Dr. Yuchen Yang is inviting applications for Ph.D. students, research internships, and visiting scholars. Potential research topics include:
- Algorithms, Theory, and Infrastructure: adversarial attacks & provable defenses for large models; trustworthiness-functionality-efficiency trade-offs.
- Applications and User-Centered Perspectives: generative content safety (e.g., sexually explicit), healthcare risks (e.g., privacy leakage), online trust (e.g., scams)
Interested applicants can send an email to yuchen@yuchenyang.org with their research interests and the following materials:
- Curriculum Vitae (required)
- Link to Github or software developed (if available)
- Link or PDF to representative publications, preprints, or writing samples (if available)
Highly motivated applicants with strong system-building skills and backgrounds in one or more areas, such as trustworthy AI, generative models, adversarial ML, efficient ML, or HCI, are preferred but not required.
Advisor Bio
Dr. Yuchen Yang is an incoming tenure-track Assistant Professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Pennsylvania State University, starting from July 2025. She received her Ph.D. in the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University, advised by Dr. Yinzhi Cao. During her doctoral studies, she also worked closely with Dr. Neil Gong at Duke University.
Dr. Yang has broad interests in computer security, privacy, and trustworthy AI, with an emphasis on enabling seamless real-world deployment of AI systems aligned with societal values. Her work has been published in top-tier security conferences, including IEEE S&P, ACM CCS, USENIX Security, and NDSS, as well as CV/NLP conferences such as ECCV and EMNLP. Her research has made a notable societal impact, with features in media outlets like MIT Technology Review, IEEE Spectrum, and being listed among the Normalized Top-100 Security Papers. She also serves as a PC member for multiple conferences and journals, including IEEE S&P, ACM CCS, ICLR, ICCV, DSN, TDSC, etc. For more information, please visit her website: yuchenyang.org.
About Pennsylvania State University
Pennsylvania State University is a top research university with strong rankings in computer science and related areas. As of 2025, it ranks #5 in Computer Security and #18 in all areas (CSRankings), #39 (U.S. News computer science), and #33 in Placement Rank.
Located in State College, a safe and vibrant college town, the campus is walkable to downtown and just 10 minutes by shuttle to major grocery stores like Trader Joe’s, Wegmans, Sam’s Club, and Walmart. It’s also a 15-minute drive to hiking, skiing, and the airport, and within driving distance to Pittsburgh (2h), D.C. (3h), and NYC (4h). An ideal setting for high-impact research and a balanced lifestyle.