Y. Zhang

Yaru Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate at Maastricht University from March 2024, supervised by Dr. Chang Sun and Prof. Michel Dumontier. She is a member of the ICAI GENIUS Lab, which designs and deploys Generative-Enhanced Next-generation Intelligent Understanding Systems to support human experts in knowledge management and decision making.

Her research focuses on trustworthy conversational AI — exploring how large language models can be made more reliable and rigorously evaluated in scientific contexts. A central theme of her work is AI-driven knowledge discovery: enabling systems to uncover hidden connections and novel insights across large bodies of scientific literature that would be difficult or impossible for humans to find alone, opening new directions for both research and industry. Her current work investigates the use of vision-language models and multimodal reasoning to support this kind of discovery from scientific literature.

Yaru holds a Master of Science in Data Science for Decision Making from Maastricht University, and a Bachelor of Engineering in Measuring and Control Technology and Instrumentation from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology.