Dr. Liu’s research lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), and information systems. He develops human-centered, trustworthy, and reproducible computational methods for analyzing and governing digital information environments, with applications in public health surveillance, misinformation, generative AI platforms, and autonomous research systems.
Vaughn, A., Biocco, P., Liu, Y., & Anwar, M. (2018, July). Activity detection and analysis using smartphone sensors. In 2018 IEEE International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration (IRI) (pp. 102-107). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/IRI.2018.00022
Liu, Y. (2020). A comparative study of vector space language models for sentiment analysis using reddit data (Doctoral dissertation, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University).
Whitfield, C., Liu, Y., & Anwar, M. (2021, August). Surveillance of COVID-19 pandemic using social media: a reddit study in North Carolina. In Proceedings of the 12th ACM International Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Health Informatics (pp. 1-8). https://doi.org/10.1145/3459930.3469550
Liu Y, Whitfield C, Zhang T, Hauser A, Reynolds T, Anwar M. Monitoring COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of social media using natural language processing and machine learning. Health Inf Sci Syst. 2021 Jun 25;9(1):25. doi: 10.1007/s13755-021-00158-4. PMID: 34188896; PMCID: PMC8226148.
Almousa, M., Liu, Y., Zhang, T., Anwar, M. (2021). A Study on Online Businesses’ Commitment to Consumer Privacy. In: Moallem, A. (eds) HCI for Cybersecurity, Privacy and Trust. HCII 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12788. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77392-2_25
Y. Liu and M. Anwar, "Learning Programming in Social Media: An NLP-powered Reddit Study," 2022 Fourth International Conference on Transdisciplinary AI (TransAI), Laguna Hills, CA, USA, 2022, pp. 55-58, doi: 10.1109/TransAI54797.2022.00015.
Y. Liu, Z. Yue and M. Anwar, "Monkeypox At-a-glance from Google Trends and Reddit," 2022 IEEE/ACM Conference on Connected Health: Applications, Systems and Engineering Technologies (CHASE), Arlington, VA, USA, 2022, pp. 166-167.
Luitel, S., Liu, Y., & Anwar, M. (2023). Investigating Fairness in Machine Learning-based Audio Sentiment Analysis using Spectrograms and Bag-of-visual-words.
Liu, Z., Hu, J., Liu, Y., Roy, K., Yuan, X., & Xu, J. (2023). Anomaly-based Intrusion on IoT networks using AIGAN - a Generative Adversarial Network.
Aldrich, B., Liu, Y., Almousa, M., & Anwar, M. (2023). Translating Keystroke and Mouse Dynamics Data to Classify Human Mood.
Luitel, S., Liu, Y. & Anwar, M. Investigating fairness in machine learning-based audio sentiment analysis. AI Ethics (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-024-00453-2
Whitfield, C., Liu, Y. & Anwar, M. Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Social Determinants of Health Issues of Marginalized Black and Asian Communities: A Social Media Analysis Empowered by Natural Language Processing. J. Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-024-01996-0
Liu, Y. (2024). Pandemic Surveillance Using Social Media Data, Natural Language Processing, and Machine Learning (Doctoral dissertation, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University).
Liu Y, Anwar M. Analyzing twitter data for insights into public sentiment during covid-19 pandemic. In: New Trends in Intelligent Software Methodologies, Tools and Techniques: Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on New Trends in Intelligent Software Methodologies, Tools and Techniques (SoMeT_24). SAGE Publications; 2024:412-425. doi:10.3233/FAIA240388
B. D. Davis, Y. Liu and M. Anwar, "Repository of Metadata-Related Threats and Mitigation Strategies to Enhance Security in Smart Homes," 2024 Conference on AI, Science, Engineering, and Technology (AIxSET), Laguna Hills, CA, USA, 2024, pp. 189-193, doi: 10.1109/AIxSET62544.2024.00035.
S. Luitel, Y. Liu and M. Anwar, "Audio Sentiment Analysis with Spectrogram Representations and Transformer Models," 2024 Conference on AI, Science, Engineering, and Technology (AIxSET), Laguna Hills, CA, USA, 2024, pp. 149-153, doi: 10.1109/AIxSET62544.2024.00027.
Zhang, T., Jiang, Z., Bai, S., Zhang, T., Lin, L., Liu, Y., & Ren, J. (2024, November). RAG4ITOps: A Supervised Fine-Tunable and Comprehensive RAG Framework for IT Operations and Maintenance. In Proceedings of the 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing: Industry Track (pp. 738-754). https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2024.emnlp-industry.56
ChengYan Wu, Yiqiang Cai, Yang Liu, Pengxu Zhu, Yun Xue, Ziwei Gong, Julia Hirschberg, and Bolei Ma. 2025. Multimodal Emotion Recognition in Conversations: A Survey of Methods, Trends, Challenges and Prospects. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2025, pages 6257–6274, Suzhou, China. Association for Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2025.findings-emnlp.332
Jiang, Z. et al. (2026). LLMA4ITOps: A Lightweight LLM-Based Multi-Agent Framework for IT Operations and Maintenance. In: Mao, XL., Ren, Z., Yang, M. (eds) Natural Language Processing and Chinese Computing. NLPCC 2025. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 16103. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-95-3346-6_36
Liu, Y., Almousa, M., & Anwar, M. (2026). A FAIR Principles-Driven Quality Assessment of Social Media Datasets for Natural Language Processing-Based Pandemic Surveillance. Journal of Database Management (JDM), 37(1), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.4018/JDM.399759
Sun, Yiyou, et al. "Agents' Last Exam." arXiv preprint arXiv:2606.05405 (2026).
Lei F, Huang F, Guo Y, Kim SS, Liu Y. Online Intervention on Lung Cancer Screening Among High-Risk Individuals: Pilot Intervention Study. JMIR Cancer. 2026 Jun 16;12:e89823. doi: 10.2196/89823. PMID: 42302275
Speaker at The IEEE/ACM international conference on Connected Health: Applications, Systems and Engineering Technologies (CHASE), WASHINGTON D.C., USA
Award at IEEE SoutheastCon, Atlanta, GA, USA
Speaker at IBM HBCU Quantum Center Symposium, Howard University, WASHINGTON D.C., USA
Appoint at North Carolina Central University, School of Business, Durham, NC, USA
Honor at North Carolina Central University, School of Business, Durham, NC, USA
Fellowship at Howard University, Washington, D.C., USA
Workshop at Howard University and PRISSEM Academic Services, Alexandria, VA, USA
Service at NCCU, Durham, NC, USA
Award at NCCU, Durham, NC, USA
Fellowship at Howard University, Washington, D.C., USA
National HBCU Fellowship by the Center for HBCU Research, Leadership, and Policy at Howard University (Sep. 2025 - Present)
Member of Technical Committees of the IEEE Consumer Technology Society (IEEE CTSoc) for the theme: Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and AI in Consumer Electronics (MDA) (Mar. 2025 - Present)