Ziping Ye

Ziping Ye

Graduate Student @ UPenn CIS

About Me

I am currently a graduate student in Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

In May 2023, I graduated Summa Cum Laude from Schreyer Honors College at Penn State, where I was honored to serve as the College of Engineering Student Marshal and received Outstanding Undergraduate Research Achievement Award, recognizing my academic excellence, research accomplishments, and leadership. During my time at Penn State, I was fortunate enough to work with Professors Jinchao Xu, Syed Rafiul Hussain, and Shagufta Mehnaz on various research projects.

Research Interest

I am interested in developing machine learning that is fundamentally trustworthy. This involves ensuring properties such as correctness, robustness, privacy, fairness, and interpretability with mathematical guarantees.

Lately, I have been investigating the tension/tradeoff between various trustworthiness objectives (e.g., security, privacy, fairness, transparency). Specifically, my focus was on studying

  • how model explanation relates to adversarial example generation?
  • how can explanation be utilized to generate (attack) and detect (defense) adversarial examples?

By exploring these issues, we can establish principles for constructing secure and transparent machine learning systems in the face of potential threats.

I am also interested in addressing emerging challenges associated with large language models (LLMs), such as adversarial prompting.

Education

:mortar_board: University of Pennsylvania
M.S. in Computer and Information Science                               2023 -

:mortar_board: Schreyer Honors College at Penn State
B.S. with Honors in Computer Science, Minor in Mathematics               2019 - 2023
Honors Thesis: “Dragon Defender: Runtime Threat Detection for Cellular Devices”

Honors and Award

Click on the triangle for the description of each honor/award.

Penn State College of Engineering Student Marshal, 2023 Student marshals are selected for their outstanding academic achievement and contributions to engineering student life. This high honor is bestowed on a student in the graduating class who represents the best of the program graduates.
Outstanding Undergraduate Research Achievement, 2023 This award recognizes an undergraduate researcher in Penn State College of Engineering that has made an impact in their group and field.
Inducted into The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, 2023 Only the top 7.5 percent of second-term juniors and top 10 percent of seniors and graduate students are invited to join the nation’s oldest, most selective, and most prestigious all-discipline honor society.
Inducted into Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) - EECS Honor Society, 2022 Only the top forth of Juniors and top third of Seniors major in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering are invited to join.
Inducted into Golden Key International Honour Society, 2022 Only the top 15% of college and university sophomores, juniors and seniors, as well as top-performing graduate students in all fields of study are invited to join.
The Evan Pugh Scholar Senior Award, 2022 The Evan Pugh scholars are those juniors and seniors who are in the upper 0.5 percent of their respective classes and have completed at least 48 graded Penn State credits at the end of the fall semester of the academic year in which the award is given.
Engagement Excellence Award, 2021 For Outstanding Demonstration of Personal Growth, Professional Readiness, and/or Community Impact from an Engaged Learning Experience.
PSU President Sparks Award, 2021 This award is presented annually to those undergraduate degree candidates who have earned a 4.0 (A) cumulative grade-point average based on at least 36 graded Penn State credits completed by the end of the fall semester of the academic year in which the award is given.
David & Shirley Wormley Engineering Scholarship, 2020 Awarded to undergraduate students in the College of Engineering who are working in research groups.
PSU President’s Freshman Award, 2020 This award is presented annually to undergraduate degree candidates and degree-seeking provisional students who have earned a 4.0 (A) cumulative grade-point average based on at least 12 graded Penn State credits completed during their first semester of admission.
AP Scholar with Distinction Award, 2019 Granted to students who receive an average score of at least 3.5 on all AP Exams taken, and scores of 3 or higher on five or more of these exams.


Skills and Certifications

  • Languages: Python, C/C++, Java, HTML, CSS, JavaScript
  • Frameworks & Libraries: PyTorch, HuggingFace, Scikit-learn, Numpy, Pandas, Matplotlib
  • Tools & Software: LaTex, Postman, Git, Docker, EndNote
  • Platforms: GitHub, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • Skills: Algorithm Design and Analysis, Software Development

Certifications:

Certified Peer Educator (CPE), National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA)

News

September’23: Our team won the Best Design Hack at PennApps XXIV! (GitHub)
April’23: Awarded the Outstanding Undergraduate Research Achievement.
April’23: Selected as the College of Engineering Class of 2023 Student Marshal for Computer Science.
January’23: Served as the Founding President of the International and Multicultural Association of Schreyer Scholars (IMASS). Check Penn State News for details.

Last update: August 13th, 2023