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About Me
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of North Texas (UNT), where I direct the Responsible AI Lab and co-lead the Learning · Language · Vision (LLaVi) Lab. I am also an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Anuradha and Vikas Sinha Department of Data Science at UNT. Before joining UNT, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow/Scholar with Dr. Chirag Shah at the University of Washington, Seattle (2020-2022). I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science with Dr. Qing (Charles) Cao in 2020 from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA, and obtained my B.E. and M.E. degrees from Beijing University of Technology, China. My research interest lies in Efficient Generative AI, AI Security & Privacy, Responsible AI, and Quantum Computing. I am also the recipient of the 2023 IEEE Smart Computing Special Technical Community Early Career Award for the contributions to smart computing and responsible computing. Recently, I have been named to inaugural Dallas Innovates AI 75 List, which "honors the most significant people in AI in DFW in seven categories." In 2025, I was elevated to IEEE Senior Member and received CSE Department Teaching Excellence Award as well as Affiliate Faculty of the Year Award from Data Science Department. I am also directing the Master's Program in Artificial Intelligence at UNT, which is the first Master of Science in AI in Texas and is one of few nationwide. Beyond research, I love playing sports, including half marathons, tennis, soccer, and fishing.
We are always looking for motivated undergraduate students and graduate students (Masters and PhDs) to join the Responsible AI Lab. Don't hesitate to get in touch with Yunhe for more information.
PI Grants
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Y. Feng (PI) and K. Sha NVIDIA Academic Grant Program - Robust Generative AI for Safer Autonomous Systems (Multiple NVIDIA DGX Sparks) September, 2025. |  |
Y. Feng (PI) and B. Hu Enhancing Differential Privacy for User-End Large Language Model Prompts with a Three-Stage Framework ($80,000) September, 2025. |
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Y. Feng (PI) and M. Albert REU Site: Making Generative Artificial Intelligence Responsible ($463,434) June, 2025. |
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Y. Feng (PI) Two AI4Science Grants ($77,502) Feb, 2025, 2024. |
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Y. Feng (PI) Two Microsoft Accelerate Foundation Models Research Grants ($45,000) September, 2023. |
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Y. Feng (PI) and Z. Compson UNT CENG-COS Seed Grant ($10,000) May, 2023. |
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Y. Feng (PI) UW Strategic Research Fund (SRF) ($4,000) February, 2022. |
Selected Publications
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D. Gao, A. Gomez, M. Li, M. El-mokahal, H. Yang, and Y. Feng.
OrgaCast: A Trustworthy Spatiotemporal Diffusion Model for Fluorescence Organoid Forecasting 2026 Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2026. [Paper][Code] |
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M. Li, H. Fan, S. Fu, J. Ding, and Y. Feng.
DP-GTR: Differentially Private Prompt Protection via Group Text Rewriting Findings of 2025 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP), 2025. [Paper][Code] |
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B. Fan, Y. Feng, Y. Tian, Y. Lin, Y. Huang, and H. Fan.
