ZHU Yulin (Tony)

• Assistant Professor
• Department of Computer Science, Hong Kong Chu Hai College (HKCHC)
• Email: zhuyulin.tony@gmail.com, ylzhu@chuhai.edu.hk
• Office: E601r, Hong Kong Chu Hai College, No. 80 Castle Peak Bay, Tuen Mun, NT, HKSAR.

Biography

Yulin Zhu is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Hong Kong Chu Hai College (HKCHC). Before on board, he served as a postdoctoral research fellow at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and was supervised by Prof. Kai Zhou. He obtained his B.S. from Wuhan University and Ph.D. from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) advised by Prof. Xiaodan FAN. I’m open to research collaboration and please feel free to contact me! 😃

Professional Experience

• 07/2024 - Present, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, Hong Kong Chu Hai College (HKCHC).
• 07/2022 - 07/2024, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Computing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU).
• 10/2020 - 06/2022, Research Fellow, Department of Computing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU).
• 09/2016 - 10/2020, Teaching Assistant, Department of Statistics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).
• 01/2020 - 08/2020, Part-time Research Intern, TCL Moka International Limited.

Education

• 09/2016 - 12/2020, Ph.D., The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)
• 09/2012 - 06/2016, B.S., Wuhan University (WHU)

Research Interests

AI Security, Adversarial Network Analysis, Trustworthy Graph Learning, Graph Mining, Adversarial Robustness, Graph Data Augmentation.

Selected Publications (More in Google Scholar)

• [TIFS] Coupled-Space Attacks against Random-Walk-based Anomaly Detection
  Yuni Lai, Marcin Waniek, Liying Li, Jingwen Wu, Yulin Zhu, Tomasz P. Michalak, Talal Rahwan, Kai Zhou
  IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, Sep. 2024, (CCF A, Core A, IF=7.178)
• [AI] Adversarial Analysis of Similarity-Based Sign Prediction
  Michał T. Godziszewski, Marcin Waniek, Yulin Zhu, Kai Zhou, Talal Rahwan, Tomasz P. Michalak
  Artificial Intelligence, Elsevier, 2024, (CCF A, Core A*, IF=14.05)
• [TNNLS] From Bi-Level to One-Level: A Framework for Structural Attacks to Graph Anomaly Detection (Code)
  Yulin Zhu, Yuni Lai, Kaifa Zhao, Xiapu Luo, Mingquan Yuan, Jun Wu, Jian Ren, Kai Zhou
  IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, 2024, (CCF B, Core A*, IF=14.255)
• [IEEE S&P] Node-aware Bi-smoothing: Certified Robustness against Graph Injection Attacks
  Yuni Lai, Yulin Zhu, Bailin Pan, Kai Zhou
  IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, 2024, (CCF A, Core A*)
• [TIFS] Towards Secrecy-Aware Attacks Against Trust Prediction in Signed Social Networks (Code)
  Yulin Zhu, Tomasz Michalak, Xiapu Luo, Xiaoge Zhang, Kai Zhou
  IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, January 2024, (CCF A, Core A, IF=7.178)
• [ICASSP] Cost Aware Untargeted Poisoning Attack Against Graph Neural Networks
  Yuwei Han, Yuni Lai, Yulin Zhu, Kai Zhou
  2024 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, April 2024, (CCF B, Core B)
• [ICASSP] Uncovering Strong Ties: A Study of Indirect Sybil Attack on Signed Social Network
  Yu Bu, Yulin Zhu, Longling Geng, Kai Zhou
  2024 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, April 2024, (CCF B, Core B)
• [ICDE] Graph Anomaly Detection at Group Level: A Topology Pattern Enhanced Unsupervised Approach
  Xing Ai, Jialong Zhou, Yulin Zhu, Gaolei Li, Tomasz P Michalak, Xiapu Luo, Kai Zhou
  40th International Conference on Data Engineering, May 2024, (CCF A, Core A*)
• [TIFS] Towards Adversarially Robust Recommendation from Adaptive Fraudster Detection
  Yuni Lai, Yulin Zhu, Wenqi Fan, Xiaoge Zhang, Kai Zhou
  IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, October 2023, (CCF A, Core A, IF=7.178)
• [TKDE] FocusedCleaner: Sanitizing Poisoned Graphs for Robust GNN-based Node Classification (Code)
  Yulin Zhu, Liang Tong, Gaolei Li, Xiapu Luo, Kai Zhou
  IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, October 2023, (CCF A, Core A*, IF=8.9)
• [ICDE] BinarizedAttack: Structural Poisoning Attacks to Graph-Based Anomaly Detection (Code)
  Yulin Zhu, Yuni Lai, Kaifa Zhao, Xiapu Luo, Mingquan Yuan, Jian Ren, and Kai Zhou
  38th International Conference on Data Engineering, May 2022, (CCF A, Core A*)
• [CCS] Structural Attack Against Graph Based Android Malware Detection
  Kaifa Zhao, Hao Zhou, Yulin Zhu, Xian Zhan, Kai Zhou, Jianfeng Li, Le Yu, Wei Yuan, Xiapu Luo
  Proceedings of ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, November 2021, (CCF A, Core A*)
• [ICDM] Attacking Similarity-Based Sign Prediction
  MT Godziszewski, TP Michalak, M Waniek, T Rahwan, Kai Zhou, Yulin Zhu
  21st IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, December 2021, (CCF B, Core A*)

