Yubo (Mars) Zhou
π§ [email protected] ο½ Google Scholar ο½ CV
Master of Information Science (Thesis Track)
University of Michigan, School of Information
I am a Master of Information Science student (thesis track) at the University of Michigan School of Information, advised by Prof. Ceren Budak and working with Prof. Anhong Guo and Prof. Yulin Yu. My research investigates how platforms and AI systems can be designed to advance individuals' own goals while producing value for the communities they participate in, moving beyond the direct optimization of short-term engagement or contribution. I combine causal inference and data mining on large-scale platform data -- characterizing how existing mechanisms shape behavior and community outcomes, and when these effects hold -- with the design and experimental evaluation of interactive systems that act on those findings as interventions.
Before Michigan, I received my B.S. (First Class Honours) in Business Computing and Data Analytics from Hong Kong Baptist University, where I worked on applied machine learning and graph algorithms with Prof. Jianliang Xu and Prof. Renchi Yang.
Beyond research, I care about putting ideas into practice β mentoring students, teaching, and building scholarly communities. See my teaching and service.
Research Interests
- Computational social science and online communities
- Causal inference and large-scale field experiments
- Human-AI interaction and user agency
Read more about my researchβ
Selected Publications
- Yubo Zhou, Pengyu Chen, Ceren Budak. "Who Benefits from Wikipedia's Growth Mentorship? The Role of Newcomer Information Needs." ICWSM, 2026.
- Haoran Zheng, Renchi Yang, Yubo Zhou, Jianliang Xu. "Rethinking Message Passing Neural Networks with Diffusion Distance-Guided Stress Majorization." ACM SIGKDD, 2025.
View full publication list β
Selected Awards
- HKSAR Government Scholarship (top recipients)
- Teresa Noel Urban Blaurock Student Research Award, University of Michigan
- ETHGlobal Brussels β World Top 10 Finalist (top award)
- Mathematical Contest in Modeling β Meritorious Winner (top 2β7%)
News
- Aug 15, 2026 β Our AI Scaffolding Tool for Social Annotation was accepted at UIST Poster 2026. π
- Jul 16, 2026 β Our Wikipedia mentorship paper was directly accepted at ICWSM 2026. π
- May 1, 2026 β Received the Teresa Noel Urban Blaurock Student Research Award for research with Prof. Ceren Budak. Thank you, Ceren!
- Apr 15, 2026 β SIMA was named Student Organization of the Year at the UMSI Student Leadership Showcase. Congrats to the whole team!