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Zhiyuan (Jerry) Lin
zylin@cs.stanford.edu
ItsMrLin.com
Education
Stanford University Ph.D. in Computer Science September 2016 - June 2021
Computational social science, algorithm-assisted human decision making, data science, applied statistics and machine learning.
Georgia Institute of Technology B.S. in Computer Science, Minor in Math; Highest Honor August 2012 - May 2016
Info-internetworks and intelligence threads, with all theory thread courses completed for CS major. Probability and statistics track for math minor.
Experience
Research Scientist Meta August 2021 - Present
2026-Present: Applied AI. Develop methods for improving and evaluating AI systems and agents through expert feedback, human-in-the-loop optimization, and data-efficient learning.
2021-2026: Adaptive Experimentation at Central Applied Science. Bayesian optimization, AI-moderated preference learning, and experiment decision modeling methods for sample-efficient product optimization and experimentation.
Research Intern and Collaborator Facebook June 2019 - September 2020
Interned and collaborated externally at the Adaptive Experimentation team under Core Data Science. Worked on preference learning and experiment decision modeling.
Social Network Research Intern Tencent June 2017 - September 2017
Interned at WeChat. Worked on user behavior modeling and article forwarding prediction leveraging latent overlapping group structures; improved performance by 20% compared to baseline model.
Applied Research Intern eBay 2015 - 2016
Interned at Discovery team at eBay NYC office in summer 2015 and summer 2016. In summer 2015, I worked on eBay's related product recommender system. The resulted model outperformed eBay's existing counterpart by 30% in internal test. In summer 2016, I worked on complementary products recommender systems and devised user group separation models with mathematical and machine learning techniques.
Media Application & Presentation Engineer Intern Yahoo May 2014 - August 2014
Interned in Yahoo's Homepage & Vertical team, Worked on Yahoo's homepage, mainly the mobile website. Worked collaboratively with product managers, designers, and engineers to improve the user experience at the end of articles. My work increased a group of users' engagement time by 3 times.
Selected Publications
Embedding by Elicitation: Dynamic Representations for Bayesian Optimization of System Prompts [PDF] [PDF] Preprint 2026
  • Zhiyuan Jerry Lin,
  • Benjamin Letham,
  • Samuel Dooley,
  • Maximilian Balandat,
  • Eytan Bakshy
  • Zhiyuan Jerry Lin,
  • Benjamin Letham,
  • Samuel Dooley,
  • Maximilian Balandat,
  • Eytan Bakshy
LILO: Bayesian Optimization with Natural Language Feedback [PDF] [PDF] ICML 2026
  • Katarzyna Kobalczyk,
  • Zhiyuan Jerry Lin,
  • Benjamin Letham,
  • Zhuokai Zhao,
  • Maximilian Balandat,
  • Eytan Bakshy
  • Katarzyna Kobalczyk,
  • Zhiyuan Jerry Lin,
  • Benjamin Letham,
  • Zhuokai Zhao,
  • Maximilian Balandat,
  • Eytan Bakshy
Ax: A Platform for Adaptive Experimentation [PDF] [PDF] AutoML 2025
  • Miles Olson,
