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Hi, I'm Yibo (Jacky) Zhang


photo taken in Vancouver, Canada
I am a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University, where I am fortunate to be advised by Sanmi Koyejo.

I'm interested in solving fundamental AI problems through theoretical research that leads to real-world solutions. The problems I've worked on include:

  • Intelligent Fields: A framework for objective‑driven dynamical stochastic fields, where decentralized entities interact with local neighbors and co-evolve within a dynamic environment to achieve specific objectives.
  • Machine Learning: Model alignment, federated learning, adversarial robustness, active learning.
  • Optimization: Bayesian coresets and combinatorial (particularly submodualr) optimization.
  • Algorithms: Approximation algorithms and practical heuristics.
Education Stanford University
  • PhD Student - Department of Computer Science (present)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • M.S. in Computer Science (2022)
University of Science and Technology of China
  • B.E. in Computer Science (2019)
Publications & Preprints
(*eqaul contribution)
Selected A Framework for Objective-Driven Dynamical Stochastic Fields [ pdf ]
Yibo Jacky Zhang, Sanmi Koyejo.
arXiv, 2025.
List of All A Framework for Objective-Driven Dynamical Stochastic Fields [ pdf ]
Yibo Jacky Zhang, Sanmi Koyejo.
arXiv, 2025.
Aligning Compound AI Systems via System-level DPO [ pdf ][ poster ]
Xiangwen Wang*, Yibo Jacky Zhang*, Zhoujie Ding, Katherine Tsai, Sanmi Koyejo.
MARW and WMAC (Oral) at AAAI25.
Can Public Large Language Models Help Private Cross-device Federated Learning? [ pdf ]
Boxin Wang, Yibo Jacky Zhang, Yuan Cao, Bo Li, H. Brendan McMahan, Sewoong Oh, Zheng Xu, Manzil Zaheer.
NAACL 2024.
Principled Federated Domain Adaptation: Gradient Projection and Auto-Weighting [ pdf ]
Enyi Jiang*, Yibo Jacky Zhang*, Oluwasanmi Koyejo.
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2024.
Batch Active Learning from the Perspective of Sparse Approximation [ pdf ] [ poster ]
Maohao Shen*, Bowen Jiang*, Jacky Y. Zhang*, Oluwasanmi Koyejo.
NeurIPS 2022 Workshop on Human in the Loop Learning.
Adversarially Robust Models may not Transfer Better: Sufficient Conditions for Domain Transferability from the View of Regularization [ pdf ] [ poster ] [ talk ]
Xiaojun Xu*, Jacky Y. Zhang*, Evelyn Ma, Danny Son, Oluwasanmi Koyejo, Bo Li
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2022.
Bayesian Coresets: Revisiting the Nonconvex Optimization Perspective
[ pdf ] [ poster ] [ short talk ] [ long talk ]
Jacky Y. Zhang, Rajiv Khanna, Anastasios Kyrillidis, Oluwasanmi Koyejo.
International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS), 2021. (Oral)
Uncovering the Connections Between Adversarial Transferability and Knowledge Transferability [ pdf ] [ poster ] [ talk ]
Kaizhao Liang*, Jacky Y. Zhang*, Boxin Wang, Zhuolin Yang, Oluwasanmi Koyejo, Bo Li
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2021.
Labeling Cost-Sensitive Batch Active Learning for Brain Tumor Segmentation
Maohao Shen, Jacky Y. Zhang, Leihao Chen, Weiman Yan, Neel Jani, Brad Sutton, Oluwasanmi Koyejo.
International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI), 2021.
Robusta: Robust AutoML for Feature Selection via Reinforcement Learning [ pdf ]
Xiaoyang Wang, Bo Li, Yibo Zhang, Bhavya Kailkhura, Klara Nahrstedt.
AAAI 2021 Workshop Towards Robust, Secure and Efficient Machine Learning.
Learning Sparse Distributions using Iterative Hard Thresholding [ pdf ] [ poster ]
Jacky Y. Zhang, Rajiv Khanna, Anastasios Kyrillidis, Oluwasanmi Koyejo.
Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2019.
Maximizing Monotone DR-submodular Continuous Functions by Derivative-free Optimization [ pdf ]
Yibo Zhang, Chao Qian, Ke Tang.
Preprint: arXiv 1810.06833, 2018.
On Multiset Selection with Size Constraints [ pdf ]
Chao Qian, Yibo Zhang, Ke Tang, Xin Yao.
AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2018.
Selected Honors
  • 2018 Guo Moruo Scholarship (Highest Graduation Distinction)
  • 2017 Outstanding Student Scholarship Golden Award
  • 2016 Member of Talent Program in Computer Science and Technology, USTC
  • 2016 Outstanding Student Scholarship Golden Award
Contact yiboz@stanford.edu
Miscellaneous I love photography, music and outdoor activities in general.
Photographer of Today: Matt Stuart Music of Today: A Love Song - EGO WRAPPIN' I will probably update these tomorrow almost surely with high probability.