CV
Contact Information
| Name | Jinyi Ye |
| Professional Title | CS PhD Student at USC |
| jinyiy@usc.edu | |
| Location | 1031 Downey Way, Los Angeles, CA 90089 |
Interests
Generally: Human-Centered AI, Computational Social Science, NLP
Recently: Multi-agent Systems, LLM Social Simulations, (Inverse) Reinforcement Learning
Education
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Aug 2024 - Los Angeles, CA
Ph.D. in Computer Science
University of Southern California
Computer Science
- GPA: 3.93/4.0
- Advisor: Emilio Ferrara, Luca Luceri (co-advisor)
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Sep 2021 - Jun 2024 Los Angeles, CA
M.S. in Data Science
Tsinghua University + University of Southern California Joint Program
Communication Data Science
- GPA: 4.0/4.0; Graduated with High Honors
- Top Master’s Thesis Award (Tsinghua University)
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Sep 2017 - Jun 2021 Beijing, China
B.A. in Economics; B.A. in Communication & Journalism
Peking University; Communication University of China
Economics; Communication & Journalism
- GPA: 3.85/4.0; GPA: 3.90/4.0; Graduated with High Honors
Industry Experience
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May 2025 - Aug 2025 Redmond, WA, USA
Research Intern
Microsoft Research (MSR + IDEAS)
Mentor: Scott Counts
- Multimodal AI Workflows: Designed and executed large-scale empirical analysis of 5M Bing Copilot interaction logs to develop a taxonomy of real-world multimodal AI tasks, quantifying task uniqueness and complexity across modalities. Delivered internal presentations (MSR and IDEAS product team) and prepared a paper for submission.
- Organization Simulation using LLM Agents: Built a generative-agent simulation framework modeling cross-team communication networks to evaluate AI-driven interventions for improving information flow and collaboration in organizations.
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Apr 2024 - Jul 2024 Beijing, China
Research Intern
Microsoft Research Asia (Social Computing Group)
Mentor: Fangzhao Wu, Xing Xie
- Generative AI for Human Learning and Productivity: Conducted behavioral experiments on AI-augmented human learning, demonstrating how large language models can enhance human performance, accelerate knowledge acquisition, and facilitate knowledge discovery and transfer on novel tasks. Led a paper currently in submission.
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Feb 2022 - Jun 2022 Beijing, China
Data Scientist Intern
ByteDance (Lark Product Team)
- Internal Data Workflow Platform Development: Designed and implemented the financial operations data modeling module of an internal one-stop data analytics platform, adopted across all divisions of the Enterprise Applications department.
Academic Research Experience
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Aug 2024 - Los Angeles, CA
Research Assistant
USC HUMANS Lab
Advised by Emilio Ferrara
- Social Simulations with LLM Agents: Developed generative-agent simulations that approximate and optimize human decision-making, with validation against real-world data across domains such as political science, public opinion, and malicious social media behavior. Publication in WWW ‘26.
- Trustworthy AI and AI Safety: Research on algorithmic amplification of partisan bias and the role of AI-generated content (AIGC) during elections. Publications in FAccT ‘25 and HT ‘25.
- Grants: NSF (#2331722), The Evolution of Language Use in Online Communities
- Cross-Lab Collaborations: FORTIS Lab
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Aug 2025 - Marina Del Rey, CA
Research Assistant
USC ISI SIGNALS Lab
Advised by Luca Luceri
- Research on advancing multi-agent simulations with (inverse) reinforcement learning.
- Grants: DARPA - DSO, Incentive-Driven Prediction of Emergent Phenomena in Complex Social Systems
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Dec 2022 - Dec 2023 Los Angeles, CA
Graduate Student Researcher (Master's)
USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI)
Advised by Emilio Ferrara and Luca Luceri
- Research projects on social networks, misinformation, and susceptibility to online social influence. Publications in WWW ‘24 and ICWSM ‘25.
- Research on identifying and characterizing cross-platform information diffusion. Publication in ICWSM ‘23.
- Grants: DARPA (#HR001121C0169), Influence Campaign Awareness and Sensemaking
Awards & Grants
- 2025 Best Paper Honorable Mention — International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)
- 2025 Best Student Paper Honorable Mention — 36th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (HT)
- 2025 Best Poster Presentation (Doctoral Student) — USC ShowCAIS 2025
- 2024 Top Master's Thesis Award (top 5%) — Tsinghua University
- 2022, 2023 Graduate Student All-Round Excellence Awards (First Level) — Tsinghua University
Teaching & Mentoring
I care deeply about mentoring emerging scholars; to support interdisciplinary research and women in science, I prioritize students with STEM + social science backgrounds and female students.
Mentoring: USC Center for Undergraduate Research in Viterbi Engineering (CURVE) Fellowship Program; Google ExploreCSR Program (USC branch)
• 2026 Spring: Esteban Murillo (B.S. in AI for Business), Preyashi Poddar (B.A. in Psychology & Data Science), Kyoungeui Hong (B.S. in CS)
• 2025 Fall: James Yunkai Zhan (B.S. in CS & Applied Math), Blair Ding Chen (B.S. in AI for Business)
• 2025 Spring: Zhiyi Chen (M.S. in Data Science), Beverlyn Tsai (B.S. in CS), Francesca Kubica (B.S. in AI for Business)
• 2024 Fall: Collin Hargreaves (B.A. in Data Science), Shreeya Chand (B.S. in CS)
• 2023 Fall: Ravneet Kaur (M.S. in CS)
Invited Talks & Presentations
2026-02-17 Emergent Coordinated Behaviors in Networked LLM Agents — Complex Data Lab (McGill/Mila)
2026-01-23 Simulating the Spiral of Silence with a Network of Generative Agents — Community Twin reading group, University of Maryland
2024-06-24 Measuring and modeling susceptibility to influence in social networks — Intern Tech Talk, Microsoft Research Asia
2024-05-24 Susceptibility to Unreliable Information Sources: Swift Adoption with Minimal Exposure — The Web Conference 2024 (Oral)
Academic Service
Peer Review — ACL 2025, ICWSM 2025, WWW 2025, CIKM 2024
PC Member — WWW 2025 - Web for Good Track
Conference Organization — ICWSM 2026 (Local Chair)