  • Elizabeth Santorella,
  • Louis C. Tiao,
  • Sait Cakmak,
  • Mia Garrard,
  • Samuel Daulton,
  • Zhiyuan Jerry Lin,
  • Sebastian Ament,
  • Bernard Beckerman,
  • Eric Onofrey,
  • Paschal Igusti,
  • Cristian Lara,
  • Benjamin Letham,
  • Cesar Cardoso,
  • Shiyun Sunny Shen,
  • Andy Chenyuan Lin,
  • Matthew Grange,
  • Elena Kashtelyan,
  • David Eriksson,
  • Maximilian Balandat,
  • Eytan Bakshy
  • Miles Olson,
  • Elizabeth Santorella,
  • Louis C. Tiao,
  • Sait Cakmak,
  • Mia Garrard,
  • Samuel Daulton,
  • Zhiyuan Jerry Lin,
  • Sebastian Ament,
  • Bernard Beckerman,
  • Eric Onofrey,
  • Paschal Igusti,
  • Cristian Lara,
  • Benjamin Letham,
  • Cesar Cardoso,
  • Shiyun Sunny Shen,
  • Andy Chenyuan Lin,
  • Matthew Grange,
  • Elena Kashtelyan,
  • David Eriksson,
  • Maximilian Balandat,
  • Eytan Bakshy
Joint Composite Latent Space Bayesian Optimization [PDF] [PDF] ICML 2024
  • Natalie Maus,
  • Zhiyuan Jerry Lin,
  • Maximilian Balandat,
  • Eytan Bakshy
  • Natalie Maus,
  • Zhiyuan Jerry Lin,
  • Maximilian Balandat,
  • Eytan Bakshy
qEUBO: A Decision-Theoretic Acquisition Function for Preferential Bayesian Optimization [PDF] [PDF] AISTATS 2023
  • Raul Astudillo,
  • Zhiyuan Jerry Lin,
  • Eytan Bakshy,
  • Peter I. Frazier
  • Raul Astudillo,
  • Zhiyuan Jerry Lin,
  • Eytan Bakshy,
  • Peter I. Frazier
Preference Exploration for Efficient Bayesian Optimization with Multiple Outcomes [PDF] [PDF] AISTATS 2022
  • Zhiyuan Jerry Lin,
  • Raul Astudillo,
  • Peter I. Frazier,
  • Eytan Bakshy
  • Zhiyuan Jerry Lin,
  • Raul Astudillo,
  • Peter I. Frazier,
  • Eytan Bakshy
Probability Paths and the Structure of Predictions over Time [PDF] [PDF] NeurIPS 2021
  • Zhiyuan Jerry Lin,
  • Hao Sheng,
  • Sharad Goel
  • Zhiyuan Jerry Lin,
  • Hao Sheng,
  • Sharad Goel
Blind Justice: Algorithmically Masking Race in Charging Decisions [PDF] [PDF] AAAI/ACM AIES 2021
  • Alex Chohlas-Wood,
  • Joe Nudell,
  • Keniel Yao,
  • Zhiyuan (Jerry) Lin,
  • Julian Nyarko,
  • Sharad Goel
  • Alex Chohlas-Wood,
  • Joe Nudell,
  • Keniel Yao,
  • Zhiyuan (Jerry) Lin,
  • Julian Nyarko,
  • Sharad Goel
The Limits of Human Predictions of Recidivism [PDF] [PDF] Science Advances, 2020
  • Zhiyuan (Jerry) Lin,
  • Jongbin Jung,
  • Sharad Goel,
  • Jennifer Skeem
  • Zhiyuan (Jerry) Lin,
  • Jongbin Jung,
  • Sharad Goel,
  • Jennifer Skeem
Guiding Prosecutorial Decisions with an Interpretable Statistical Model [PDF] [PDF] AAAI/ACM AIES 2019
  • Zhiyuan Lin,
  • Alex Chohlas-Wood,
  • Sharad Goel
  • Zhiyuan Lin,
  • Alex Chohlas-Wood,
  • Sharad Goel
I'll Be Back: On the Multiple Lives of Users of a Mobile Activity Tracking Application [PDF] [PDF] WWW 2018
  • Zhiyuan Lin,
  • Tim Althoff,
  • Jure Leskovec
  • Zhiyuan Lin,
  • Tim Althoff,
  • Jure Leskovec
Better When It Was Smaller? Community Content and Behavior After Massive Growth [PDF] [PDF] AAAI ICWSM 2017
  • Zhiyuan Lin,
  • Niloufar Salehi,
  • Bowen Yao,
  • Yiqi Chen,
  • Michael Bernstein
  • Zhiyuan Lin,
  • Niloufar Salehi,
  • Bowen Yao,
  • Yiqi Chen,
  • Michael Bernstein