Yunhao Yang is a 4th-year Ph.D. student in computer science at The University of Texas at Austin. Prior to this, he received B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science, and a B.A. in mathematics from UT Austin.
He is currently a member of the Center for Autonomy, supervised by Prof. Ufuk Topcu.
His research interests include integrating large language models and formal methods for autonomy and uncertainty quantification in AI.
In addition, he received the Amazon Science Research Fellowship (by the UT-Amazon Hub) in the 2024~2025 academic year
and interned at General Motors (GM) in the summer of 2024 and 2026, conducting research on autonomous driving.
yunhaoyang234@gmail.com
Department of Computer Science
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas
USA
Selected Publications
Journal
* Equal Contribution
Yunhao Yang*, Minkyu Choi*, Neel Bhatt*, Kushagra Gupta, Sahil Shah, Aditya Rai, David Fridovich-Keil, Ufuk Topcu, Sandeep P Chinchali. Real-Time Privacy Preservation for Robot Visual Perception
Transactions on Machine Learning Research, 2025.
Yunhao Yang*, Parham Gohari* and Ufuk Topcu. On the Privacy Risks of Deploying Recurrent Neural Networks in Machine Learning
Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies 2023.
Yunhao Yang, Zhaokun Xue and Andrew Whinston. Self-Enhancing Multi-filter Sequence-to-Sequence Model
Procedia Computer Science, Elsevier, 2023.
Conference Proceedings
Yunhao Yang, Junyuan Hong, Gabriel Jacob Perin, Zhiwen Fan, Li Yin, Zhangyang Wang, Ufuk Topcu. LAD-VF: LLM-Automatic Differentiation Enables Fine-Tuning-Free Robot Planning from Formal Methods Feedback
IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation (ICRA) 2026.
Yunhao Yang, Yuxin Hu, Mao Ye, Zaiwei Zhang, Zhichao Lu, Yi Xu, Ufuk Topcu, Ben Snyder. Uncertainty-Guided Enhancement on Driving Perception System via Foundation Models
IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation (ICRA) 2025.
Neel Bhatt*, Yunhao Yang*, Rohan Siva, Daniel Milan, Ufuk Topcu, Zhangyang Wang. Know Where You're Uncertain When Planning with Multimodal Foundation Models: A Formal Framework
Annual Conference on Machine Learning and Systems (MLSys) 2025.
Minkyu Choi*, Harsh Goel*, Mohammad Omama*, Yunhao Yang, Sahil Shah, Sandeep Chinchali. Towards Neuro-Symbolic Video Understanding
European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) 2024. Oral Presentation
Yunhao Yang*, Neel Bhatt*, Tyler Ingebrand*, William Ward, Steven Carr, Zhangyang Wang and Ufuk Topcu. Fine-Tuning Language Models Using Formal Methods Feedback: A Use Case in Autonomous Systems
Annual Conference on Machine Learning and Systems (MLSys) 2024.
Yunhao Yang, Cyrus Neary and Ufuk Topcu. Multimodal Pretrained Models for Verifiable Sequential Decision-Making: Planning, Grounding, and Perception
International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS) 2024. Oral Presentation
Yunhao Yang and Andrew B Whinston. A Survey on Reinforcement Learning for Combinatorial Optimization
IEEE World Conference on Applied Intelligence and Computing (AIC) 2023.
Yunhao Yang and Zhaokun Xue. Training Heterogeneous Features in Sequence to Sequence Tasks: Latent Enhanced Multi-filter Seq2Seq Model
Proceedings of Intelligent Systems Conference (IntelliSys) 2022. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, Springer. Best Student Paper Award
Patent
Ufuk Topcu, Yunhao Yang, Cyrus Neary, and Jean-Raphaël Gaglione. Automaton-Based Controller and Method with Generative Language Models for Task Execution
US Patent App. 18/958,684.
Awards and Fellowships
Amazon Scholar. Amazon Science Hub, 2024-2025.
Special Departmental Honor in Computer Science. College of Natural Science, UT Austin, 2022.
Research Distinction. College of Natural Science, UT Austin, 2021.
Undergraduate Research Fellowship. College of Natural Science, UT Austin, 2020.
Community Services
Journal and Conference Review
Area Chair for MLSys 2025
Program Committee for CSCT 2023, CSCT 2023, ICCIS 2023, ICIVC 2023
Reviewer for Journal of Computational and Cognitive Engineering, FMDM@NeurIPS, NeurIPS, ICLR, TMLR, ICML
Volunteer
STEM Girl Day at UT Austin, 2024 and 2025
Mentor for REACT RUE summer program, 2023
Volunteer for TACC Back@TACC, 2022 and 2024
Volunteer for LASA High School Visit, 2023
Volunteer for FIRST Technical Challenge: Texas-Central GEMS League Tournament, 2023