Bio Icon Misc Research Icon Research News Icon About

Research

My research is informed by years of training in mathematics, which fosters a strong commitment to rigor applied to every aspects from mathematical proofs to the design and execution of experiments, and the interpretation of the findings. Alongside this, my research is motivated by a strong desire to understand things deeply, usually from the first principles, and to critically examine conventional wisdoms in the field.

Below are a few selected works that are most representative of my research style. See my Google Scholar profile for the full list of publications.

Selected Publications

  1. Empirical Privacy Variance  
    Yuzheng Hu*, Fan Wu*, Ruicheng Xian, Yuhang Liu, Lydia Zakynthinou, Pritish Kamath, Chiyuan Zhang, David Forsyth
    The 42nd International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2025)
  2. Most Influential Subset Selection: Challenges, Promises, and Beyond  
    Yuzheng Hu, Pingbang Hu, Han Zhao, Jiaqi Ma
    The 38th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2024)
  3. SoK: Privacy-Preserving Data Synthesis  
    Yuzheng Hu*, Fan Wu*, Qinbin Li, Yunhui Long, Gonzalo Munilla Garrido, Chang Ge, Bolin Ding, David Forsyth, Bo Li, Dawn Song
    The 45th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P 2024)
  4. Revisiting Scalarization in Multi-Task Learning: A Theoretical Perspective  
    Yuzheng Hu, Ruicheng Xian, Qilong Wu, Qiuling Fan, Lang Yin, Han Zhao
    The 37th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2023)

About

Welcome to my homepage. I am a machine learning researcher, currently in my fourth year as a PhD student in the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I have worked on a variety of different problems in machine learning, but lately, I am mostly focused on the study of data. This includes topics such as data attribution, privacy, and synthetic data.

During my PhD, I have spent time at Google Research (current), Simons Institute (2024), Jane Street (2024), and Alibaba (2022). Before that, I obtained my bachelor's degree in mathematics from Peking University in 2021. I am grateful to Fangcheng Fu and Bin Cui, who offered me an initial glimpse into research, as well as Liwei Wang and Rong Ge, who showed me what world-class research looks like, and what it takes to get there.

I was born and raised in Guangzhou, completed high school and college in Beijing, and have since lived in the Bay Area (Berkeley and San Jose), Chicago, Las Vegas, New Jersey, the New York metropolitan area (NYC and Long Island), and the Seattle metropolitan area (Bellevue and Redmond).

Misc

Humanities & Arts

I have a profound interest in economy, history and administrative system. These are important lens through which I learn humanity and society. As a complement, I also enjoy chatting with people from different backgrounds and classes. My life experiences give me the opportunity to do so, and I have benefited tremendously from a lot of these conversations.

I played the piano for over 10 years before stopping after moving to Beijing. Nervertheless, I've developed a deep appreciation for music and art more broadly. For classical music, my favorite are Beethoven , Chopin, and Rachmaninoff. For (mandarin) pop music, I am a big fan of Ethan Chan (陳奕迅) and JJ Lin (林俊杰). Additionally, I enjoy the artistic creation from Korean, especially films and their OST. If you haven't already, I highly recommend checking out the following: Joint Security Area (공동경비구역 JSA, 2000), My Sassy Girl (엽기적인 그녀, 2001), The Classic (클래식, 2003), and Squid Game (오징어 게임, 2021).

Sports

Like many others, soccer and basketball have long been integral parts of my life. On the soccer field, I am competent across the entire central axis, from ST through CM to CB. For basketball, I play the point guard. I have been an old fan of Barcelona and Spurs. I got my first sneaker of Tim Duncan in 2005, which is the time when I started to watch NBA. I'm also reasonably good at badminton, golf, ping-pong and tennis.

Travel & Culinary Adventures

In my free time, I enjoy traveling. I have been to over 25 countries around the world. My favorite cities include Lucerne, Paris, Prague, San Diego, and Seattle. I also frequently visit the national parks in US.

I'm very picky about food, but Japanese cusines have always been my favorite. The philosophy of preserving the original flavor of ingredients strongly echos with me. Over the years I've explored many forms, including but not limited to Kaiseki (懐石料理), Omakase (お任せ), Sukiyaki (すき焼き), Tempura (天婦羅), Teppanyaki (鉄板焼き), Yakiniku (焼肉), and Yakitori (焼き鳥). Omakase has been my go-to choice whenever I arrive in a new city. These experiences have made me quite knowledgeable about fish and seafood. I also learned a lot from the channel 日本美食日报 (グルメリア日誌, @jpmeishi).

Fun Fact about my Name

My Chinese name is 宇征 (Yǔ Zhēng). "宇" means "universe", and "征" can mean "to conquer" or "to explore". While I like to think of it as "exploring the universe", my friends often tease that it's more about "conquering the universe"! This notion is the inspiration behind the website's aesthetic.