Yuanjie Shi

PhD Candidate in Computer Science at Washington State University

Pullman, Washington

yuanjie.shi@wsu.edu

GitHub

I am a PhD candidate in Computer Science at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Washington State University, advised by Prof. Yan Yan. I expect to graduate in 2026.

My research develops reliable machine learning methods with statistically valid and distribution-free risk control. I work at the intersection of robust machine learning, uncertainty quantification, conformal prediction, federated learning, and reliable and controllable language models.

Research directions

  • Distribution-free uncertainty quantification and risk control: conformal methods for reliable and efficient human–ML collaboration.
  • Federated learning under decentralized heterogeneity: uncertainty-aware and privacy-preserving learning under cross-client distribution shift.
  • Reliable and controllable language models: uncertainty-aware inference, preference alignment, and reliability analysis for multi-step LLM systems.

My work has appeared at ICML, ICLR, NeurIPS, AISTATS, AAAI, and UAI. I received the WSU EECS Outstanding Dissertation award (2026), the WSU EECS Outstanding Research Assistant award (2025), an ICML Gold Reviewer recognition (2026), and a NeurIPS Top Reviewer recognition (2025).

selected publications

  1. UAI
    uai26_sketch_size_effect.png
    Valid and Efficient Uncertainty Quantification for Federated Joint Shift
    Yuanjie Shi, Peihong Li, Xin Cao, and Yan Yan
    In Proceedings of the Forty-Second Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, 2026
  2. ICML
    ICML26_inference_time.png
    Inference-Time Conformal Reasoning with Valid Factuality Control for Large Language Models
    Tian Wang, Yuanjie Shi, Yan Yan, and Huan Zhang
    In Proceedings of the Forty-Third International Conference on Machine LearningTian Wang and Yuanjie Shi contributed equally. , 2026
  3. ICLR
    ICLR2026.png
    Keep the Best, Forget the Rest: Reliable Alignment with Order-Aware Preference Optimization
    Jiacheng Zhu, Yuanjie Shi, Xuebin Peng, Xiaoran Liu, Yan Yan, and Honghao Wei
    In Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Learning RepresentationsJiacheng Zhu and Yuanjie Shi contributed equally. , 2026
  4. AISTATS
    AISTATS2026.png
    Conformal Margin Risk Minimization: An Envelope Framework for Robust Learning under Label Noise
    Yuanjie Shi, Peihong Li, Jana Doppa, and Yan Yan
    In Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and StatisticsYuanjie Shi and Peihong Li contributed equally. , 2026
  5. ICML
    ICML25_DPSM.png
    Direct Prediction Set Minimization via Bilevel Conformal Classifier Training
    Yuanjie Shi, Hamed Shahrokhi, Xuesong Jia, Xinyu Chen, Jana Doppa, and Yan Yan
    In Proceedings of the Forty-Second International Conference on Machine LearningYuanjie Shi and Hamed Shahrokhi contributed equally. , 2025
  6. NeurIPS
    Conformal Prediction for Class-wise Coverage via Augmented Label Rank Calibration
    Yuanjie Shi, Subhankar Ghosh, Taha Belkhouja, Yan Yan, and Jana Doppa
    In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 2024