YANG, YAO

小船今已遠航，我最憂鬱的朋友。

Biography

Completed MSc in Artificial Intelligence at HKU and BEng in Data Science and Big Data Technology at NEU, YANG, YAO combines a solid theoretical grounding in mathematics and statistics with deep practical experience in algorithm programming. Thus far, he has led three first-author papers (two accepted by ACL 2025 and ACM Multimedia 2025, one under review), and has been credited as a core contributor on a technical report. As an early-stage researcher, his research interests focus on (1) (Multimodal) Large Language Models, (2) Agents, and (3) Safe and Trustworthy AI, while staying OPEN to exploration across broader topics. Currently, He is pursuing PhD opportunities for Fall 2026 to further contribute to these domains.

Education

The University of Hong Kong 香港大學

Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence 人工智能理學碩士
Faculty of Science 理學院

  • Supervised by Prof. Yunwen Lei and Dr. Yue Xie

  • Sep 2023 to Jun 2025

    • Northeastern University 東北大學

    Bachelor of Engineering in Data Science and Big Data Technology
    數據科學與大數據技術工學學士
    School of Mathematics and Statistics 數學與統計學院

  • Supervised by Prof. Mingwei Li and Dr. Yushan Jiang

  • Sep 2019 to Jun 2023

    • Publications

    [ACL 2025] A Mousetrap: Fooling Large Reasoning Models for Jailbreak with Chain of Iterative Chaos

    Yang Yao, Xuan Tong, Ruofan Wang, Yixu Wang, Lujundong Li, Liang Liu, Yan Teng, Yingchun Wang

    Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2025 [#Poster] [#Resources]

    [ACM Multimedia 2025] Argus Inspection: Do Multimodal Large Language Models Possess the Eye of Panoptes?

    Yang Yao, Lingyu Li, Jiaxin Song, Chiyu Chen, Zhenqi He, Yixu Wang, Xin Wang, Tianle Gu, Jie Li, Yan Teng, Yingchun Wang

    Proceedings of the 33rd ACM International Conference on Multimedia [#Oral] [#Resources]

    [Technical Report] SafeWork-R1: Coevolving Safety and Intelligence under the AI-45° Law

    Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory: Yang Yao (Core Contributor), et al.

    Intern Safework Technical Report

    [Under Review] A Rigorous Benchmark with Multidimensional Evaluation for Deep Research Agents: From Answers to Reports

    Yang Yao, Yixu Wang, Yuxuan Zhang, Yi Lu, Tianle Gu, Lingyu Li, Dingyi Zhao, Keming Wu, Haozhe Wang, Ping Nie, Yan Teng, Yingchun Wang

    arXiv Preprint 2025 [#Resources]

    [AAAI 2026] The Other Mind: How Language Models Exhibit Human Temporal Cognition

    Lingyu Li, Yang Yao, Yixu Wang, Chunbo Li, Yan Teng, Yingchun Wang

    Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 40

    [AAAI 2026] CADiff: Context-Aware Diffusion for Controllable Anomaly Generation in Anomaly Detection

    Xuan Tong, Yuxuan Lin, Junxiong Lin, Xinji Mai, Haoran Wang, Zeng Tao, Yang Yao, Ruofan Wang, Wenqiang Zhang

    Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 40

    [NeurIPS 2025] SafeVid: Toward Safety Aligned Video Large Multimodal Models

    Yixu Wang, Jiaxin Song, Yifeng Gao, Xin Wang, Yang Yao, Yan Teng, Xingjun Ma, Yingchun Wang, Yu-Gang Jiang

    Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 2025

    [Under Review] SafeEvalAgent: Toward Agentic and Self-Evolving Safety Evaluation of LLMs

    Yixu Wang, Xin Wang, Yang Yao, Xinyuan Li, Yan Teng, Xingjun Ma, Yingchun Wang

    arXiv Preprint 2025

    [Under Review] Simulated Ensemble Attack: Transferring Jailbreaks Across Fine-tuned Vision-Language Models

    Ruofan Wang, Xin Wang, Yang Yao, Xuan Tong, Xingjun Ma

    arXiv Preprint 2025

    [Under Review] GhostEI-Bench: Do Mobile Agent Resilience to Environmental Injection in Dynamic On-Device Environments?

    Chiyu Chen, Xinhao Song, Yunkai Chai, Yang Yao, Haodong Zhao, Lijun Li, Jie Li, Yan Teng, Gongshen Liu, Yingchun Wang

    arXiv Preprint 2025

    [Under Review] Paint Your Prompt: From Sequential Text to Structured Blueprints for Enhanced Image Synthesis

    ###, ###, ###, Yang Yao, ###, ###

    Preprint Not Released

    [Under Review] Probing the Robustness of Large Language Models Safety to Latent Perturbations

    Tianle Gu, Kexin Huang, Zongqi Wang, Yixu Wang, Jie Li, Yuanqi Yao, Yang Yao, Yujiu Yang, Yan Teng, Yingchun Wang

    arXiv Preprint 2025

    Internship

    Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
    上海人工智能實驗室

    Large Model Safety Algorithm Intern 大模型安全算法實習生
    Safety and Trustworthy AI Center, Research Department

  • Supervised by Prof. Yingchun Wang and Dr. Yan Teng

  • Nov 2024 to Present

    • Service

    ACM Multimedia 2025 Reviewer

    The 33rd ACM International Conference on Multimedia
    Dataset Track

  • Oct 2025

  • Dublin, Ireland

    • EMNLP 2025 Reviewer

    The 2025 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
    ACL Rolling Review 2025 May

  • Nov 2025

  • Suzhou, China

    • ICLR 2026 Reviewer

    The Fourteenth International Conference on Learning Representations
    Regular Paper

  • Apr 2026

  • Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    • Pastimes

    Travel, Plays and Meditation

    Travel has long been a profound passion of mine. My journeys have carried me to the edge of the world—to Longyearbyen and Ny-Ålesund in the Arctic, where silence reigns, glaciers breathe, and the horizon stretches into a quiet infinity. Equally, theatre and film offer imaginative passageways into lives unchosen, unfolding parts of myself I might otherwise never meet. I also find solace in writing and meditation, often entranced by the silent dialogue between waves and the ever-shifting clouds on the horizon.