Yunhe Feng | Responsible AI Lab

Yunhe.Feng@unt.edu

[CV]

About Me

I'm 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. 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 Responsible AI, Generative AI, and Data Security & Privacy. 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. Besides research, I love playing sports, including half marathons, tennis, soccer, and fishing. I am also co-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.

We are always looking for motivated undergraduate students, graduate students (Masters and PhDs) and postdoctoral fellows to join the Responsible AI Lab. Don't hesitate to get in touch with Yunhe for more information.

Published Papers

S. Dong, Y. Feng, Q. Yang, Y. Huang, D. Liu, and H. Fan.
Efficient Multimodal Semantic Segmentation via Dual-Prompt Learning
(arXiv preprint), 2024.
[Paper][Code]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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%, Accept)
[Paper]
Q. Cao and Y. Feng
Probabilistic Error Reasoning on IoT Edge Devices
2023 IEEE International Conference on Edge Computing and Communications (EDGE), 2023. (Acceptance rate: 17%)
[Paper]
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]
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]
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]
Y. Feng, P. Poralla, S. Dash, K. Li, V. Desai, and M. Qiu.
The Impact of ChatGPT on Streaming Media: A Crowdsourced and Data-Driven Analysis using Twitter and Reddit
International Conference on Intelligent Data and Security (IDS), 2023. (Acceptance rate: 25%)
[Paper][Prompt Dataset]
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]
B. Wen, Y. Feng, Y. Zhang, and C. Shah
ExpScore: Learning Metrics for Recommendation Explanation
The ACM Web Conference (WWW), 2022.
[Paper]
Y. Feng and C. Shah
Unifying Telescope and Microscope: A Multi-lens Framework with Open Data for Modeling Emerging Events
Information Processing and Management (IP&M), 2021. (Impact factor: 6.222)
[Paper]
Y. Feng, C. Guo, B. Wen, P. Sun, Y. Yue, and D. Tao
EmojiCloud: a Tool for Emoji Cloud Visualization
The 5th International Workshop on Emoji Understanding and Applications in Social Media at 2022 Annual Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EMOJI@NAACL), 2022.
[Paper][Code][Slides]
B. Wen, Y. Feng, Y. Zhang, and C. Shah
Towards Generating Robust, Fair, and Emotion-Aware Explanations for Recommender Systems
arXiv preprint arXiv:2208.08017, 2022. (Preprint)
[Paper]
Y. Feng, D. Saelid, K. Li, R. Gao, and C. Shah
Towards Fairness-Aware Ranking by Defining Latent Groups Using Inferred Features
International Workshop on Algorithmic Bias in Search and Recommendation at the 43rd European Conference on Information Retrieval (BIAS@ECIR2021), 2021.
[Paper][Slides]
Y. Feng and W. Zhou
Work from Home During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Observational Study Based on A Large Geo-Tagged COVID-19 Twitter Dataset (UsaGeoCov19)
Information Processing and Management (IP&M), 2021. (Impact factor: 6.222)
[Paper][Dataset]
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]
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 Journal), 2021. (Impact factor: 9.936)
[Paper]
J. Tian, S. Di, X. Yu, C. Rivera, K. Zhao, S. Jin, Y. Feng, X. Liang, D. Tao, and F. Cappello
cuSZ (x): Optimizing Error-Bounded Lossy Compression for Scientific Data on GPUs
IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing (CLUSTER), 2021.
[Paper]
Y. Feng, D. Zhong, P. Sun, W. Zheng, Q. Cao, X. Luo, and Z. Lu
Micromobility in Smart Cities: A Closer Look at Shared Dockless E-Scooters via Big Social Data
2021 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), 2021.
[Paper][Slides]
Y. Feng, D. Saelid, K. Li, R. Gao, and C. Shah
University of Washington at Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) 2020 Fairness Ranking Track
arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.02066, 2020. (Preprint)
[Paper]
Y. Feng, and W. Zhou
Is Working From Home The New Norm? An Observational Study Based on a Large Geo-tagged COVID-19 Twitter Dataset
arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.08581, 2020. (Preprint)
[Paper]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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: 7.377)
[Paper]
Y. Feng, Z. Lu, Z. Zheng, P. Sun, W. Zhou, R. Huang, and Q. Cao
Chasing Total Solar Eclipses on Twitter: Big Social Data Analytics in Once-in-a-lifetime Events
2019 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), 2019.
[Paper]
Z. Lu, Y. Feng, and Q. Cao
Two-level Index for Truss Community Query in Large-Scale Graph
2019 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), 2019.
[Paper]
P. Sun, L. Wu, Z. Wang, Y. Feng, and Z. Wang
SCRA: Structured Compressive Random Access for Efficient Information Collection in IoT
IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IoT Journal), 2019. (Impact factor: 9.515)
[Paper]
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]
Z. Wang, Y. Li, B. Jin, Q. Wang, Y. Feng, Y. Li, and H. Shao
AirMouse: Turning a Pair of Glasses into a Mouse in the Air
IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IoT Journal), 2019. (Impact factor: 9.515)
[Paper]
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]
Y. Feng, Z. Lu, W. Zhou, Q. Cao and X. Li
A Multi-Granularity Perspective for Spatial Profiling of Mobile Apps
Information Sciences 430, (2018): 127-141. (Impact factor: 4.832)
[Paper]
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]
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]
Q. Cao, Y. Feng, Z. Lu, H. Qi, L. M. Tolbert, L. Wan, Z. Wang, and W. Zhou
Approximate Cardinality Estimation (ACE) in large-scale Internet of Things deployments
Ad Hoc Networks, 66, (2017): 52-63. (Impact factor: 3.047)
[Paper]
L. Wan, Z. Wang, Z. Lu, Y. Feng, H. Qi, W. Zhou, and Q. Cao
Approximate and Sub-linear Spatial Queries for Large-scale Vehicle Networks
IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology (TVT), 2017. (Impact factor: 2.243)
[Paper]

