About Me
I am a PhD student in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign advised by Dr. Dong Wang.
Prior to this, I received a Bachelor of Applied Science with Distinction in Electrical Engineering and a Master of Engineering in Electrical and Computer Engineering, both from the University of British Columbia.
My research interests lie in AI for Social Good and Human-Centered AI, with a particular focus on social sensing approaches that leverage multimodal digital traces to understand societal patterns and human behavior.
News
Our work “Beyond Truth Discovery: A Two-Stage Framework to Assess the Severity of False Claim during Disasters” has been accepted to HCOMP 2026. 🎉
Our work “MASH: A Multiplatform and Multimodal Annotated Dataset for Societal Impact of Hurricane” has been accepted to ICWSM 2026 and received the Best Dataset Paper Award. 🎉
Our work “DisImpact: Quantifying the Physi-Social Impact of Natural Disasters Through Social Media” has been accepted to ICWSM 2026. 🎉
Started my PhD journey at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Experience
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Doctor of Philosophy - Information Sciences
Advisor: Dr. Dong Wang
2024 - Present
University of British Columbia
Master of Engineering - Electrical and Computer Engineering
2022 - 2024
University of British Columbia
Bachelor of Applied Science - Electrical Engineering
2018 - 2022
Selected Publications
View All →Beyond Truth Discovery: A Two-Stage Framework to Assess the Severity of False Claim during Disasters
Ruichen Yao, Tejna Dasari, Gulshat Baispay, Aizhan Zaurbek, Yifan Liu, Yaokun Liu, Zelin Li, Dong Wang
Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Conference on Human-AI Complementarity and Alignment (HCOMP 2026)
MASH: A Multiplatform and Multimodal Annotated Dataset for Societal Impact of Hurricane
Ruichen Yao, Aslanbek Murzakhmetov, Raaghav Pillai, Aliya Maussymbayeva, Zelin Li, Yifan Liu, Yaokun Liu, Lanyu Shang, Yang Zhang, Na Wei, others
Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
Best Dataset Paper Award
DisImpact: Quantifying the Physi-Social Impact of Natural Disasters Through Social Media
Ruichen Yao, Tejna Dasari, Xuanyu Meng, Elliot Cao, Zelin Li, Yifan Liu, Yaokun Liu, Lanyu Shang, Dong Wang
Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
Modality interactive mixture-of-experts for fake news detection
Yifan Liu, Yaokun Liu, Zelin Li, Ruichen Yao, Yang Zhang, Dong Wang
Proceedings of the ACM on Web Conference
Improving Fairness in Image Classification via Sketching
Ruichen Yao, Ziteng Cui, Xiaoxiao Li, Lin Gu
Workshop on Trustworthy and Socially Responsible Machine Learning, NeurIPS