Yue Zhao

Dr. Yue Zhao is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California and a faculty member of the USC Machine Learning Center. He leads the FORTIS Lab (Foundations Of Robust Trustworthy Intelligent Systems), focusing on trustworthy, robust, and efficient AI. His research spans multiple interdisciplinary areas with significant practical impact.

Dr. Zhao's research focuses on building trustworthy, robust, and scalable AI that advances science and benefits society. His work centers on three interconnected pillars: Robust & Trustworthy AI where he designs core algorithms for anomaly, out-of-distribution, and outlier detection across diverse modalities; AI for Science & Society where he pairs robust detection with large language models to tackle challenges from scientific discovery to political forecasting; and Scalable, Automated & Open-source ML Systems where he builds reproducible tools like PyOD (27M+ downloads) that democratize advanced ML across academia and industry. His work bridges rigorous algorithmic foundations with high-impact applications.

Dr. Zhao has received numerous prestigious awards, including:

• Capital One Research Award (2024)
• Amazon Research Awards (2024)
• Google Cloud Research Innovators (2024)
• AAAI New Faculty Highlights (2024)
• NSF Awards (2024-2025)
• CMU Presidential Fellowship (2019-2020)

As an educator, Dr. Zhao teaches CSCI 566: Deep Learning and its Applications at USC, with approximately 300 students per semester. He has served on over 10 student committees this semester despite travel commitments. His open-source contributions—including PyOD, PyGOD, TDC, and TrustLLM—collectively exceed 30 million downloads and 20,000 GitHub stars, ranking him among the top 800 developers worldwide. His tools are used by NASA, Tesla, Morgan Stanley, and the U.S. Senate.

Dr. Zhao leads the FORTIS Lab, which is actively recruiting Ph.D. students for Fall 2026 and welcomes undergraduate and graduate interns from USC and other institutions. The lab provides GPUs/API keys for projects and prioritizes candidates in North America for time zone compatibility. Dr. Zhao also serves as an Associate or Action Editor for several prestigious journals and as an Area Chair for major AI conferences including ICLR, ICML, and NeurIPS.