Bio
I am a research intern in Carnegie Mellon University working with Prof. Steven Wu, focusing on AI safety. Specifically, I am deeply interested in identifying the vulnerabilities in machine learning (ML) models and developing practical safety solutions for ML applications, particularly LLM safety. I am also interested in how Test-Time Scaling influences LLM/LRM’s reasoning ability and alignment behavior. Prior to this, I completed my M.S. in Information Security at Carnegie Mellon University, where I worked with with Prof. Steven Wu. I have obtained B.E. degree in Computer Science and Technology from Zhejiang University under the supervision of Prof. Kai Bu on network security (in detail, path validation).
Interested topics: AI Safety, LLM, Test Time Scaling, etc.
I am actively seeking PhD opportunities from 2026!
Publications
- Xiaoyu Wu, Yifei Pang, Terrance Liu, Steven Wu. “Rethinking Exact Unlearning under Exposure: Extracting Forgotten Data under Exact Unlearning in Large Language Model” NeurIPS 2025. [paper, code]
- Xiaoyu Wu, Yifei Pang, Terrance Liu, Steven Wu. “Winning the MIDST Challenge: New Membership Inference Attacks on Diffusion Models for Tabular Data Synthesis” Theory and Practice of Differential Privacy 2025. [paper, code, poster]
- Yifei Pang, Sreenidhi Ganachari, Yuan Yuan, Steven Wu, Xiaojing Dong, Jin Xu, Zhenyu Yan. “A New Approach to Generate Individual Level Data of Walled Garden Platforms: Linear Programming Reconstruction” NeurIPS 2024 Workshop on Behavioral ML. [paper, code, poster]
- Anxiao He, Kai Bu, Jiongrui Huang, Yifei Pang, Qianping Gu, and Kui Ren. “SwiftParade: Anti-burst Multipath Validation.” IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (2023) [paper]
- Yifei Pang, Anxiao He, Wenjie Hou, Yunyi Teng, Kai Bu, Qianping Gu, and Kui Ren. “SwiftOracle: Orthogonality-driven Private Multipath Validation”, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing in Apr. 2025.
Award
- MIDST Challenge 1st ($8000 CAD prize) for all four tracks - as a team member of Tartan Federer (2025)
- Information Networking Institute Outstanding Student Services Award - Research Assistant (2025)
Teaching
- Fall 2025: Teaching Assistant for CMU 18734/17731
- Fall 2024: Teaching Assistant for CMU 14740
Others
I watch and play soccer, and am a fan of Liverpool Football Club (L.F.C.).