Yuanfu Sun
Logo Ph.D. Student

I’m a second-year Ph.D. student at NYU Courant and NYU Shanghai, fortunately advised by Prof. Qiaoyu Tan in the DIR Lab. Prior to this, I earned my bachelor’s degree in Artificial Intelligence from Jilin University (JLU), where I was fortunate to be mentored by Prof. Yi Chang at JLUAI.

My research centers on Foundation Models, Relational AI, and Data-centric AI, including but not limited to:

  • LLMs and MLLMs: Multimodal Understanding, Agentic Reasoning, RAG, Agents and Safety
  • Data Mining: Graph Mining, Graph Foundation Models, Multimodal Graph Reasoning and GraphRAG

I’m open to collaborations of all kinds. Feel free to reach out if you’re interested in our work or would like to explore potential collaboration opportunities.


Education
  • New York University
    New York University
    Computer Science Department at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
    Ph.D.
    Aug. 2024 - present
  • Jilin University
    Jilin University
    School of Artificial Intelligence
    B.Eng
    Aug. 2020 - Jun. 2024
Experience
  • Sensetime Research
    Sensetime Research
    Research Scientist Intern
    Aug. 2025 - Feb. 2026
  • New York University Shanghai
    New York University Shanghai
    Research Assistant
    Nov. 2023 - Aug. 2024
  • Tencent
    Tencent
    Program Intern
    Aug. 2023 - Nov. 2023
Honors & Awards
  • Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award
    2024
  • Outstanding Undergraduate Student (JLU)
    2024, 2023, 2022
  • First-class scholarship (JLU)
    2024, 2023
News
2026
One paper accepted by ACL'2026 main! See you in San Diego!
Apr 06
Please check out our new book: Artificial Intelligence for STEM Education Research. I’m very fortunate to have contributed as the first author of Chapter 9, “Recommender Systems for STEM Education Research.” If you are an educator, then this book may offer you some new insights into education!
Mar 08
One paper accepted by CVPR'2026 main!
Feb 21
2025
I will join Sensetime Research Foundation Model Training Team as a research intern this fall, working on MLLM Reasoning.
Aug 15
I will serve as the PC member of AAAI 2026
Aug 10
One paper accepted by KDD'25 Dataset&Benchmark Track!
May 15
One paper accepted by NAACL'2025
Jan 23
2024
I will be a Ph.D. Student at NYU Courant starting in Fall 2024
Mar 01
Selected Publications (view all )
AgentGL: Towards Agentic Graph Learning with LLMs via Reinforcement Learning
AgentGL: Towards Agentic Graph Learning with LLMs via Reinforcement Learning

Yuanfu Sun*, Kang Li*, Dongzhe Fan, Jiajin Liu, Qiaoyu Tan

Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) 2026

AgentGL: Towards Agentic Graph Learning with LLMs via Reinforcement Learning

Yuanfu Sun*, Kang Li*, Dongzhe Fan, Jiajin Liu, Qiaoyu Tan

Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) 2026

Chapter 9. Recommender Systems for STEM Education Research
Chapter 9. Recommender Systems for STEM Education Research

Yuanfu Sun, Qiaoyu Tan

Artificial Intelligence for STEM Education Research by Xiaoming Zhai and Gyeonggeon Lee (Springer Nature) 2026

Chapter 9. Recommender Systems for STEM Education Research

Yuanfu Sun, Qiaoyu Tan

Artificial Intelligence for STEM Education Research by Xiaoming Zhai and Gyeonggeon Lee (Springer Nature) 2026

Mario: Multimodal Graph Reasoning with Large Language Models
Mario: Multimodal Graph Reasoning with Large Language Models

Yuanfu Sun*, Kang Li*, Pengkang Guo, Jiajin Liu, Qiaoyu Tan

The IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2026

Mario: Multimodal Graph Reasoning with Large Language Models

Yuanfu Sun*, Kang Li*, Pengkang Guo, Jiajin Liu, Qiaoyu Tan

The IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2026

TrustGLM: Evaluating the Robustness of GraphLLMs Against Prompt, Text, and Structure Attacks
TrustGLM: Evaluating the Robustness of GraphLLMs Against Prompt, Text, and Structure Attacks

Qihai Zhang*, Xinyue Sheng*, Yuanfu Sun, Qiaoyu Tan

ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) 2025

TrustGLM: Evaluating the Robustness of GraphLLMs Against Prompt, Text, and Structure Attacks

Qihai Zhang*, Xinyue Sheng*, Yuanfu Sun, Qiaoyu Tan

ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) 2025

GraphICL: Unlocking Graph Learning Potential in LLMs through Structured Prompt Design
GraphICL: Unlocking Graph Learning Potential in LLMs through Structured Prompt Design

Yuanfu Sun*, Zhengnan Ma*, Yi Fang, Jing Ma, Qiaoyu Tan

Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (NAACL) 2025

GraphICL: Unlocking Graph Learning Potential in LLMs through Structured Prompt Design

Yuanfu Sun*, Zhengnan Ma*, Yi Fang, Jing Ma, Qiaoyu Tan

Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (NAACL) 2025

All publications