Yi Gu's violin

Yi Gu

Research Data Scientist
Google

About me

I am a Research Data Scientist at Google. I work on LLM evaluation and AI metrics used across Google, including by Google DeepMind. I lead the Work Done by AI team, which develops metrics that track AI participation in workflows across the company.

Since joining my current team in February 2026, I have worked on coding-agent trajectory scoring as part of the evaluation effort behind Gemini 4 Argon.

I earned my Ph.D. in mathematics at Northwestern University (before the “super math AI” era), where I was advised by Antonio Auffinger. I’m a probabilist, interested in just about anything involving probability and its applications, from computer science to statistical physics. Outside research, I play the violin, which I have studied since the age of four.

Experience

Google

Sept 2024 - Current

Research Data Scientist - AI System Knowledge and Information Engine (ASKIE)

February 2026–present · New York City, NY

Joined shortly after Gemini 3.1 Pro's launch; tenure spans the introduction of Gemini 4 Argon.

  • Lead the Work Done by AI team, designing and owning Google-wide metrics of AI contribution, primarily focused on Antigravity coding agents powered by multiple models, including Gemini 4 Argon.
  • Own the development of grading algorithms for Google Antigravity coding-agent trajectories, measuring effort-equivalent AI contribution, correctness, complexity, and impact; completed trajectory analysis intended for use by Google DeepMind and other internal teams.
  • Developed a modular statistical-reporting and visualization skill in Gemini's internal codebase, used by 500+ Google employees and integrated into team data-science and organizational insight agents; supports standalone use and composition within larger skill suites, and serves as an internal example of effective skill design.
  • Conduct cross-product studies of AI adoption, employee behavior, and productivity across Google, applying double machine learning and continuous-treatment difference-in-differences to inform development priorities for next-generation coding agents. Analyze hundreds of billions of first-party coding-agent and LLM usage records.

Research Data Scientist - Google Hardware (Pixel)

September 2024–January 2026 · Chicago, IL

  • Built an LLM sentiment-analysis pipeline using LLM-as-judge, SFT, and RAG; achieved 99.5% accuracy and informed hardware KPI targets and RMA analysis.
  • Developed a Pixel diagnostic pipeline using LoRA and RLHF; improved classification accuracy from 40% to over 90% (0.95+ recall) and increased throughput by 300%.

Google

June 2022 – Sept 2022 & June 2023 – Sept 2023

Data Scientist Intern (Ph.D) · Mountain View, CA

Details in my CV

Publications & preprints

  1. LLM-Judge Autopilot: Analytically Grounded Reliability and Uncertainty for LLM-as-a-Judge

    Lingyou Pang, Jianyu Lin, Yi Gu†, et al

    Preprint

  2. SIGMA: Scalable Spectral Insights for LLM Model Collapse

    Yi Gu, Lingyou Pang, Xiangkun Ye, et al

    Preprint

  3. Equilibrium Distribution for t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding with Generalized Kernels

    Yi Gu

    Preprint

  4. Learning Combinatorial Structures via Markov Random Fields with Sampling through Lovász Local Lemma

    Nan Jiang, Yi Gu†, et al

    AAAI 2023

  5. Iterative Imputating Variational Auto-Encoders for Partially Observed Data

    Zichao Wang, Yi Gu et al

    EDM 2020

  6. Introduction to Random Graphs and Models

    Yi Gu

    Book · Research Survey in Random Graph, 2019.

† Equal contribution, co-first author.

Education

Northwestern University

Ph.D in Mathematics · Advisor: Antonio Auffinger
Thesis: Generalized t-SNE and Beyond: Probabilistic Methods for Dimensionality Reduction, Combinatorial Optimization, and Machine Learning

Rice University

B.S. in Mathematics, President Honor Roll

Service & mentorship

  • ICML 2026Gold Reviewer (top 25%)
  • Peer reviewNeurIPS 2026; AAAI 2027; AISTATS 2027
  • GoogleIntern Mentor · 2025 · Guided a Data Scientist intern to a full-time return offer.
  • Northwestern UniversityInstructor, Random Matrix Theory · 2019
  • Rice UniversityLead Organizer and Speaker, Spectral Theory Seminar · 2016 · Prepared and delivered 9 of 12 graduate lectures on OPUC.