Xiaofan Yu

[Photo credit: Hui Shi]

Xiaofan Yu (于晓凡)

Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering
University of California, Merced

E-mail: xiaofanyu@ucmerced.edu
Office: Science and Engineering Building 2 (SE2) #382

Education:
Ph.D., UC San Diego, 2025, advised by Prof. Tajana Šimunić Rosing
B.S., Peking University, China, 2018

Awards:
ML&Systems Rising Star, 2024
CPS Rising Star, 2023
EECS Rising Star, 2022

More Information: My CV, Group's Website

Research Interests

On-device AI for edge computing in real-world deployments
Embedded systems design for emerging applications and needs
Neuromorphic and next-generation edge intelligence

I am broadly interested in building intelligent and autonomous embedded systems. Much of my work involves collaborations with academia and industry partners (full collaboration list).

Selected Publications

For the full publication list, see YuCCA Lab's publication or google scholar.

IMWUT'25

SensorChat: Answering Qualitative and Quantative Questions during Long-Term Multimodal Sensor Interactions

X. Yu, L. Hu, B. Reichman, D. Chu, R. Chandrupatla, X. Zhang, L. Heck, T. Rosing

Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologie (IMWUT), 2025

Code Slides

SenSys'25

SensorQA: A Question Answering Benchmark for Daily-Life Monitoring

B. Reichman^*, X. Yu^*, L. Hu, J. Truxal, A. Jain, R. Chandrupatla, T. Rosing, L. Heck

ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys), 2025

Code Slides

IPSN'24

Lifelong Intelligence beyond the Edge using Hyperdimensional Computing

X. Yu, A. Thomas, I. Gomez Moreno, L. Gutierrez, T. Rosing

ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN), 2024

Code Slides

IoTDI'23

Async-HFL: Efficient and Robust Asynchronous Federated Learning in Hierarchical IoT Networks

X. Yu, L. Cherkasova, H. Vardhan, Q. Zhao, E. Ekaireb, X. Zhang, A. Mazumdar, T. Rosing

ACM/IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things Design and Implementation (IoTDI), 2023

Code Slides

TCAD'20

Optimizing Sensor Deployment and Maintenance Cost for Large-Scale Environmental Monitoring

X. Yu, K. Ergun, L. Cherkasova, T. Rosing

IEEE Transactions on Computer Aided Design of Integrated Circuits & Systems (TCAD), 2020

Code Slides

Teaching

EE 60 (Spring 26), Digital System Design

Mentorship

Since 2020, I have mentored approximately 40 students across high school, undergraduate, master's, and doctoral levels, fostering research excellence and professional development.

Individual Mentees

Ye Tian,PhD'29 at UCSD
Publications: MASS'25, TIOT'25, SenSys'25 poster
Louis Gutierrez,PhD student at UCSD → E3R Inc.
Publication: IPSN'24
Alexander Redding,PhD'27 at UCSD
Publication: MobiCom'23 workshop
Danlin Jiang,MS'23 at UCSD → RF-Lambda
Publication: MDPI Sensors'24
Shengfan Hu,MS'24 at UCSD → Supermicro
Publications: DATE'24, MobiCom'23 workshop
Run Wang,BS'26 at UCSD
Publication: SenSys'24 poster
Rushil Chandrupatla,BS'26 at UCSD
Publications: IMWUT'25, SenSys'25, SenSys'24 demo
Dylan Chu,BS'25 at UCSD
Publication: IMWUT'25, SenSys'24 demo
Ivannia Gomez Moreno,BS'23 at CETYS University → MS'26 at TUM
Publications: ASP-DAC'24, IPSN'24
Quanling Zhao,BS'24 at UCSD → PhD'29 at UCSD
Publications: AAAI'25, DATE'24, NeurIPS'23 workshop, IPSN'23 poster, MobiCom'22 demo
Jinhao Liu,BS'22 at UCSD → Whova
Publication: SmartIoT'22
Emily Ekaireb,BS'22 at UCSD → MS'24 at UCSD
Publication: WNS3'22
Xueyang Song,BS'21 at UCSD → MS'23 at Stanford
Publications: TNSM'22, CNSM'20

Structured Mentorship Programs

Early Research Scholarship Program (ERSP) at UCSD

2022-2023: Jennifer Tanurdjaja (BS), Aammya Sapra (BS), Duanhui Li (BS), Jezebel Yangari (BS)
Project: Lightweight Hyperdimensional Computing (HDC) Algorithm for Microcontrollers
2021-2022: Quanling Zhao (BS), Kai Lee (BS), Jeffrey Liu (BS), Muhammad Huzaifa (BS)
Project: Hyperdimensional Computing on IoT Devices
Publication: MobiCom'22 demo

ENLACE Summer Research Program at UCSD

2024: Audrick Bolaños Linares (BS), Cesar Daniel Ortiz Aguilera (BS), Diego Muñiz De las Casas (HS), Marena Schiess (HS)
Project: Human Activity Data Collection, Analysis and LLM-based Zero Shot Reasoning
2022: Paul Verdugo (BS), Enya Solis (BS), Valeria Leal (HS), Mariana Flores (HS)
Project: Smart Elderly Monitoring with Mobile Robots

Miscellaneous

Since 2021, I have been organizing paper reading groups to help students in:

reading papers accurately and efficiently,
designing and conducting research schedules,
discussing research effectively with other people.

Throughout this process, I have found that using a template I created is very helpful. You can explore a repository of all the papers we have reviewed here.