Ryan Shi

Last updated in . Get the latest version at ryanzshi.github.io/cv, or download the PDF.

Assistant Professor at University of Pittsburgh

Research Area

Positions

2024–Present University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA
Assistant Professor
2023 DataKind Remote
Consultant
2022 Microsoft Redmond, WA
Research Intern
2021 Facebook Menlo Park, CA
Software Engineering Intern

Education

2018–2023 Ph.D. in Societal Computing, Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA

School of Computer Science. Advisor: Fei Fang
Committee: Rayid Ghani, Jason Hong, Milind Tambe
Thesis: Learning and Planning Towards AI for Social Good

2014–2018 B.A. in Mathematics and Computer Science, with Honors, Swarthmore College Swarthmore, PA

GPA 4.00/4.00

2016–2017 Visiting Student, EECS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA

GPA 5.00/5.00

Deployed Research

SmartFoodRescue: Volunteer engagement for food security

Working with Food Rescue Hero, we built a set of tools that predict which food rescue requests are at risk and design a volunteer notification scheme around them. In use by 412 Food Rescue since February 2020, serving over 45k volunteers and 8k community organizations, and helping distribute over 124 million pounds of food. Built on AWS.

NewsPanda & NewsSerow: Media monitoring for timely conservation action

A toolkit that automatically detects and analyzes online articles about environmental conservation and infrastructure construction. Deployed by World Wide Fund for Nature teams in the UK, India, and Nepal since February 2022, monitoring 60K+ protected areas. The follow-up, NewsSerow, has been deployed with WWF Nepal and Colombia since 2023. Winner of the 2023 IAAI Deployed Application Award and Google AI for Good award funding.

Notable Awards

2026 Amazon Research Award Amazon
Runner-up, Laude Moonshots Program Laude Institute
IAAI Deployed Application Award AAAI
Google Gemini Academic Program Award Google
2025 Google Academic Research Award Google
AAAI New Faculty Highlights AAAI
2024 Google Academic Research Award Google
Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence Carnegie Mellon University
John C. Mascaro Faculty Fellowship University of Pittsburgh
2023 Finalist, Schmidt Science Fellows Schmidt Futures
IAAI Deployed Application Award AAAI
2022 Rising Star in Data Science University of Chicago
Rising Star in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence University of Southern California
2021 Siebel Scholar Award Siebel Scholars Foundation
Carnegie Mellon Presidential Fellowship Carnegie Mellon University
2018 Upsilon Pi Epsilon Honor Society Scholarship IEEE Computer Society
2017 Best Paper Award AAMAS-17 Workshop on Teams in Multiagent Systems
Honorable Mention, Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award Computing Research Association

Grants

2026 Precision Rehab for Patients Post-Stroke Through Artificial Intelligence Co-I

NIH NICHD-R01

The Digital Twin for Transforming Post-Surgical Care and Achieving Best-in-Class Outcomes PI

Laude Moonshots Seed Grant, $200,000

Benchmarking and Improving Multilingual LLMs on Real Indic Language Healthcare Dialogues PI

Amazon Research Award, $50,000

Benchmarking and Improving Multilingual LLMs on Real Indic Language Healthcare Dialogues PI

Google Gemini Academic Award, $30,000

OpenAI Research Access Grant PI

OpenAI, $1,000

2025 Empowering Smallholder Farmers Through Personalized Engagement PI

Google Academic Research Award, $100,000

Identifying and Analyzing Influencer Marketing of Pharmaceutical Products on Social Media PI

