Yan Zhu

I am a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Tulane University, advised by Prof. Rebecca J. Faust. I began my doctoral studies at Tulane in 2024 after completing my master's degree in Computer Science at Boston University. My current research focuses on explainable and interpretable AI, with an emphasis on interactive machine learning and vision-language models.

Before joining Tulane, I was involved in research at Harvard University's Lichtman Laboratory, where I worked with large-scale electron microscopy data and computational methods for studying the developing mouse cerebellum. This experience introduced me to research at the intersection of computer science, imaging, and scientific discovery.

My academic background spans computer science, machine learning, and computational imaging across Shanghai, Boston, Cambridge, and New Orleans. These experiences have shaped my interest in working across both fundamental machine learning problems and interdisciplinary applications, especially systems that support human-AI interaction and make model behavior easier for people to understand and refine.