Manyi Yao

I’m currently pursuing my doctorate in Computer Science at the University of California, Riverside, where I have the privilege of being advised by Professors Christian R. Shelton and Amit K. Roy-Chowdhury.

My research interests lie in the captivating realm of vision-language models and dynamic networks, with recent work proposing an efficient transformer encoder design for Mask2Former-style models. This innovative approach optimally selects subnetworks based on the input images. Moreover, it extends beyond segmentation to detection tasks and can be tailored to various computational budgets.

When I’m not immersed in academia, I enjoy spending time with my two beloved cats, pursuing my passion for quirky neo-deconstructivist fashion design, and spreading fitness joy as a NASM certified personal trainer.

news

Sep 18, 2025	Paper on vision-based LLM grounding for dash-cam video reasoning accepted in NeurIPS 2025!
Jun 24, 2024	Join NEC Labs America as Research Intern in Media Analytics team, mentored by Abhishek Aich.

selected publications

NeurIPS

iFinder: Structured Zero-Shot Vision-Based LLM Grounding for Dash-Cam Video Reasoning

Manyi Yao, Bingbing Zhuang, Sparsh Garg, Amit Roy-Chowdhury, Christian R. Shelton, Manmohan Chandraker, and Abhishek Aich

In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems , 2025

to appear

arXiv Bib

@inproceedings{Yaoetal25,
  author = {Yao, Manyi and Zhuang, Bingbing and Garg, Sparsh and Roy-Chowdhury, Amit and Shelton, Christian R. and Chandraker, Manmohan and Aich, Abhishek},
  title = {{iFinder}: Structured Zero-Shot Vision-Based {LLM} Grounding for Dash-Cam Video Reasoning},
  booktitle = {Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems},
  year = {2025},
  volume = {38},
  note = {to appear},
}

Preprint

Efficient Transformer Encoders for Mask2Former-style models

Manyi Yao, Abhishek Aich, Yumin Suh, Amit Roy-Chowdhury, Christian Shelton, and Manmohan Chandraker

2024

arXiv Bib

@misc{yao2024efficient,
  title = {Efficient Transformer Encoders for Mask2Former-style models},
  author = {Yao, Manyi and Aich, Abhishek and Suh, Yumin and Roy-Chowdhury, Amit and Shelton, Christian and Chandraker, Manmohan},
  year = {2024},
  eprint = {2404.15244},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  primaryclass = {cs.CV},
}