student Track: CSLS
Research Area: Interfaces
Advisor(s): Worsley, Marcelo
Cohort: September 2021
Expected Graduation Date: 2026
Research Statement: My research interests include culturally-responsive-sustaining K12 CS education, computer science teacher development, makerspaces, and creative applications of AI. (I have not officially begun research yet since CS+LS students have a little more leeway in exploring).
Adia's Website
Email
Adia

Jiayi Wang
Advisor(s): Liu, Han
Cohort: September 2021
Email
Jiayi

Caleb Wang
Student Track: Systems and Networking
Advisor(s): Bustamante, Fabian
Cohort: September 2022
Email
Caleb

Lixu Wang
Student Track: Computer Engineering
Research Area: Security and Privacy
Advisor(s): Wang, Xiao; Zhu, Qi
Cohort: January 2021
Expected Graduation Date: August 2025
Research Statement: I aim to create socially responsible machine learning (ML) models, i.e., ML models that can protect the privacy of their training data and minimize the chance of being misused. In particular, to ensure privacy protection, those models must be resistant to various privacy attacks. To prevent harmful social impacts from the misuse of ML models, their generalization ability on unintentional data domains and tasks must be reduced. To achieve these goals, I have been developing novel ML models and tools with a diverse set of techniques in Optimization Theory, Information Theory, and Cryptography. Greater ability comes with greater responsibility, and this applies equally to ML technology. ML models with social responsibility can protect data privacy and prevent serious consequences caused by the harmful use of models, such as teenagers obtaining violent information from recommendation systems or criminals using ML models to engage in criminal activities.
Lixu's Website
Email
Lixu

Xijun Wang
Student Track: Interfaces
Research Area: Robotics, Graphics
Advisor(s): Cossairt, Oliver Strides
Cohort: January 2019
Expected Graduation Date: December 2023
Research Statement: I'm working on using Machine Learning and deep learning methods to solve computer vision and video/image processing problems, for example, activity classification, object detection, and super-resolution.
Email
Xijun

Lingzhi Wang
Student Track: Systems
Advisor(s): Chen, Yan
Cohort: September 2020
Email
Lingzhi

Yixue Wang
Student Track: TSB
Research Area: HCI
Advisor(s): Diakopoulos, Nicholas
Cohort: September 2017
Expected Graduation Date: August 2023
Research Statement: As a researcher in HCI, computational journalism, and social science, I analyze human behavioral data as a means to enhance diversity, maintain civility, and eliminate biases. I am specifically interested in promoting online deliberation, supporting journalistic sourcing practices via online comments, and designing article-level news personalizations. I am advised by Nicholas Diakopoulos in the Computational Journalism Lab.
Yixue's Website
Email
Yixue

Ning Wang
Student Track: Artificial Intelligence
Advisor(s): Liu, Han
Cohort: September 2018
Email
Ning

Nick Wanninger
Student Track: Systems
Research Area: Operating Systems, Parallel Systems, High Performance Computing
Advisor(s): Dinda, Peter
Cohort: September 2021
Expected Graduation Date: 2026
Research Statement: My research falls broadly into the category of kernel support for specialized application requirements and parallelism. I enjoy finding novel ways of enabling new programming models by adding support at the lowest levels of the operating system kernel.
Nick's Website
Email
Nick

Boyang Wei
Student Track: Interfaces
Research Area: Mobile Health
Advisor(s): Alshurafa, Nabil
Cohort: September 2020
Email
Boyang

Chenkai Weng
Student Track: Systems
Research Area: Security and Privacy
Advisor(s): Wang, Xiao
Cohort: September 2019
Expected Graduation Date: June 2024
Research Statement: My research lies in cryptography with focus on secure multi-party computation and zero-knowledge proofs. I use cryptographic techniques to provide security and privacy in real-world scenarios involving data sharing.
Chenkai's Website
Email
Chenkai

Michael Wilkins
Student Track: Computer Engineering
Research Area: Architecture, Parallel Systems
Advisor(s): Dinda, Peter; Hardavellas, Nikos
Cohort: September 2019
Email
Michael

