Research Profile

Research interests: Human-centered AI governance; AI agents and human oversight; privacy auditing; usable privacy and security; human-AI interaction.

My research studies how AI systems reshape user agency, privacy, and oversight across AI-mediated interactions, agentic workflows, and model training pipelines. I design and evaluate sociotechnical mechanisms for contextual privacy scaffolding, behavioral auditing, and human oversight of LLM-powered agents. My recent work focuses on detecting unauthorized use of protected data in RL fine-tuning, supporting privacy decisions in LLM applications, and evaluating oversight failures in GUI agents.

Academic Appointments

09/2026 -

Incoming Postdoctoral Fellow

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD

Whiting School of Engineering.

Advisor: Yaxing Yao

Education

2022 - 2026

Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering

University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN

Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

Advisors: Toby Jia-Jun Li and Yanfang Ye

2021 - 2022

M.S. in Educational Technology and Applied Learning Sciences

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

Human-Computer Interaction Institute, School of Computer Science.

2015 - 2020

B.Eng. in Industrial Design

Tongji University, Shanghai, China

College of Design and Innovation.

Experience

05/2026 - 07/2026

Applied Scientist Intern

Amazon, Seattle, WA

Research focus: robustness and evaluation of tool-using conversational agents under uncertainty.

Hosts: Vy Nguyen and Ziji Zhang

07/2025 - 04/2026

Student Researcher

Google, Sunnyvale, CA

Research focus: privacy auditing for RL fine-tuned LLMs, including behavioral canaries for detecting unauthorized use of protected retrieved contexts in post-training.

Hosts: Dayu Yuan and Peter Kairouz

10/2024 - 12/2024

Research Intern

Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy, Bochum, Germany

Research focus: literature synthesis and research agenda development on privacy risks, human oversight, and security challenges in LLM-powered GUI agents.

Host: Abraham Mhaidli

Selected Fellowships, Programs, Honors, and Awards

  • International Programme on AI Evaluation: Capabilities & Safety, Inaugural Cohort, 2026
  • Advanced Researcher Award, University of Notre Dame, 2026
  • Travel Grant, Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS), 2025
  • Third prize of Tech Ethics Hackathon ($1,000), Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab, 2024
  • Gary Marsden Travel Award, ACM SIGCHI, 2022
  • Best Implementation Award ($2,000), MobileHCI 2022
  • Merit Scholarship ($7,000), Carnegie Mellon University

Publications

Preprints

[P.1]
2026

NARRA-Gym for Evaluating Interactive Narrative Agents

Yue Huang, Yuchen Ma, Jiayi Ye, Wenjie Wang, Zipeng Ling, Xingjian Hu, Yuexing Hao, Zichen Chen, Zhangchen Xu, Yunhong He, Zhengqing Yuan, Yujun Zhou, Kehan Guo, Chaoran Chen, Toby Jia-Jun Li, Stefan Feuerriegel, and Xiangliang Zhang

arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.08503

Journal Papers

Conference Papers(* indicates equal contribution.)

Workshop Papers

Lightly-Reviewed Publications and Extended Abstracts

Teaching Experience

Spring 2025

Teaching Assistant, CSE 40567: Computer Security

Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Notre Dame

Fall 2023

Teaching Assistant, CSE 40625: Machine Learning

Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Notre Dame

Fall 2022

Teaching Assistant, 05-738: Evidence-Based Educational Design

Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University

Spring 2022

Teaching Assistant, 05-440/05-640: Interaction Techniques

Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University

Academic Service

Organizer / Program Committee Member

  • Human-Agent Collaboration Workshop at CHI 2026
  • HAIPS Workshop at CCS 2025

Conference Reviewer

  • CHI 2023-2026
  • CSCW 2025
  • IUI 2025-2026
  • UIST 2026
  • ICLR Trustworthy AI Workshop 2026
  • Special recognitions for outstanding reviews at CHI 2024 LBW, CSCW 2025, IUI 2025-2026, CHI 2026, and UIST 2026

Journal Reviewer

  • ACM TOPS
  • ACM TAISAP
  • ACM AI Letters
  • IJHCS
  • PACM EICS