Yang Zhang, Ph.D.

Biography

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Miami University. Prior to this, I also worked as a Postdoc at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and a researcher at Argonne National Laboratory. I hold a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Notre Dame.

Prospective Students

We currently has multiple fully funded Research Assistant (RA) openings for Ph.D. students in Computer Science. Interested applicants are encouraged to email me their CV and/or research statement at zhang981@miamioh.edu.

Research Interests

Data-Centric LLM/VLM Post-Training

• Develop data-centric post-training systems that integrate on-policy optimization (PPO, GRPO, and OPD), offline learning (SFT and DPO), and data-centric inference methods (e.g., truth discovery, weak supervision, and probabilistic inference) to derive reliable supervision from noisy, conflicting, and heterogeneous human- and model-generated feedback.

Compute-Adaptive Agentic Reasoning

• Design uncertainty- and utility-aware reasoning policies that dynamically allocate test-time computation, balancing premature stopping against wasteful overthinking across token generation, tool use, and knowledge-intensive agentic workflows.

Quantum–Classical Computing for Scientific Discovery

• Build scalable QPU–GPU hybrid systems using IBM Quantum and NVIDIA CUDA-Q that combine quantum optimization, GPU-accelerated learning, and classical simulation to advance molecular dynamics, protein folding, and molecular docking for biomedical discovery.

For a comprehensive list of the research papers, please visit my Google Scholar profile.

Awards and Fundings

• [2026] NSF CyberTraining Award (Lead PI, ~$1M in total funding), National Science Foundation
• [2026] Best Dataset Paper Award, AAAI ICWSM
• [2026] Rising Stars of Education, Dayton Business Journal
• [2025] NSF OAC Core Award (Lead PI, ~$600K in total funding), National Science Foundation
• [2025] Book Publication Grants, Miami University
• [2023, 2024, 2025] Teachers Ranked as Excellent, University of Illinois
• [2022] Best Paper Award, ACM/IEEE ASONAM
• [2022] Best Paper Honorable Mention, IEEE SMARTCOMP
• [2021] Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant Award, University of Notre Dame
• [2021] Video Presentation Award, ACM/IEEE IWQoS
• [2020] W. J. Cody Associate Award, Argonne National Laboratory
• [2018, 2019] Conference Travel Award, IEEE BigData
• [2015] Data Science Scholar Fellowship, Indiana Unviersity

Teaching

Miami University

• Spring 2027  CSE 433/533 Deep Learning
• Fall 2026  CSE 627 Advanced Machine Learning; CSE 434/534 Generative Artificial Intelligence
• Spring 2026  CSE 434/534 Generative Artificial Intelligence
• Fall 2025  CSE 434/534 Generative Artificial Intelligence

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• Spring 2025  IS 455 Database Design and Prototyping; IS 327 Concepts of Machine Learning
• Fall 202  IS 455 Database Design and Prototyping
• Spring 2024  IS 455 Database Design and Prototyping; IS 327 Concepts of Machine Learning
• Fall 2023  IS 455 Database Design and Prototyping; IS 206 Introduction to Database Concepts and Applications
• Spring 2023  IS 455 Database Design and Prototyping