Guangyao Dou

Hi, my name is Guangyao Dou (ηͺ¦ε…‰θ€€). I'm a first-year PhD student in Computer Science at the Center for Language and Speech Processing at Johns Hopkins University, advised by Prof. Benjamin Van Durme.

Previously, I completed my master's degree at the University of Pennsylvania, where I worked with Prof. Chris Callison-Burch and Prof. Eric Wong. Before that, I earned a B.S. in Computer Science from Brandeis University, graduating with honors as a member of Phi Beta Kappa (top 10%).

My research interest lies in GenAI Safety, AI Privacy, and Trustworthy AI.

Email  /  Master's Thesis  /  Google Scholar  /  X (Twitter)  /  Github  /  LinkedIn

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πŸ”₯What's New
  • 2025/08/25 Happily started my PhD at Johns Hopkins University! πŸŽ‰
  • 2025/06/02 Starting a role at Amazon as an Applied Scientist Intern this summer! πŸš€
  • 2025/05/15 MANU has been accepted to ACL 2025 Main. Congrats to all collaborators! πŸŽ‰
  • 2025/01/22 Two papers have been accepted to NAACL! Congrats to all collaborators! πŸŽ‰ Links: MLLMU-Bench, SSU.
  • 2024/12/13 Glad to receive the Best Master's Thesis Award at Penn! πŸ†
  • 2024/08/02 Glad to receive the GAPSA Professional Student Individual Grant from Penn! πŸŽ“πŸ…
  • 2024/07/30 Our new survey paper about Generative AI Machine Unlearning is now available on arxiv!
  • 2024/05/15 One paper has been accepted to ACL 2024πŸ‘: SKU. See you in Thailand!
  • 2024/01/23 Our paper ConMU has been accepted to WWW conference 2024!
Selected Publications (* indicates equal contribution) [Google Scholar]
2025
3DSP Modality-Aware Neuron Pruning for Unlearning in Multimodal Large Language Models
Zheyuan Liu, Guangyao Dou, Xiangchi Yuan,Chunhui Zhang, Zhaoxuan Tan, Meng Jiang
Proceedings of ACL 2025 (Main).

We propose Modality Aware Neuron Unlearning (MANU), a novel unlearning framework for MLLMs designed to selectively clip neurons based on their relative importance to the targeted forget data, curated for different modalities. Specifically, MANU consists of two stages: important neuron selection and selective pruning. The first stage identifies and collects the most influential neurons across modalities relative to the targeted forget knowledge, while the second stage is dedicated to pruning those selected neurons.

3DSP Avoiding Copyright Infringement via Large Language Model Unlearning
Guangyao Dou, Zheyuan Liu, Qing Lyu, Kaize Ding, Eric Wong
Proceedings of NAACL 2025 (Findings).

We propose Stable Sequential Unlearning (SSU), a novel framework designed to unlearn copyrighted content from LLMs over multiple time steps. Our approach works by identifying and removing specific weight updates in the model's parameters that correspond to copyrighted content. We improve unlearning efficacy by introducing random labeling loss and ensuring the model retains its general-purpose knowledge by adjusting targeted parameters.

3DSP Protecting Privacy in Multimodal Large Language Models with MLLMU-Bench
Zheyuan Liu, Guangyao Dou, Mengzhao Jia, Zhaoxuan Tan, Qingkai Zeng, Yongle Yuan, Meng Jiang
Proceedings of NAACL 2025 (Main).

We introduce Multimodal Large Language Model Unlearning Benchmark (MLLMU-Bench), a novel benchmark aimed at advancing the understanding of multimodal machine unlearning. MLLMU-Bench consists of 500 fictitious profiles and 153 profiles for public celebrities, each profile feature over 14 customized question-answer pairs, evaluated from both multimodal (image+text) and unimodal (text) perspectives.

2024
3DSP Towards Safer Large Language Models through Machine Unlearning
Zheyuan Liu, Guangyao Dou, Zhaoxuan Tan, Yijun Tian, Meng Jiang
Proceedings of ACL (Findings), 2024.

We introduce Selective Knowledge negation Unlearning (SKU), a novel unlearning framework for LLMs, designed to eliminate harmful knowledge while preserving utility on normal prompts.

3DSP Breaking the Trilemma of Privacy, Utility, Efficiency via Controllable Machine Unlearning
Zheyuan Liu*, Guangyao Dou*, Yijun Tian, Chunhui Zhang, Eli Chien, Ziwei Zhu
Proceedings of The Web Conference (WWW), 2024.

We present Controllable Machine Unlearning (ConMU), a novel framework designed to facilitate the calibration of MU.

Industrial Experience
Amazon Web Service
Santa Clara, CA, USA
2025.06 - 2025.08

Applied Scientist Intern
Manager: Mukul Prasad
Mentor: Vidyashankar Sivakumar
Amazon Payment Service
Seattle, WA, USA
2021.05 - 2021.08

Software Development Engineer Intern
Education
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD, USA
2025.08 - Present

Ph.D. in Computer Science
Advisor: Prof. Benjamin Van Durme
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA, USA
2023.08 - present

MSE in Data Science
GPA: 4.00 / 4.00
Brandeis University
Waltham, MA, USA
2019.08 - 2023.05

B.S. in Computer Science

GPA: 3.98 / 4.00
Teaching
  • Teaching Assistant, CIS 5190: Machine Learning, University of Pennsylvania (Fall 2024, Spring 2025)
  • Teaching Assistant, Data Structures and the Fundamentals of Computing, Brandeis University (Fall 2021)
Academic Service
  • Conference Reviewer: NeurIPS, EMNLP, NAACL, ACL
  • Journal Reviewer: IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, npj Digital Medicine (Nature Portfolio)
Miscellaneous
  • I've always been surrounded by wonderful friends, collaborators, and advisors, and I try to maintain an optimistic outlook. If you're having a tough time and would like someone to talk to, feel free to reach out!
  • I like basketball, lifting, and making new friends.