My name is Jingyan Shen. I am a first-year CS Ph.D. student at New York University, advised by Prof. Matus Telgarsky and Prof. Pavel Izmailov. Previously, I earned my dual master degree from Tsinghua University and Columbia University. Prior to this, I completed my Bachelor’s degree at Wuhan University, majoring in Statistics.

I am broadly interested in data-centric machine learning and statistical machine learning. My recent research focuses on LLM post-training, particularly on advancing the reasoning capabilities of large language models through reinforcement learning.

I am also fortunate to work with many great scholars and mentors, and I’m deeply grateful for their guidance.

📝 Preprints and Publications

(^†: equal contribution)

Large Language Model Reasoning:

• When Reasoning Meets Its Laws

  Junyu Zhang^†, Yifan Sun^†, Tianang Leng^†, Jingyan Shen^†, Ziyin Liu, Paul Pu Liang, Huan Zhang
  Efficient Reasoning Workshop at NeurIPS 2025 (Oral Presentation) [Paper] [Website]

• Improving Data Efficiency for LLM Reinforcement Fine-tuning Through Difficulty-targeted Online Data Selection and Rollout Replay

  Yifan Sun^†, Jingyan Shen^†, Yibin Wang^†, Tianyu Chen, Zhendong Wang, Mingyuan Zhou, Huan Zhang
  NeurIPS 2025 [Paper]

Large Language Model Alignment:

• MiCRo: Mixture Modeling and Context-aware Routing for Personalized Preference Learning

  Jingyan Shen^†, Jiarui Yao^†, Rui Yang^†, Yifan Sun, Feng Luo, Rui Pan, Tong Zhang, Han Zhao
  EMNLP 2025 (Main) Outstanding Paper Award 🏆 [Paper]

• Conformal Tail Risk Control for Large Language Model Alignment

  Catherine Chen, Jingyan Shen, Zhun Deng, Lihua Lei
  ICML 2025 [Paper]

• Rethinking Diverse Human Preference Learning through Principal Component Analysis

  Feng Luo, Rui Yang, Hao Sun, Chunyuan Deng, Jiarui Yao, Jingyan Shen, Huan Zhang, Hanjie Chen
  ACL 2025 (Findings) [Paper]

Data-centric Machine Learning:

• TimeInf: Time Series Data Contribution via Influence Functions

  Yizi Zhang^†, Jingyan Shen^†, Xiaoxue Xiong^†, Yongchan Kwon
  ICLR 2025 [Paper] [Code]

• 2D-OOB: Attributing Data Contribution through Joint Valuation Framework

  Yifan Sun^†, Jingyan Shen^†, Yongchan Kwon
  NeurIPS 2024 [Paper] [Code]

🎖 Honors and Awards

• Outstanding Graduate Student (Top 1%), Tsinghua University, 2024
• Excellent Graduate Thesis Award, Tsinghua University, 2024
• Graduate Fellowship, Columbia University, 2023
• Outstanding Undergraduate Student, Wuhan University, 2021
• National Scholarship for Undergraduates, Ministry of Education of China, 2018

💻 Industry Experience

• 2024.02 - 2025.06, Full-time machine learning engineer at Pinterest

🌟 Miscs

I value the diversity and richness of life, and I hold a deep respect for beauty and purity in all their forms. Beyond research, I enjoy playing table tennis and tennis, playing drums, losing myself in a good book, or discovering new places through travel. My recent favorite novels include Flowers for Algernon and My Name Is Red. I am also a big fan of Stephen Sondheim’s musicals, particularly Company and Sunday in the Park with George. Born in Guangzhou, I’m picky about food and I particularly enjoy Japanese and Cantonese cuisine for their focus on fresh ingredients and natural flavors.