Panitan Wongse-Ammat
Student Track: Systems
Advisor(s): Joseph, Russell
Cohort: March 2016
Email
Panitan

Chaofeng Wu
Student Track: Theory
Research Area: Economics
Advisor(s): Liang, Annie
Cohort: September 2020
Expected Graduation Date: December 2025
Research Statement: My research interest is the applications of Computer Science in Economics. I apply data science and machine learning techniques to problems in decision theory and network of economics, especially for model building and evaluation.
Chaofeng's Website
Email
Chaofeng

Yuhang Wu
Student Track: Systems
Research Area: Security and Privacy
Advisor(s): Xing, Xinyu
Cohort: March 2022
Email
Yuhang

Xian Wu
Student Track: Systems
Research Area: Security and Privacy
Advisor(s): Xing, Xinyu
Cohort: January 2022
Email
Xian

Yifan Wu
Student Track: Theory
Research Area: Economics
Advisor(s): Hartline, Jason D
Cohort: September 2020
Expected Graduation Date: 2025
Research Statement: Yifan Wu's research interest lies in the intersection of economics and computation. Currently, her work focuses on the design of optimal scoring rules in mechanism design, with applications to other areas such as machine learning and visualization studies in human-computer interaction.
Yifan's Website
Email
Yifan

Yunming Xiao
Student Track: Systems
Research Area: Networking
Advisor(s): Kuzmanovic, Aleksandar
Cohort: September 2019
Expected Graduation Date: June 2024
Research Statement: I am broadly interested in computer networks and distributed systems. My current work focuses on network measurement and edge network design.
Yunming's Website
Email
Yunming

Wangcheng Xu
Student Track: Artificial Intelligence
Research Area: Cognitive Systens
Advisor(s): Forbus, Kenneth
Cohort: June 2021
Expected Graduation Date: June 2026
Research Statement: My primary research interests focus on analogical reasoning and learning, natural language understanding, and interactive task learning. I’m exploring the general methods for the AI system to learn tasks via interactions with humans, including task-independent natural language and demonstrations, and accumulate knowledge that can be operationalized in the task environment or transferred in future learning. I’m also investigating analogy as a core mechanism for acquiring the underlying task concepts and procedures and adapting and grounding them in novel situations.
Wangcheng's Website
Email
Wangcheng

Shichao Xu
Student Track: Computer Engineering
Research Area: Artificial Intelligence
Advisor(s): Zhu, Qi
Cohort: June 2018
Expected Graduation Date: June 2023
Research Statement: Shichao Xu is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science Department at Northwestern University, and his advisor is Prof Qi Zhu. He received his undergraduate degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (ACM Honors Class) in 2018. His current research interests mainly focus on Learning from Limited or Imperfect Data, especially for dealing with the problem of data insufficiency, and poor data quality. The related topics include deep representation learning, domain adaptation, self/weakly/semi-supervised learning, transfer learning, and reinforcement learning with application to vision, multimodal, and control problems.
Shichao's Website
Email
Shichao

Bingjie Xu
Student Track: Interfaces
Research Area: Computational Imaging
Advisor(s): Tumblin, Jack
Cohort: September 2018
Expected Graduation Date: June 2023
Research Statement: I am working on using 3D surface and subsurface imaging techniques and building portable optical systems to solve practical questions in cultural heritage and VR applications. I am interested in 3D imaging systems from micro-scale OCT to macro-scale Deflectometry, photometric stereo, and single-pixel imaging. I am also interested in interdisciplinary projects, which combine imaging results with other kinds of information, such as material composition from XRF results to get a better understanding of objects.
Bingjie's Website
Email
Bingjie

Ye Xue
Student Track: Artificial Intelligence
Advisor(s): Trajcevski, Goce; Klabjan, Diego
Cohort: September 2016
Email
Ye

