Grace Hui Yang

Dr. Grace Hui Yang is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Computer Science at Georgetown University, where she leads the InfoSense (Information Retrieval and Sense-Making) research group. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Language Technologies from Carnegie Mellon University and has received prestigious recognition including an NSF CAREER Award.

Her research focuses on:

• Deep reinforcement learning for interactive systems
• Privacy-preserving information retrieval
• Proactive conversational agents
• Neural information retrieval architectures

Publication analysis reveals three primary research trajectories: (1) Fundamental advances in neural IR infrastructure including segment-based indexing and gaze-incorporated models; (2) Theoretical frameworks for understanding search behavior and task classification; (3) Applied systems for conversational AI and proactive interaction. Recent work increasingly examines LLM integration in information systems.

Dr. Yang has led major initiatives including TREC Dynamic Domain tracks and SIGIR workshops on privacy-preserving IR. She currently supervises multiple PhD students working on large language models and conversational agents. Her research has been supported by DARPA and NSF, including a recent $599,974 grant for developing proactive conversational systems.