Recent Preprints/Under Review/Working papers

• Simple yet Effective Gradient-Free Graph Convolutional Networks
  Yulin Zhu, Xing Ai, Qimai Li, Xiao-Ming Wu, Kai Zhou
  Arxiv 2302.00371, 2023. (Arxiv)
• Homophily-Driven Sanitation View for Robust Graph Contrastive Learning
  Yulin Zhu, Xing Ai, Yevgeniy Vorobeychik, Kai Zhou
  Arxiv 2307.12555, 2023. (Arxiv)
• Unleashing the Power of Indirect Attacks against Trust Prediction via Preferential Path
  Yu Bu, Yulin Zhu, Longling Geng, Kai Zhou
• Universally Robust Graph Neural Networks by Preserving Neighbor Similarity
  Yulin Zhu, Yuni Lai, Xing Ai, Kai Zhou
  Arxiv 2401.09754, 2024. (Arxiv)
• SFR-GNN: Simple and Fast Robust GNNs against Structural Attacks
  Xing Ai, Guanyu Zhu, Yulin Zhu, Yu Zheng, Gaolei Li, Jianhua Li, Kai Zhou
  Arxiv 2408.16537, 2024. (Arxiv)
• Crowdsourced Homophily Ties Based Graph Annotation Via Large Language Model
  Yu Bu, Yulin Zhu, Kai Zhou

Teaching Experience

• Final Year Projects (CSC141), Co-Supervisor, Department of Computer Science, HKCHC
• Capstone Projects (RAI601), Supervisor, Department of Computer Science, HKCHC
• Discrete Math (CSC031), Lecture, Department of Computer Science, HKCHC
• Artificial Intelligence (RAI604), Lecture, Department of Computer Science, HKCHC
• Machine Learning (RAI605), Lecture, Department of Computer Science, HKCHC
• Introduction to Statistics (STAT1011), Tutorial, Department of Statistics, CUHK
• Basic Methods in Biomedical Statistics (STAT3004), Tutorial, Department of Statistics, CUHK
• Statistical Techniques in Life Science (STAT3210), Tutorial, Department of Statistics, CUHK
• Statistics Projects (STAT4011), Tutorial, Department of Statistics, CUHK

Community Services

• Subreviewer: CIKM-2022, AAMAS-2022, AAMAS-2023, AAMAS-2024, ECAI-2023, CIKM-2023, SecureComm-2023.
• External Reviewer: KDD-2022.
• Reviewer: IET Communications, TDSC, TKDD, IoTJ, KDD-2024, TNNLS, ACML-2024, ICASSP-2025.
• Program Committee Member: AAAI-2023, AAAI-2024, AAAI-2025.
• IEEE Member.
• Technical Program Committee Member: ICNC-2025.

Invited Talks

• 07/12/2022 Invited talk titled “BinarizedAttack: Structural Poisoning Attacks to Graph-Based Anomaly Detection” hosted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Institute of Cyber Science and Technology.

Referees

• Zhou, Kai. Assistant Professor of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 2766 7244, kaizhou@polyu.edu.hk.
• Luo, Xiapu. Full Professor of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 2766 7264, daniel.xiapu.luo@polyu.edu.hk.
• Fan, Xiaodan. Full Professor of Statistics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 3943 7930, xfan@cuhk.edu.hk.