Yang Zhang

Dr. Yang Zhang is a tenured Professor at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security. His research focuses on Trustworthy Machine Learning, emphasizing privacy, safety, and security, with additional work on measuring misinformation and unsafe online content like hateful memes. He has published extensively at top conferences (CCS, NDSS, Oakland, USENIX Security) and received multiple awards including the Busy Beaver Award (2022) and NDSS Distinguished Paper Award (2019).

Research Interests:

• Trustworthy Machine Learning
• LLM Security, Privacy, and Safety
• Misinformation and Hate Speech Detection
• Social Network Analysis

Recent Publications examine synthetic data auditing, hate speech detection in LLM-generated content, and privacy risks in curriculum learning, spanning conferences like USENIX Security, IEEE S&P, and ACM CCS. His work often intersects AI security with ethical considerations.

Scientific Awards:

• Busy Beaver Award for “Privacy of Machine Learning” (2022)
• NDSS Distinguished Paper Award (2019)
• CCS Best Paper Runner-Up (2022)
• Best Machine Learning and Security Paper in Cybersecurity Award (2025)
• Best Paper Finalist at CSAW Europe (2023, 2024)

Students in his group include Yixin Wu, Xinyue Shen, and Yiting Qu, the latter recently completing their Ph.D. defense. He actively recruits MSc and PhD students and has contributed to iDRAMA Lab for meme-related research.