PRVQL: Progressive Knowledge-guided Refinement for Robust Egocentric Visual Query Localization International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2025. [Paper][Code] |
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S. Dong, Y. Feng, J. Liang, Q. Yang, Y. Liu, and H. Fan. Efficient and Accurate Low-Resolution Transformer Tracking IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2025. [Paper][Code] |
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H. Zhang, H. Fan, K. Sha, Y. Huang, and Y. Feng. DAM: Dynamic Attention Mask for Long-Context Large Language Model Inference Acceleration Findings of The 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2025. [Paper][Code] |
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S. Anjum, H. Zhang, W. Zhou, EJ. Paek, X. Zhao, and Y. Feng HALO: Hallucination Analysis and Learning Optimization to Empower LLMs with Retrieval-Augmented Context for Guided Clinical Decision Making ACM/IEEE Conference on Connected Health: Applications, Systems and Engineering Technologies (CHASE) , 2025. [Paper][Code] |
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G. Cao, Z. Wang, Y. Feng, and X. Dong. DAAP: Privacy-Preserving Model Accuracy Estimation on Unlabeled Datasets Through Distribution-Aware Adversarial Perturbation The 33rd USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security), 2024. [Paper] |
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S. Dong, Y. Feng, Q. Yang, Y. Huang, D. Liu, and H. Fan. Efficient Multimodal Semantic Segmentation via Dual-Prompt Learning IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2024.(Oral Presentation) [Paper][Code] |
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S. Song, Y. Huang, P. Jiang, X. Yu, W. Zheng, S. Di, Q. Cao, Y. Feng, Z. Xie, and F. Cappello. CereSZ: Enabling and Scaling Error-bounded Lossy Compression on Cerebras CS-2 The ACM International Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing (HPDC), 2024. [Paper] |
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K. Shaik, D. Wang, W. Zheng, Q. Cao, H. Fan, P. Schwartz, and Y. Feng. S3LLM: Large-Scale Scientific Software Understanding with LLMs using Source, Metadata, and Document 24th International Conference on Computational Science (ICCS), 2024. [Paper][Code] |
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C. Clemmer, J. Ding, and Y. Feng. PreciseDebias: An Automatic Prompt Engineering Approach for Generative AI to Mitigate Image Demographic Biases IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), 2024. [Paper][Code] |
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G. Cao, Z. Wang, Y. Feng, X. Dong, Z. Zhang, Z. Qin, and K. Ren. Task-Free Fairness-Aware Bias Mitigation for Black-Box Deployed Models IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), 2023. [Paper] |
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Y. Feng, Z. Meng, C. Clemmer, H. Fan, and Y. Huang. A Multi-granularity Decade-Long Geo-Tagged Twitter Dataset for Spatial Computing 31st ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (SIGSPATIAL), 2023. [Paper][Website][Geo-Aware-LLM][JSON APIs][Tweet Rehydration] |
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L. Zhang, Z. Wang, X. Dong, Y. Feng, X. Pang, Z. Zhang, and K. Ren. Towards Fairness-aware Adversarial Network Pruning 2023 International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2023. (Acceptance rate: 26.2%) [Paper] |
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P. Dammu, Y. Feng and C. Shah Addressing Weak Decision Boundaries in Image Classification by Leveraging Web Search and Generative Models 2023 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), 2023. (Acceptance rate: 20%) [Paper] |
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Y. Feng, S. Vanam, M. Cherukupally, W. Zheng, M. Qiu and H. Chen Investigating Code Generation Performance of ChatGPT with Crowdsourcing Social Data 47th IEEE Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC), 2023. (Best Track Paper Award, acceptance rate: 27%) [Paper][Prompt Dataset] |
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Z. Wang, H. Yang, Y. Feng, P. Sun, H. Guo, Z. Zhang, and K. Ren. Towards Transferable Targeted Adversarial Examples In Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern (CVPR), 2023. (Acceptance rate: 25.78%) [Paper] |
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B. Zhang, J. Tian, S. Di, X. Yu, Y. Feng, X. Liang, D. Tao, F. Cappello FZ-GPU: A Fast and High-Ratio Lossy Compressor for Scientific Computing Applications on GPUs The ACM International Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing (HPDC), 2023. (Acceptance rate: 22.8%) [Paper] |
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Y. Feng and C. Shah Has CEO Gender Bias Really Been Fixed? Adversarial Attacking and Improving Gender Fairness in Image Search Proceedings of the AAAI conference on artificial intelligence (AAAI), 2022. (Acceptance rate: 15%, Oral Presentation) [Paper] |
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B. Wen, Y. Feng, Y. Zhang, and C. Shah ExpScore: Learning Metrics for Recommendation Explanation The ACM Web Conference (WWW), 2022. [Paper] |
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S. Jin, C. Zhang, X. Jiang, Y. Feng, H. Guan, Guanpeng. Li, S. Song, and D. Tao COMET: A Novel Memory-Efficient Deep Learning Training Framework by Using Error-Bounded Lossy Compression Proceedings of the International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB), 2022. [Paper] |