Guo Ye
Student Track: Artificial Intelligence
Research Area: Robotics
Advisor(s): Liu, Han
Cohort: September 2020
Expected Graduation Date: June 2025
Research Statement: My research interest lies on the intersection of the robotic learning and cloud robotics. I am interested in the Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning, Cloud Robotics, Differentiable Robot Simulation.
Guo's Website
Email
Guo

Shu Hung You
Student Track: Systems
Research Area: Programming Languages
Advisor(s): Findler, Robby; Dimoulas, Christos
Cohort: September 2016
Expected Graduation Date: August 2023
Research Statement: I am interested in the theory and the design of programming languages.
More specifically, I design language features that provably enforce
correctness properties on programs. I currently work on the
theoretical foundation of contract systems to enable the modular
specification of contract monitoring strategies.
Shu Hung's Website
Email
Shu Hung

Jiahao Yu
Student Track: Systems
Research Area: Security and Privacy
Advisor(s): Xing, Xinyu
Cohort: January 2022
Expected Graduation Date: June 2026
Research Statement: My research interests focus on utilizing deep learning to address the issues in security and privacy. In addition, I work on explainable machine learning to help understand the machine learning model and trust the behavior.
Jiahao's Website
Email
Jiahao

Zheng Yu
Student Track: Security and Privacy
Advisor(s): Xing, Xinyu
Cohort: September 2022
Email
Zheng

Richard Zhang
Student Track: TSB
Advisor(s): Shaw, Aaron; Horvat, Emoke-Agnes
Cohort: September 2021
Email
Richard

Dongping Zhang
Student Track: TSB
Advisor(s): Hullman, Jessica
Cohort: September 2018
Email
Dongping

Zhi Zhang
Advisor(s): Liu, Han
Cohort: September 2021
Email
Zhi

Chenhao Zhang
Student Track: Theory
Research Area: Game Theory
Advisor(s): Hartline, Jason D; Dimoulas, Christos
Cohort: September 2018
Chenhao's Website
Email
Chenhao

Zheng Zhang
Student Track: Systems
Research Area: Security and Privacy
Advisor(s): Rogers, Jennie
Cohort: September 2021
Expected Graduation Date: June 2026
Research Statement: I have a broad interest in the area of security and privacy. More concretely, I have been working on improving the security and privacy guarantees of database management systems with differential privacy mechanisms and cryptographic primitives such as oblivious computation and zero-knowledge proof. I’m also interested in adversarial and backdoor attacks on deep learning models and systems.
Zheng's Website
Email
Zheng

Wenhao Zhang
Student Track: Security and Privacy
Advisor(s): Wang, Xiao
Cohort: September 2022
Email
Wenhao

Guannan Zhao
Student Track: Systems
Research Area: Security and Privacy
Advisor(s): Chen, Yan
Cohort: September 2018
Email
Guannan

Andong Li Zhao
Student Track: Artificial Intelligence
Research Area: Digitization of Government
Advisor(s): Hammond, Kristian
Cohort: September 2019
Expected Graduation Date: June 2024
Research Statement: My main research focus is modernizing our political systems through AI. I am focused on developing human-centered AI that provides that access and improves, in that order, the transparency, accountability, and efficiency of government. The technical work involves building systems that can understand vaguely-articulated questions, obtain the correct data analysis, and identify the most appropriate representation of that analysis. Additionally, I am working on the more human-centered issues related to understanding users, their needs, and how they are impacted by these systems. Through this balanced approach, I believe that true accessibility of political information, regardless of users’ technical or political knowledge, can be achieved.through AI/ML.
Andong Li's Website
Email
Andong Li

Zhihan Zhou
Student Track: Artificial Intelligence
Advisor(s): Liu, Han
Cohort: September 2020
Expected Graduation Date: December 2024
Research Statement: My research focuses on the modeling of sequential and graphical data using deep learning techniques. I am especially interested in applying large language models to solve real-world and science problems such as dialogue understanding and genome analysis.
Zhihan's Website
Email
Zhihan

Yufeng Zou
Student Track: Artificial Intelligence
Advisor(s): Liu, Han
Cohort: September 2022
Email
Yufeng