Farewell to Dr. Yifu Wu!

Early April, we gathered for a warm and celebratory farewell dinner at K Pub to say goodbye to Dr. Yifu Wu. Friends who had joined our Reinforcement Learning seminar series also came out to celebrate, sharing stories, laughter, and best wishes for Yifu’s next chapter.

After completing his PhD in Computer Science at Purdue University, Yifu joined the LARK Lab and became one of its founding members. From the very beginning, he has contributed substantially to the lab’s growth—helping shape our technical infrastructure, collaborative culture, and research direction. He was instrumental in setting up our lab’s server manual, cloud computing protocols, and onboarding documents—always stepping up as an incredible team player. He also played a key role in recruiting new members and building our collaborative culture.

On the research front, Yifu led the development of our neural-symbolic knowledge base project, pushing forward our efforts in combining language models with structured reasoning.

We’re thrilled for his next step as an Applied Scientist at Amazon Alexa’s Trust Sensitive Conversational Intelligence team, but we’re also sad to see him go. Yifu is not only a brilliant researcher but also a genuinely kind and steady presence in the lab. He will be deeply missed.

Wishing you all the best, Yifu—you’ll always be part of the LARK family.