Pitt Cyber Accelerator Grant, $5,169.60

2024 Empowering Smallholder Farmers Through Personalized Engagement PI

Google Academic Research Award, $75,000

John C. Mascaro Faculty Fellowship PI

University of Pittsburgh, $15,000

Mitigating Misinformation in LLM-Generated Legal Summaries Co-PI

Pitt Cyber Accelerator Grant, $12,000

Publications

Conference Publications

C19
Script Gap: Evaluating LLM Triage on Indian Languages in Native vs Roman Scripts in a Real World Setting
Manurag Khullar, Utkarsh Desai, Poorva Malviya, Aman Dalmia, Zheyuan Ryan Shi. EMNLP: Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, 2026.
C18
RescueLens: LLM-Powered Triage and Action on Volunteer Feedback for Food Rescue
Naveen Janaki Raman, Jingwu Tang, Zhiyu Chen, Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Sean Hudson, Ameesh Kapoor, Fei Fang. IAAI: Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 2026.
C17
MMBERT: Scaled Mixture-of-Experts Multimodal BERT for Robust Chinese Hate Speech Detection under Cloaking Perturbations
Qiyao Xue, Yuchen Dou, Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Xiang Lorraine Li, Wei Gao. AAAI: AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2026.
C16
Resolving UnderEdit & OverEdit with Iterative & Neighbor-Assisted Model Editing
Bhiman Kumar Baghel, Scott M. Jordan, Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Xiang Lorraine Li. EMNLP: Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, 2025.
C15
Predicting and Presenting Task Difficulty for Crowdsourcing Food Rescue Platforms
Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Jiayin Zhi, Siqi Zeng, Zhicheng Zhang, Ameesh Kapoor, Sean Hudson, Hong Shen, Fei Fang. WWW: The ACM Web Conference, 2024.
C14
Global Rewards in Restless Multi-Armed Bandits
Naveen Raman, Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Fei Fang. NeurIPS: Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, 2024.
C13
Where It Really Matters: Few-Shot Environmental Conservation Media Monitoring for Low-Resource Languages
Sameer Jain, Sedrick Scott Keh, Shova Chhetri, Karun Dewan, Pablo Izquierdo, Johanna Prussmann, Pooja Shrestha, César Suárez, Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Lei Li, Fei Fang. AAAI: AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2024.
C12
NewsPanda: Media Monitoring for Timely Conservation Action
Sedrick Scott Keh*, Zheyuan Ryan Shi*, David J. Patterson, Nirmal Bhagabati, Karun Dewan, Areendran Gopala, Pablo Izquierdo, Debojyoti Mallick, Ambika Sharma, Pooja Shrestha, Fei Fang. IAAI: Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 2023.
C11
MAVIPER: Learning Decision Tree Policies for Interpretable Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
Stephanie Milani, Zhicheng Zhang, Nicholay Topin, Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Charles Kamhoua, Evangelos E. Papalexakis, Fei Fang. ECML PKDD: European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases, 2022.
C10
Bandit Data-Driven Optimization
Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Zhiwei Steven Wu, Rayid Ghani, Fei Fang. AAAI: AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2022.
C9
Pallet Estimation for Food Bank Logistics Management
Alison Hau, Fei Fang, Zheyuan Ryan Shi. COMPASS: ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies (Poster), 2021.
C8
A Recommender System for Crowdsourcing Food Rescue Platforms
Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Leah Lizarondo, Fei Fang. WWW: The ACM Web Conference, 2021.
C7
AI for Social Good: Between My Research and the Real World
Zheyuan Ryan Shi. AAAI DC: AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Doctoral Consortium, 2021.
C6
Improving Efficiency of Volunteer-Based Food Rescue Operations
Zheyuan Ryan Shi*, Yiwen Yuan*, Kimberly Lo, Leah Lizarondo, Fei Fang. IAAI: Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 2020.
C5
Learning and Planning in the Feature Deception Problem
Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Ariel D. Procaccia, Kevin S. Chan, Sridhar Venkatesan, Noam Ben-Asher, Nandi O. Leslie, Charles Kamhoua, Fei Fang. GameSec: Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security, 2020.
C4
Draining the Water Hole: Mitigating Social Engineering Attacks with CyberTWEAK
Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Aaron Schlenker, Brian Hay, Daniel Bittleston, Siyu Gao, Emily Peterson, John Trezza, Fei Fang. IAAI: Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 2020.
C3
Deep Reinforcement Learning for Green Security Games with Real-Time Information
Yufei Wang, Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Lantao Yu, Yi Wu, Rohit Singh, Lucas Joppa, Fei Fang. AAAI: AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2019.
C2
Designing the Game to Play: Optimizing Payoff Structure in Security Games
Zheyuan Ryan Shi*, Ziye Tang*, Long Tran-Thanh, Rohit Singh, Fei Fang. IJCAI-ECAI: International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2018.
C1
Strategic Reporting in Exponential Family Prediction Markets
Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Sindhu Kutty. IEEE URTC: MIT IEEE Undergraduate Research Technology Conference, 2016.

Journal Publications

J1
A Deployment Study of a Data-Driven Volunteer Engagement System for Food Security
Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Rayid Ghani, Fei Fang. IJAA: INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics, 2026.

Magazine Publications

M1
RescueLens: LLM-Powered Triage and Action on Volunteer Feedback for Food Rescue
Naveen Janaki Raman, Jingwu Tang, Zhiyu Chen, Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Sean Hudson, Ameesh Kapoor, Fei Fang. AIMag: AI Magazine, 2026.

Book Chapter Publications

B2
Interpretable Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with Decision-Tree Policies
Stephanie Milani, Zhicheng Zhang, Nicholay Topin, Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Charles Kamhoua, Evangelos E. Papalexakis, Fei Fang. Book Chapter: Explainable Agency in Artificial Intelligence (CRC Press / Taylor & Francis), 2024.
B1
AI for Food Rescue
Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Yiwen Yuan, Kimberly Lo, Ameesh Kapoor, Anthony Levin-Decanini, Sean Hudson, Jake Tepperman, Leah Lizarondo, Fei Fang. Book Chapter: AI for Social Impact (eds. Tambe, Fang, Wilder), 2022.

