🌐 Collaboration

Current status (August 2026): industry collaboration is the priority. I serve as Chief Scientific Advisor to Figwork, and I am open to further advising, sponsored research, and joint evaluation work.

Teams usually arrive with the same problem: an agent is going to production and there is no way to show it is safe to deploy. That is what my lab builds, and the tools are open source, so a collaboration can start from working code. The Auditable AI Ecosystem lists what already exists and where each piece applies.

Academic collaboration needs no explanation and continues as usual: papers, shared infrastructure, and joint open-source releases with faculty, students, and industry research labs. The part worth naming is the reach. 博士栈 CSPhD.org, which I founded and run, has 3000+ U.S. CS PhD members and 1000+ computer science professors, and I can make introductions through it.

Industry and Startup Collaboration

I work with product and leadership teams on evaluation, guardrails, and the transferability of enterprise agent skills, particularly where a team needs auditable evidence and verifiable policy checks before a skill runs in a new agent system.

  • Open to: part-time advising, sponsored research, strategy sprints, and targeted work with founders, product leads, and research leads.
  • Current industry role: Chief Scientific Advisor to Figwork. Earlier industry work spans Siemens, PwC, Norton, Microsoft, and a stealth startup, including financing, operations, and hiring.
  • Typical output: a judgment on whether a system is ready to ship, the evidence behind it, and a plan for re-checking it as the system changes.

Open-Source and Ecosystem Impact

Partners can build on distribution that already exists. The sourced record, with the organizations and governments that name these tools, is on the open source page.

  • Enterprise usage: documented integrations include Databricks, Walmart, IQVIA, Apache Beam, PostHog, MLflow, and Genentech (Roche). Teams at Tesla, Microsoft, and Amazon have told me directly that they use these tools.
  • What a partner gains: where the fit is right, a release path into libraries that already have users.

Conference and Journal Collaboration

I am open to community work that raises quality standards and outlasts a single program.

  • Open to: co-organizing workshops, tracks, and challenges, and selected editorial initiatives.
  • Relevant service: area chair and editorial roles at major venues, listed on the services page.
  • Preference: programs with a committed team, a clear goal, and benefit beyond the organizers.

To start a conversation, write to yue.z@usc.edu. For background, see CV / Resume and Publications.