Media Coverage

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.
The Algorithm Shows Which New Emoji Twitter Users Want Most
[TNW] [News Break]
July, 2020.
'Sarcasm' among most requested emojis according to UT study
[WBIR-TV] [Video]
August, 2020.

Grants and Competitions

Y. Feng
Two Microsoft Accelerate Foundation Models Research Grants ($20,000x2)
September, 2023.
Y. Feng and Z. Compson
UNT CENG-COS Seed Grant ($10,000)
May, 2023.
Y. Feng
UW Strategic Research Fund (SRF) ($4,000)
February, 2022.
Y. Feng and C. Shah
UW-Microsoft Azure Cloud Computing Credits ($20,000)
November, 2021.
Y. Feng
NSF-funded XSEDE (Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment ) Startup Allocation ($1,600)
October, 2021.
Y. Feng
Google Cloud COVID-19 Research Credits ($9,000), Google Cloud Research Credits ($5,000)
July, 2020; January, 2024
Y. Feng
Kaggle's Open Data Research Grant Award ($2,000)
Junuary, 2020.
Y. Feng and W. Zhou
Top 5 Finalists among 600 Teams for 2017 Syngenta Crop Challenge in Analytics hosted by Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
Presented at INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research April, 2017.
Presented at INFORMS Annual Meeting October, 2017. [Link]

Internship & Teaching Experience

Deep Learning Research Intern at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN
May - August, 2018.
Guest Lecturer for CSS 590 - AI for Social Good, University of Washington - Bothell
Spring 2022.
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.
Guest Lecturer for ME 686 Human Robot Interaction Fall 2023
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

Lecturer for CSCE 5300 - Introduction to Big Data and Data Science, University of North Texas Fall 2022, Spring 2023

