Yongkang Du

Yongkang Du is a third-year PhD student at Penn State University, College of IST, advised by Prof. Lu Lin. He received his M.S. in computer science from University of Southern California advised by Prof. Jieyu Zhao and B.E. in computer science and technology from North China University of Technology. His cv is available here.

His research is driven by building capable and reliable AI systems. Specifically, two fundamental questions:

• How can we bridge the gap between human and AI reasoning? Investigating advanced cognitive capabilities in multimodal and agentic systems, including compositional logic, analogical reasoning, and long-horizon memory.
• How can we ensure the trustworthiness of AI in the real world? Auditing and optimizing models for fairness, alignment, and safety, particularly in the context of decision-making.

Open to collaboration and internship opportunities!