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Y. Feng, H. Niu, F. Wang, S. Ivey, J. Wu, H. Qi, R. Almeida, S. Eda, and Q. Cao SocialCattle: IoT-based Mastitis Detection and Control through Social Cattle Behavior Sensing in Smart Farms IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IoT-J), 2021. (Impact factor: 9.936) [Paper] |
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P. Sun, Z. Wang, L. Wu, Y. Feng, X. Pang, H. qi, and Z. Wang Towards Personalized Privacy-Preserving Incentive for Truth Discovery in Mobile Crowdsensing Systems Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC), 2020. [Paper] |
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Y. Feng, Q. Cao, H. Qi, and S. Ruoti SenCAPTCHA: A Mobile-First CAPTCHA Using Orientation Sensors Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT, Best Presentation, Audience Award Nomination and Judges Award Nomination @UbiComp2020), 2020. [Paper][Code] |
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P. Sun, Z. Wang, Y. Feng, L. Wu, Y. Li, H. Qi, and Z. Wang Towards Personalized Privacy-Preserving Incentive for Truth Discovery in Crowdsourced Binary-Choice Question Answering International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), 2020. [Paper] |
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Y. Feng, Z. Lu, W. Zhou, Z. Wang, and Q. Cao New Emoji Requests from Twitter Users: When, Where, Why, and What We Can Do About Them ACM Transactions on Social Computing (TSC) 3(2), 2020. [Website] [Paper] |
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Y. Feng, Z. Chen, D. Wang, J. Chen, and Z. Feng DeepWelding: A Deep Learning Enhanced Approach to GTAW Using Multi-source Sensing Images IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (TII), 2019. (Impact factor: 9.9) [Paper] |
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Y. Feng, W. Zhou, Z. Lu, Z. Wang, and Q. Cao The World Wants Mangoes and Kangaroos: A Study of New Emoji Requests Based on Thirty Million Tweets The Web Conference 2019 (formerly known as WWW), 2019. (Acceptance rate: 20.0%) [Paper] |
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Y. Feng, Z. Lu, and Q. Cao Secure Sharing of Private Locations through Homomorphic Bloom Filters 2018 IEEE 4th International Conference on Big Data Security on Cloud (BigDataSecurity), 2018. (Best Paper Award, acceptance rate: 18.6%) [Paper] |
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Z. Lu, Y. Feng*, W. Zhou, X. Li, and Q. Cao Inferring Correlation between User Mobility and App Usage in Massive Coarse-grained Data Traces Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT, the new publication model of UbiComp) 1.4, (2018): 153. (*Corresponding Author, 10-year average acceptance rate: 18.5%) [Paper] |
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Z. Lu, Y. Feng, and Q. Cao Decentralized Search for Shortest Path Approximation in Large-scale Complex Networks IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (CloudCom), 2017. (Best Track Paper Award, acceptance rate: 29.4%) [Paper] |
Media Coverage
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Google’s ‘CEO’ image search gender bias hasn’t really been fixed [UW NEWS] [ACM TECHNEWS] [AAAS EurekAlert!] February, 2022. |  |
Why Isn't There a Sarcasm Emoji? [Financial Times] [Yahoo! Finance] [Business Insider] July, 2020. |
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The Algorithm Shows Which New Emoji Twitter Users Want Most [TNW] [News Break] July, 2020. |
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'Sarcasm' among most requested emojis according to UT study [WBIR-TV] [Video] August, 2020. |
Internship & Teaching Experience
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Deep Learning Research Intern at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN May - August, 2018. |
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Lecturer for CSCE 5300 - Introduction to Big Data and Data Science, University of North Texas Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Spring 2024, Fall 2025, Spring 2025 |
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Guest Lecturer for ME 686 Human Robot Interaction Fall 2023, Fall 2024 Guest Lecturer for BAZN 557 Text Mining, Haslam College of Business Fall 2018, Fall 2019 Teaching Assistant for ECE 453/553 - Computer Communication Networks Spring 2018 Teaching Assistant for COSC 361 - Operating Systems Spring 2015, Fall 2016, Spring 2017 Teaching Assistant for ECE 451 - Computer Systems Architecture Fall 2014 |
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Guest Lecturer for NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program, University of Dallas Summer 2025. Guest Lecturer for EMSE 6367 - Software Testing, Validation and Verification, University of Dallas Fall 2025. |
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Guest Lecturer for CSS 590 - AI for Social Good, University of Washington - Bothell Spring 2022. |
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Guest Lecturer for M455 - Advanced Digital Merchandising, Indiana University Bloomington Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022. Guest Lecturer for M485 - Data-Driven Decisions, Indiana University Bloomington Spring 2020. |
Recent Professional Services
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Honors & Awards
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