Portrait of Ashley Gao
Ashley (Ye) Gao
Assistant Professor · Computer Science · William & Mary

Welcome

My name is Ashley Gao, and I am an Assistant Professor at William & Mary. I obtained my PhD in Computer Science from the University of Virginia (UVa), advised by Professor John Stankovic. My research interest lies in the intersection of Large Audio Language Models (Audio LLMs), Affective Computing, Natural Language Processing, and their application in smart healthcare.

Before joining Professor Stankovic's group, I obtained my M.S. in Computer Science at the University of Virginia, and my B.S. in Computer Science and B.A. in Literatures of the World at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).

Research Assistant Recruitment

I am actively looking for graduate and undergraduate students from the following disciplinary backgrounds: computer science, data science, artificial intelligence, information science, health sciences.

If you are interested in working with me, please email me following the instructions below. In your email, include:

  • Your resume/CV.
  • Your transcript(s) and class ranking.
  • Your current degree program, and a brief overview of any relevant coursework or research experience.
  • A concise and pithy summary of why you are interested in working with me; please refer to my publications for relevant prior work. Note: if you are a Master's or undergraduate student, I may direct you to complete an independent study before considering a funded position.

Lab

The Galatea Lab @ William & Mary.

Graduate Student

  • Jiacheng Shi — Affective computing in Audio LLMs.
  • Hongfei Du — Affective computing in NLP and LLMs.

Open Positions

Prospective students and collaborators are encouraged to read the Research Assistant Recruitment notes and email as directed.

Projects

  • Domain-Generalized Audio Sensing — robust SER under distribution shift.
  • Sentiment Steering in LLMs — learning to interpret and control/steer the emotional tone of generated output by LLMs.
  • Audio Stress Detection for ADRD Caregivers — lightweight models linked to an mobile app to reduce ADRD caregiver stress.

Publications

List publications in reverse chronological order. Include links to PDFs, code, and datasets when available.

For my publications earlier than 2025, please see my Google Scholar page Here.

Selected

  • [2025] Role-Guided Annotation and Prototype-Aligned Representation Learning for Historical Literature Sentiment Classification. - Du, H., Shi, J., Myerston, J., Lu, S., Zhou, G., Gao, Y. — The 2025 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP). PDF · Code
  • [2025] EAA: Emotion-Aware Audio Large Language Models with Dual Cross-Attention and Context-Aware Instruction Tuning - Du, H., Lu, S., Zhou, G., Gao, Y. — Interspeech 2025. PDF · Code
  • [2025] CLEP-DG: Contrastive Learning for Speech Emotion Domain Generalization via Soft Prompt Tuning — Shi, J., Zhang, Y., Gao, Y. - Interspeech 2025. PDF · Code
  • [2025] ElectroMeter: The Practical Electrolyte Measurement System. - Clapham, J., Zhou, M., MacDonald, C., Koltermann, K., Gao, Y., Shao, H. — Connected Health: Applications, Systems and Engineering Technologies (CHASE 2025). PDF · Code
  • [2025] Challenges to recruiting dementia caregiving dyads in community-based settings: Lessons learned from an in-home technology-based intervention. - Ko, E., Gao, Y., Wang, P., Wijayasingha, L., Wright, K. D., Gordon, K. C., Wang, H., Stankovic, J. A., Rose, K. M. — JMIR Formative Research. PDF · Code
  • [2025] MiddleGAN: Generating Inter-domain Images with GANs - Macdonald, C., Chu, Z., Stankovic, J., Zhou, G., Shao, H., Gao, Y. — Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR 2025). PDF · Code

Teaching

Courses

  • CSCI 416/516: Fundenmentals of ML/AI (Fall23, Fall24, Spring25)
  • CSCI 680: Deep Transfer Leawrning (Spring24, Spring25, Fall25)

Awards & Honors

  • [2024] Best Paper Award — Connected Health: Applications, Systems and Engineering Technologies (CHASE)
  • [2024] Best Service Award — Connected Health: Applications, Systems and Engineering Technologies (CHASE)
  • [2023] Best Paper Runner Up — International Conference on Smart Computing (Smartcomp)
  • [2019] UVA Computer Science PhD Fellowship - University of Virginia.
  • [2017] Dept of Comp Sci Academic Excellence Fellowship - University of Virginia.
  • [2016] Honors with High Distinction on B.A. in Literatures of the World - University of California, San Diego.