Workshop Publications

W4
Towards Automated Scoping of AI for Social Good Projects
Jacob Emmerson, Rayid Ghani, Zheyuan Ryan Shi. ArXiv: 2504.20010, 2025.
W3
Approximated Temporal-Induced Neural Self-Play for Finitely Repeated Bayesian Games
Zihan Zhou, Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Fei Fang, Yi Wu. RLG@AAAI: Reinforcement Learning in Games Workshop at AAAI, 2020.
W2
Social Bayesian Decision Making
Dhaval Adjodah, Yan Leng, Shi Kai Chong, Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Peter Krafft, Alejandro Noriega, Sandy Pentland. CISS: Conference on Information Sciences and Systems, 2018.
W1
Optimizing Peer Teaching to Enhance Team Performance
Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Fei Fang. AAMAS Workshops: International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, Best Papers Volume (LNAI 10642, Springer), 2017. Best Paper, TEAMAS-17

Preprints

P3
Contextual Budget Allocation in Restless Multi-armed Bandits
Ariana Tang, Naveen Raman, Fei Fang, Zheyuan Ryan Shi. ArXiv: 2509.10777, 2025.
P2
Context-Guided Churn Prediction: Explainable Farmer Engagement in Agricultural Chatbots
Yuchen Dou, Modhumonty Das, Jona Repishti, Sai Gole, Lorraine Li, Fei Fang, Zheyuan Ryan Shi. Preprint, 2025.
P1
Artificial Intelligence for Social Good: A Survey
Zheyuan Ryan Shi, Claire Wang, Fei Fang. ArXiv: 2001.01818, 2020.

Invited Talks

Sequential Decision Making on Crowdsourcing Food Rescue Platforms

Industrial Engineering Seminar, University of Pittsburgh

Iterative Learning and Planning for Public Sector Applications: Deployed Studies

IEEE Western Australia Chapter
Singapore Management University
Nanyang Technological University
Intelligent Systems Program, University of Pittsburgh
Computer Science Colloquium, University of Pittsburgh
City University of Hong Kong
The Third Macao Conference on Smart City Technologies
Peking University
Tsinghua University
Nanjing University
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Shanghai University of Finance and Economics
ShanghaiTech University

Bandit & LLM for Public Sector Applications: Deployed Studies

1st International Conference on AI-generated Content, RL in the Real World Workshop

Iterative Learning and Planning: Innovations & Lessons through AI for Nonprofits

University of Waterloo, Department of Management Sciences
University of Pittsburgh, School of Computing and Information

Artificial Intelligence for Nonprofits: Towards Computational Sustainability That Works

University of California, Irvine, Paul Merage School of Business
University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business

Towards the Science of AI for Nonprofits

University of Chicago, Data Science Institute
University of Southern California, Department of Computer Science
Microsoft Research India, Technology for Emerging Markets Speaker Series

From a Bag of Bagels to Bandit Data-Driven Optimization

INFORMS Annual Conference
Pennsylvania State University, Young Achievers Symposium
Pasteur's Quadrant Seminar Series

Learning and Planning in Feature Deception Games

Perspecta Labs

Teaching

Fall 2026 CS 2750: Machine Learning University of Pittsburgh
Fall 2025 CS 2750: Machine Learning University of Pittsburgh

1 undergraduate + 20 graduate students enrolled.

Spring 2025 CS 2750: Machine Learning University of Pittsburgh

1 undergraduate + 14 graduate students enrolled.

Spring 2026 CS 1675: Introduction to Machine Learning University of Pittsburgh

42 undergraduate + 1 graduate students enrolled.

Fall 2024 CS 1699/2099: Special Topics in CS: Machine Learning and Game Theory University of Pittsburgh

3 undergraduate + 2 graduate students enrolled.

Spring 2024 CS 3710: Advanced Topics in AI: AI for Social Good University of Pittsburgh

1 undergraduate + 12 graduate students enrolled.

Guest Lectures

Foundations of the Nonprofit Sector (PIA0501), University of Pittsburgh
Artificial Intelligence Methods for Social Good, Carnegie Mellon University
Bias and Ethical Implications in AI (CS1684), University of Pittsburgh
Data for Social Good (IE1171), University of Pittsburgh
Research Topics in Computer Science (CS2001), University of Pittsburgh
AI for Social Impact, Vanderbilt University
Artificial Intelligence Methods for Social Good, Carnegie Mellon University
Artificial Intelligence Methods for Social Good, Executive Education, Carnegie Mellon University
Artificial Intelligence Methods for Social Good, Carnegie Mellon University

Service

Workshop Organizer

2024 AAAI-24 Workshop on Public Sector Large Language Models: Algorithmic and Sociotechnical Design

Co-organized with Hong Shen, Sera Linardi, Lei Li, Fei Fang.

2020, 2021, 2022 CMU Symposia on AI for Social Good

Co-organized with Fei Fang, Rex Chen.

Senior Program Committee

Program Committee (Reviewer)

Professional Society Memberships