Zhengyang Shan headshot

Zhengyang Shan

PhD Student

Boston University (CDS)

I am a PhD student in the Faculty of Computing and Data Sciences at Boston University. I study fairness, interpretability, and evaluation of large language models, focusing on how demographic attributes are represented and their potential misuse.

Interests
  • LLM Fairness & Inclusivity
  • Interpretability
  • Evaluation
  • LLMs Personalization
Education
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Boston UniversityPhD in the Faculty of Computing and Data Sciences
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University of Michigan — Ann ArborMSc in Quantitative Finance and Risk Management
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The Pennsylvania State UniversityBSc in Mathematics and Computational Statistics, minor in Computer Science
News
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Publications

Zhengyang Shan, Emily Diana, Jiawei Zhou (2025). Gender Inclusivity Fairness Index (GIFI): A Multilevel Framework for Evaluating Gender Diversity in Large Language Models. ACL 2025

Abstract

We present a comprehensive evaluation of gender fairness in large language models (LLMs), focusing on their ability to handle both binary and non-binary genders. While previous studies primarily focus on binary gender distinctions, we introduce the Gender Inclusivity Fairness Index (GIFI), a novel and comprehensive metric that quantifies the diverse gender inclusivity of LLMs. GIFI consists of a wide range of evaluations at different levels, from simply probing the model with respect to provided gender pronouns to testing various aspects of model generation and cognitive behaviors under different gender assumptions, revealing biases associated with varying gender identifiers. We conduct extensive evaluations with GIFI on 22 prominent open-source and proprietary LLMs of varying sizes and capabilities, discovering significant variations in LLMs’ gender inclusivity. Our study highlights the importance of improving LLMs’ inclusivity, providing a critical benchmark for future advancements in gender fairness in generative models.

Zhengyang Shan (2021). Nonuniqueness for a fully nonlinear, degenerate elliptic boundary-value problem in conformal geometry. Differential Geometry and its Applications

Abstract

One way to generalize the boundary Yamabe problem posed by Escobar is to ask if a given metric on a compact manifold with boundary can be conformally deformed to have vanishing σ_k-curvature in the interior and constant H_k-curvature on the boundary. When restricting to the closure of the positive k-cone, this is a fully nonlinear degenerate elliptic boundary value problem with fully nonlinear Robin-type boundary condition. We prove nonuniqueness for the boundary-value problem σ_4-curvature equals zero and constant H_4-curvature by using bifurcation results proven by Case, Moreira and Wang. Our construction via products of sphere and hyperbolic space only works for a finite set of dimensions.

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Teaching Experience

📚 Boston University