Hello, and welcome to my website. I am Yuanxi Fu, a doctoral student in Information Science at the School of Information Sciences, UIUC [school page]. I made a career transition from chemistry to information science in 2019. After successfully defending my dissertation proposal, I am now on my way to receive a second PhD, this time in information science, which I expect to complete in 2027. You can view my CV here.
My research broadly concerns theoretical and practical issues in information quality. On the theory side, I am studying how epistemic reliance can degrade information quality, focusing on a problem called “unreliability propagation.” On the practical side, I am working on two problems: (1) developing frameworks to teach novices to critique AI-generated artifacts to combat AI-deskilling and (2) incorporating Science of Science into scientific question answering systems.
Primarily, I consider myself an information scientist as I am very much fascinated by the entity of Information itself. I also think information science is where philosophically-inclined thinkers can do “practiced philosophy,” as I often leverage concepts from epistemology and logic in my work. Lastly, I am of a Science of Science person and particularly interested in using Science of Science to improve scientific information systems.
I am supervised by Prof. Jodi Schneider, and I work in her Info Quality Lab.
Yuanxi Fu 