Ziyu YaoView profile
Assistant Professor
Ziyu Yao is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at George Mason University , co-leading the George Mason NLP Group . He is affiliated with the C4I & Cyber Center , Center for Advancing Human-Machine Partnership , and Institute for Digital InnovAtion at GMU. PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from Ohio State University (2021) Internships: Microsoft Semantic Machines, Carnegie Mellon University, Microsoft Research, Fujitsu Lab of America, Tsinghua University Research Interests: Focus on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) , particularly advancing LLM systems through knowledge grounding , reasoning , and planning . Key areas include: Mechanistic Interpretability for LLMs Interactive Semantic Parsing/Code Generation Responsible and Trustworthy NLP Interfaces Interdisciplinary Applications in Mathematics Education and Network Communication Recent Articles (2024-2025) explore trends in LLM cascading for cost efficiency, mechanistic interpretability surveys, vision-language model reasoning, and interdisciplinary educational technology. Collaborations span institutions like Microsoft Research , William & Mary , and University of Cambridge . Scientific Awards: Presidential Fellowship (OSU Graduate School, 2020) Graduate Student Research Award (OSU CSE, 2021) Top Reviewer at NeurIPS 2023 Advising & Grants: Mentors PhD students like Murong Yue , Hao Yan , and Mohamed Aghzal . Leads NSF projects on AI-driven Mathematics Education and LLM Interpretability , alongside grants from Commonwealth Cyber Initiative and Microsoft Accelerate Foundation Models Research . Organized workshops at COLM 2025 and ICML 2025 . Labs & Teams: Co-leads the NLP Lab at GMU and collaborates with the MathVC NSF Project team (w/ Jennifer Suh, William & Mary). Develops platforms like Gentopia for tool-augmented LLMs and IntelliExplain for non-professional programmers.






