About Me
My name is Zheyuan (Jason) Zhang, a fourth-year Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, advised by Prof. Yanfang (Fanny) Ye.
My research focuses on LLM Agent Optimization, with the goal of building adaptive agents that learn from experience and interaction to perform reliably in complex, evolving real-life environments. Specifically, my work spans three areas:
- Knowledge-Augmented Reasoning: GraphRAG (Diet-ODIN, MOPI-HFRS, NGQA).
- Agent Harness Optimization: Instruction Optimization (MAPRO, EvolveRouter); Task-Aware Routing (AgentRouter, NG-Router, EvolveRouter).
- Agent Policy Optimization: Data-Centric Reinforcement Learning (GCPO, RAIL); Agentic RL with Simulated Users (CLEAT, StaGPO).
I am specifically interested in the topics of Agent Uncertainty and Interactive Intent Alignment: when agents face real users’ incomplete or misleading requests and evolving goals in long-horizon agentic tasks, how can we enable them to recognize their own uncertainty, understand the limits of their capabilities, and remain aligned with users through effective and efficient interaction, such as seeking clarification? Specifically, my work covers:
- Agent Uncertainty (Survey): Uncertainty Quantification (GCPO); Uncertainty Calibration (SAGE, LProp); Uncertainty Utilization (GCPO, RAIL).
- Interactive Intent Alignment: Benchmarking Intent Misalignment and Shifting (Drift-Bench, Drift-Bench++); Interactive Policy Learning (CLEAT, StaGPO).
For more details, please check my CV here.
News
- [2026.10] We have released a new survey on agent uncertainty: Uncertainty in LLM Agents: A Comprehensive Survey.
- [2026.04] Two papers are accepted to ICML 2026.
- [2026.04] One paper is accepted to ACL 2026. See you in San Diego!
- [2026.03] I will join ByteDance as Research Scientist Intern this July. See you in Seattle.
- [2026.02] I will join Amazon as Applied Scientist Intern this April. See you in Seattle.
- [2026.01] Three papers are accepted to EACL 2026.
Selected Publications
You can find the full list of my articles on my Google Scholar profile.
Zheyuan Zhang, Mengyuan Chao, Ke Xiao, Ziyi Chen, Daoan Zhang, Yan Zhang, Yanfang Ye, Wei Xu
Zheyuan Zhang, Manqing Mao, Hong Wang, Zhuoer Wang, Samson Koelle, Jie Yuan, Yanjun Lin, James Feng, Nikki Lijing Kuang, Yanfang Ye, Wei Niu
Zheyuan Zhang, Kaiwen Shi, Han Bao, Zehong Wang, Tianyi Ma, Yanfang Ye
Kaiwen Shi*, Zheyuan Zhang*, Yanfang Ye
Jiatan Huang*, Zheyuan Zhang*, Kaiwen Shi, Yanfang Ye, Chuxu Zhang
Zheyuan Zhang*, Kaiwen Shi*, Zhengqing Yuan, Zehong Wang, Tianyi Ma, Keerthiram Murugesan, Vincent Galassi, Chuxu Zhang, Yanfang Ye
Zheyuan Zhang, Lin Ge, Hongjiang Li, Weicheng Zhu, Chuxu Zhang, Yanfang Ye
Kaiwen Shi*, Zheyuan Zhang*, Zhengqing Yuan, Keerthiram Murugesan, Vincent Galassi, Chuxu Zhang, Yanfang Ye
Zheyuan Zhang*, Yiyang Li*, Nhi Ha Lan Le*, Zehong Wang, Tianyi Ma, Vincent Galassi, Keerthiram Murugesan, Nuno Moniz, Werner Geyer, Nitesh V Chawla, Chuxu Zhang, Yanfang Ye
Zheyuan Zhang, Zehong Wang, Tianyi Ma, Varun Sameer Taneja, Sofia Nelson, Nhi Ha Lan Le, Keerthiram Murugesan, Mingxuan Ju, Nitesh V Chawla, Chuxu Zhang, Yanfang Ye
Zheyuan Zhang*, Zehong Wang*, Shifu Hou, Evan Hall, Landon Bachman, Vincent Galassi, Jasmine White, Nitesh V. Chawla, Chuxu Zhang, Yanfang Ye
Work Experience
ByteDance Seattle, WA, USA
- Research Scientist (Intern) Jul. 2026 – Oct. 2026
Amazon Science Seattle, WA, USA
- Applied Scientist (Intern) Apr. 2026 – Jul. 2026
Amazon Science Seattle, WA, USA
- Applied Scientist (Part-time) Aug. 2025 – Dec. 2025
- Applied Scientist (Intern) May 2025 – Aug. 2025
IBM Research Yorktown Heights, NY, USA
- Student Researcher (Part-time) Jun. 2024 – May 2025
Coleridge Initiative New York, NY, USA
- Research Scientist Oct. 2021 – Mar. 2023
- Associated Research Scientist Aug. 2020 – Oct. 2021
- Junior Research Scientist (Intern) Oct. 2019 – Aug. 2020
Education
- 2023.07 - present Ph.D. University of Notre Dame
- 2019.08 - 2020.08 M.S. New York University
- 2015.09 - 2019.06 B.S. Wuhan University
Mentorship
I’ve been fortunate to mentor and work alongside many brilliant minds:
Current Mentees
- Han Bao Ph.D. Student, University of Notre Dame Sept. 2025 – present
- Jiatan Huang Ph.D. Student, University of Connecticut Aug. 2025 - present
- Kaiwen Shi Ph.D. Student, University of Notre Dame Mar. 2025 - present
- Xiaoyu Ma M.S. Student, National University of Singapore Oct. 2025 – present
Former Mentees
- Nhi Le M.S. Student, Brandeis University Jun. 2024 – Jan. 2025
- Vinny Galassi Junior Undergraduate, University of Notre Dame 2023 – 2025
- Sofia Nelson Senior Undergraduate, University of Notre Dame 2024
- Varun Taneja Senior Undergraduate, University of Notre Dame 2024
- Evan Hall Senior Undergraduate, University of Notre Dame 2023 – 2024
- Landon Bachman Senior Undergraduate, University of Notre Dame 2023 – 2024
- Jasmine White Senior Undergraduate, Purdue University 2023 – 2024
Services
- Conference Senior Area Chair KDD’26
- Conference Reviewer NeurIPS’26, ICML’26, ICLR’26, KDD’26, KDD’25, WWW’25
- Journal Reviewer Transactions on Big Data, DMKD, TIST, TMLR, TWEB
- Teaching Assistant FA23-CSE-40113, SP24-CSE-40113: Design/Analysis of Algorithms
Invited Talks
- Sept. 2024 MOPI-HFRS @ IBM Research, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights.
- Jun. 2025 LLM Agents for Code Generation @ Amazon, Seattle.
Contact
- Email zzhang42 [at] nd [dot] edu
- Office 247B Fitzpatrick Hall of Engineering
- Location University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46565
Feel free to reach out via email if you’re interested in our research or potential collaborations.