Dongyu Yao (Rain)

Dongyu Yao (Rain)

Carnegie Mellon University

🤘 About Me

🤜🤛 Yo Wassup!

I’m Dongyu (Rain) Yao (姚栋宇), a Master's student in Computer Vision (MSCV) at Carnegie Mellon University. I earned my Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) degree at the School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Wuhan University (WHU). Before that, I spent three wonderful years studying at No.1 Middle School Affiliated to CCNU (华中师大一附中).

Outside the lab and work, you’ll probably find me vibing to music or shooting hoops. I’m always down to a chat — feel free to reach out!

🔬 Research Interest

My research interests focus on Data-centric AI and Reliable (Multi-modal) AI, encompassing key areas in Computer Vision (data-efficient scene understanding), Natural Language Processing, and Generative AI (LLMs and MLLMs). Recently, I’ve been exploring Multi-modal Reasoning and Alignment, especially evaluation and de-hallucination for Large Vision-language Models with multi-image and video understanding capabilities.

🔥 News

  • 2025.04: 📝 Invited as a reviewer for NeurIPS 2025.

  • 2024.09: 🎉 One paper is accepted by NeurIPS 2024.
  • 2024.06: 🎓 Obtained my Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) degree in Cyberspace Security.
  • 2024.05: 🏅 Selected as Outstanding Undergraduate (Award Rate: 10%).
  • 2024.04: 🎉 One paper is accepted by CogSci 2024 as Oral Presentation.
  • 2024.03: 🌟 Admitted to the Master of Science in Computer Vision (MSCV) program at Carnegie Mellon University!!!
  • 2024.01: 📢 Our work of FuzzLLM is invited to present at one of the top hacker conventions – ShmooCon 2024!
  • 2023.12: 🎉 One paper is accepted by ICASSP 2024.
  • 2023.10: 🏅 I won the National Scholarship (Award Rate: 0.2% national-wide), First Class Scholarship (Award Rate: 5% school-wide), and was awarded the Pacemaker to Merit Student of WHU (Award Rate: 60/59774=0.1%).
  • 2023.10: 🏅 I ranked 1/144 in the annual comprehensive assessment (the only participant with a 90+ overall score).
  • 2023.08: 🎉 One paper is accepted by ICCVW UnCV 2023.

📝 Publications

† : equal contribution, * : corresponding author

Sorted by date of acceptance.

🏅 Honors and Awards

  • 2024.06 Outstanding Undergraduate (Award Rate: 10%) Wuhan University
  • 2023.10 Pacemaker to Merit Student (Award Rate: 60/59774=0.1%) Wuhan University
  • 2023.10 National Scholarship (Award Rate: 0.2% nationwide) Ministry of Education, China
  • 2023.10 First Class Scholarship of WHU (Award Rate: 5% school-wide) Wuhan University
  • 2023.08 National Second Prize in the 16th China Undergraduate Computer Design Competition (Award Rate: 10% nationwide)

📖 Educations

💻 Internships

🧑‍💻 Industry

  • 2025.05 - 2025.08, Software Engineer - ML Intern at Meta

  • 2024.04 - 2024.07, Machine Learning Engineer Intern at TikTok (ByteDance)

🎓 Academic

  • 2025.01 - now, Research Assistant at CMU, under the supervision of Prof. Katia Sycara and Dr. Yaqi Xie.
  • 2024.11 - 2025.03, Research Assistant at MIT and HKUST, under the supervision of Prof. Paul Pu Liang and Dr. Yi R. (May) Fung (Now Assistant Professor at HKUST).
  • 2023.07 - 2023.09, UCInspire Summer Research Program (University of California Irvine), Supervised by Prof. Ian G. Harris
  • 2022.07 - 2023.12, Student Research Assistant at Key Laboratory of Aerospace Information Security and Trusted Computing, Supervised by Prof. Run Wang

🎢 Activities

📚 Academic Services

Conference Reviewer:

  • Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2025.

  • ICLR Workshops (WMARK and FM-Wild), 2025

  • AAAI Workshops (PDLM and MARW), 2025

  • 15th IEEE Symposium on Computer Applications & Industrial Electronics (ISCAIE), 2025
  • 7th IEEE Symposium on Computers & Informatics (ISCI), 2025

Journal Reviewer:

  • IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (TNNLS)

  • ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology (TIST)

  • Applied Intelligence Journal, Springer Nature

🏛️ University Services

  • 2020.09 - 2023.09, Chief Percussionist at Wuhan University Symphony Orchestra 🎼

🪩 Misc

🥁 Music Band & Symphony Orchestra

I’ve been playing percussion instruments for over 18 years — ever since I was 4. From symphony halls to rock stages, I’ve played across genres, including Jazz, Funk, Pop, and Chinese Folk. I’m proficient in a wide range of instruments used in orchestras and beyond, such as Snare Drum, Timpani, Bass Drum, Drum Kit, Cymbals, Triangle, Chimes, Glockenspiel, Vibraphone, Xylophone, Marimba, Tambourine, Conga, Gong, Clave, and more.

Sounds from the sticks — selected performances below👇

🎤 Voice & Eloquence

  • I’m recently in love with Hamilton (the Broadway musical), I can rap or sing at least 15 songs in the play. And yes, Guns and Ships? No sweat.

  • I discovered my passion for public speaking during junior high, after winning several championships in English speech contests.
  • One of my favorite speeches is Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which I still revisit from time to time.
  • I scored single-best 112 on TOEFL (28 in speaking) and 330 on GRE (V162 + Q168 + W4.0). Daily speaking practice pays off.

🏀 Basketball

  • I was the shooting guard for the WHU SCSE Men’s Basketball Team back in undergrad.