Research

Publications

2026

• Kejriwal, M., & Sun, Y. (2026). Building discoverative AI ecosystems for supporting high-quality agentic science. AIAS+ 2026. Forthcoming.
• Sun, Y., & Kejriwal, M. (2026). Modeling complex associations between socio-demographic factors and climate policies using Conditional Inference Trees. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 13.
• Sun, Y., & Kejriwal, M. (2026). Structural modeling of campaign finance decisions in the U.S. House of Representatives. PLOS Complex Systems, 3(5), e0000104.
• Sun, Y., He, D., & Kejriwal, M. (2026). Examining persistent inequities in financial complaint resolution for older Americans and veterans in the United States. PNAS Nexus, 5(4), pgag086.

2025

• Sun, Y. (2025). Scalable estimation of exponential random graph models on large networks. Companion Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2025, 721-724.
• Gawin, C., Sun, Y., & Kejriwal, M. (2025). Navigating semantic relations: Challenges for language models in abstract common-sense reasoning. Companion Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2025, 971-975.
• Sun, Y., Shen, K., & Kejriwal, M. (2025). Backlash or reinforcement? Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration and shifting climate beliefs in the United States. npj Climate Action, 4, Article 26.

2024

• Sun, Y., & Kejriwal, M. (2024). A study of firm-switching of inventors in Big Tech using public patent data. In Social Network Analysis and Mining Applications in Healthcare and Anomaly Detection. Springer.

2023

• Sun, Y., & Kejriwal, M. (2023). A structural study of Big Tech firm-switching of inventors in the post-recession era. Proceedings of the 2023 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, 670-677.
• Sun, Y., & Kejriwal, M. (2023). DeepGraph: Multi-cluster interactive visualization of complex networks in a learned representation space. Proceedings of the 2023 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, 427-430.

Under Review

• Patil, V., Bacha, S. V., Yamani, R., Sun, Y., & Kejriwal, M. (2026). Beyond the star rating: LLM-assisted aspect analysis and large-scale text classification of 4.7 million restaurant reviews. Revised manuscript under review at PLOS ONE.
• Sun, Y., & Kejriwal, M. (2026). Online sex-work advertising on Backpage in Southeast Asia, 2013-2018: A retrospective analysis of posting, place, and price. Revision under review at SN Social Sciences.
• Sun, Y., & Kejriwal, M. (2026). FORGE: An agentic system for ERGM specification and interpretation in social networks. Submitted to WSDM 2027.
• Sun, Y., et al. (2026). Computational social science for harm reduction: Privacy-preserving analysis of market structure in counter-trafficking work. Submitted to the AAAI 2027 Artificial Intelligence for Social Impact Track.

Under Preparation

• Sun, Y., & Kejriwal, M. (2026). Hallucinated references in AI-generated publications: A cross-corpus audit. Manuscript in preparation.
• Sun, Y., & Kejriwal, M. (2026). Interactive exploration of tie-formation hypotheses in complex networks. Manuscript in preparation (demonstration paper).
• Sun, Y., & Kejriwal, M. (2026). Coordination and fragmentation in Latin American and Caribbean online sex work markets. Manuscript in preparation.
• Sun, Y., & Kejriwal, M. (2026). A framework for organized control at the account level in online sex trafficking detection. Manuscript in preparation.

Public Scholarship

Global Trafficking Intelligence Hub

Founder and Lead Developer (2024-Present)

I built and maintain this public knowledge hub with the USC Artificial Intelligence and Complex Systems group and support from the Kroner Family Foundation. It curates reports, country- and region-level assessments, legal frameworks, datasets, and academic research across eight world regions, with a searchable interface for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers.

Selected Presentations

• Poster Presentation: “Building reliable PhD-level agents for computational research,” Agentic AI Summit, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, Aug. 1-2, 2026.
• Poster Presentation: “Mapping Collaboration in AI-Driven Firms: A Co-Inventor Dataset (2020-2025),” International Conference of the Computational Social Science Society of the Americas, Washington, D.C., Nov. 6-9, 2025.
• Poster Presentation: “Reviewer Rating Variability, Reviewer Confidence, and Language Model-Based Sentiment Prediction of Machine Learning Conference Submissions,” 10th International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication, Chicago, IL, Sep. 3-5, 2025.
• Oral Presentation: “Collaboration Diversity and Paper Success: A Network Analysis of Co-authorship in a Major Machine Learning Conference,” INSNA Sunbelt Conference, Paris, France, Jun. 23-29, 2025.
• Poster Presentation: “Scalable estimation of exponential random graph models on large networks,” The Web Conference, May 13, 2025.
• Oral Presentation: “Navigating semantic relations: Challenges for large language models in abstract common-sense reasoning,” The Web Conference, May 13, 2025.
• Oral Presentation: “AI Reveals Systemic Financial Inequities: A Study of CFPB Complaints for Older Adults and Veterans,” USC ShowCAIS Symposium, Apr. 2025.
• Oral Presentation: “Understanding the drivers of human trafficking using massive multi-partite network modeling and analytics,” USC Cloudwalkers Premiere, Mar. 2025.
• Oral Presentation: “A structural study of Big Tech firm-switching of inventors in the post-recession era,” Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, Nov. 7, 2023.
• Oral Presentation: “DeepGraph: Multi-cluster interactive visualization of complex networks in a learned representation space,” Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, Nov. 6, 2023.
• Poster Presentation: “Modelling campaign finance data using network science to map structures and flows of influence,” Southern California Applied Mathematics Symposium, Apr. 22, 2023.