Professional Services and Technical Skills

  • Program Committee (PC) for the 32nd ACM Int. Conf. on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM 2023, 2024)
  • TPC for 2023 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM 2023)
  • TPC for IEEE International Conference on Computers, Software, and Applications (COMPSAC), 2024, 2023
  • TPC for 2024 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (IEEE BigData), 2024
  • TPC for 7th International Workshop on Dependable and Secure Machine Learning (DSML), 2024
  • Reviewer for 27th International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR), 2024
  • TPC for 24th IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability, and Security (QRS), 2024
  • TPC for 2024 IEEE International Conference on Mobility: Operations, Services, and Technologies (MOST), 2024
  • Program Committee (PC) Member for 2024 AAAI Undergraduate Consortium (AAAI-UC), 2024
  • Reviewer for The Web Conference (WWW), 2024
  • Reviewer for IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), 2024
  • Reviewer for the 17th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), 2023
  • Reviewer for Information Processing & Management (IP&M), 2023
  • Reviewer for International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction (IJHCI), 2023
  • TPC for the IEEE 29th International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems (ICPADS), 2023
  • Reviewer for Artificial Intelligence training content for CITI Program, 2023
  • Program Committee (PC) for Conf. on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) - Industry Track, 2023
  • Program Chair for the 8th International Conference on Smart Computing and Communication (SmartCom 2023)
  • Program Committee (PC) for AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2024, 2023
  • TPC for the First International Conference on AI-generated Content (AIGC 2023)
  • Guest Editor for Special Issue "Applications of Deep Learning Techniques" in Electronics, 2023
  • Reviewer for Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP), 2023
  • Reviewer for 61st AnnualMeeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2023
  • Web Chair for the First IEEE International Conf. on Medical Artificial Intelligence (IEEE MedAI), 2023
  • Reviewer for Information Sciences, 2023
  • TPC for International Symposium on Emerging Information Security and Applications (EISA), 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020
  • TPC for 2023 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM 2023)
  • Reviewer for IEEE Network Magazine, 2023
  • Web Chair for The 8th IEEE International Conference on Smart Cloud (IEEE SmartCloud), 2023
  • Reviewer for IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IoT-J), 2023, 2022
  • Reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (T-ITS), 2023
  • TPC for Usable Security and Privacy (USEC) Symposium 2023 at the Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS 2023)
  • Reviewer for ACM Transactions on the Web (TWEB), 2022
  • TPC for the 16th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2022)
  • TPC for 2022 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM 2022)
  • TPC for the 24th IEEE International Conferences on High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC 2022)
  • Reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (TII 2022)
  • Reviewer for Journal of Information Science, 2022
  • Reviewer for American Medical Informatics Association 2022 Annual Symposium (AMIA 2022)
  • Reviewer for the 16th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), 2022
  • TPC for the 5th International Workshop on Emoji Understanding and Applications in Social Media (EMOJI@NAACL 2022)
  • Reviewer for Journal of Information Science, 2021
  • Reviewer for Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), 2021
  • Associate Editor for ASIS&T Information Matters (IM) Since 2021
  • Reviewer for 2022 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2022), 2021
  • Editorial Board Members for International Journal of Data Science (IJDS) Since 2021
  • TPC for 2021 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM 2021)
  • TPC for the 23rd IEEE International Conferences on High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC 2021)
  • Reviewer for Information Processing & Management (IP&M 2021)
  • Reviewer for 2021 IEEE Visualization Conference (VIS 2021)
  • Reviewer for American Medical Informatics Association 2021 Annual Symposium (AMIA 2021)
  • TPC for the 4th International Workshop on Emoji Understanding and Applications in Social Media (EMOJI@ICWSM 2021)
  • Reviewer for 2021 IEEE VR (VR 2021)
  • TPC for the 22nd IEEE International Conferences on High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC 2020)
  • Reviewer for Elsevier Computers & Security (2020)
  • TPC for 2020 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM 2020)
  • Reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (TII 2020)
  • Reviewer for American Medical Informatics Association 2020 Annual Symposium (AMIA 2020)
  • TPC for 2019 IEEE Global Communications Conference: Communication & Information Systems Security (GLOBECOM 2019)
  • Reviewer for IEEE Access Journal (2019)
  • Reviewer for the International Journal of Forecasting (2019)
  • External referee for the ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery & Data Mining (SIGKDD 2019)
  • External referee for the IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE 2018)
  • Reviewer for the 14th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS 2017)
  • External referee for the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM 2016)
  • Reviewer for the 12th International Conference on Mobile Ad-hoc and Sensor Networks (MSN 2016, 2019)
  • Reviewer for the 2016 International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2016)
  • Programming skills:
  • Honors & Awards

  • IEEE Smart Computing Special Technical Community (SCSTC) Early Career Award, 2023
  • Best Track Paper Award (COMPSAC 2023)
  • UW Data Science Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2021
  • Student Registration Grants (IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy 2020)
  • Kaggle's Open Data Research Grant Award, 2020, Kaggle
  • Min H. Kao Fellowship, 2019-2020, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • The Graduate Student Senate (GSS) Travel Awards, 2019, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Gonzalez Family Awards (Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant), 2018, 2019, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Best Paper Award (BigDataSecurity 2018)
  • Best Track Paper Award(CloudCom 2017)
  • Finalists for 2017 Syngenta Crop Challenge in Analytics (Top 5 among 600 Teams)
  • EECS Department Excellence Fellowship, 2014-2015, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Outstanding Graduate Student Award, 2014, Beijing University of Technology, China
  • Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award, 2011, Beijing University of Technology, China