Papers by Lixin Ma
CoRanking: Collaborative Ranking with Small and Large Ranking Agents (2025.findings-emnlp)
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| Challenge: | Listwise ranking based on Large Language Models (LLMs) has achieved state-of-the-art performance in Information Retrieval (IR) however, their effectiveness often depends on LLMs with massive parameter scales and computationally expensive sliding window processing, leading to substantial efficiency bottlenecks. |
| Approach: | They propose a Collaborative Ranking framework (CoRanking) for LLM-based listwise ranking based on large language models with massive parameter scales and computationally expensive sliding window processing. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework reduces ranking latency by approximately 70% while improving effectiveness compared to the standalone large reranker. |
SPHERE: Unveiling Spatial Blind Spots in Vision-Language Models Through Hierarchical Evaluation (2025.acl-long)
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Wenyu Zhang, Wei En Ng, Lixin Ma, Yuwen Wang, Junqi Zhao, Allison Koenecke, Boyang Li, Wanglu Wanglu
| Challenge: | Current vision-language models lack multi-dimensional spatial reasoning capabilities for human-like understanding and applications. |
| Approach: | They propose a hierarchical evaluation framework that probes models across increasing levels of complexity and integrates spatial, visual, and logical understanding. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework probes models across increasing levels of complexity, from basic skills to multi-skill integration and high-level reasoning that combines spatial, visual, and logical understanding. |
PPC-GPT: Federated Task-Specific Compression of Large Language Models via Pruning and Chain-of-Thought Distillation (2025.emnlp-main)
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| Challenge: | Large Language Models (LLMs) are becoming more popular and are gaining widespread use in artificial intelligence. |
| Approach: | They propose a unified framework that addresses both privacy preservation and model compression in federated settings. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework maintains competitive performance comparable to full-sized LLMs while ensuring robust privacy protection through its federated architecture. |
FedCoT: Federated Chain-of-Thought Distillation for Large Language Models (2025.findings-emnlp)
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| Challenge: | Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as a transformative force in artificial intelligence, demonstrating exceptional proficiency across various tasks. |
| Approach: | They propose a federated framework for the Chain-of-Thought distillation of knowledge from LLMs to SLMs, while adhering to privacy requirements. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework ensures secure knowledge transfer from an LLM on a high-powered server to an SLM on resource-constrained client while adhering to privacy requirements. |
TP-RAG: Benchmarking Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Model Agents for Spatiotemporal-Aware Travel Planning (2025.emnlp-main)
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| Challenge: | Existing studies on large language models (LLMs) focus on basic plan validity, but neglect critical aspects such as route efficiency, POI appeal, and real-time adaptability. |
| Approach: | They propose a benchmark for retrieval-augmented, spatiotemporal-aware travel planning that integrates retrieved trajectories with LLMs’ intrinsic reasoning. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework improves spatial efficiency and POI rationality while challenging universality and robustness due to conflicting references and noisy data. |
FedMKT: Federated Mutual Knowledge Transfer for Large and Small Language Models (2025.coling-main)
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| Challenge: | Recent research in large language models (LLMs) has focused on enabling clients to fine-tune their locally deployed homogeneous LLMs collaboratively or on transferring knowledge from server-based LLM to small language models at downstream clients. |
| Approach: | They propose a parameter-efficient federated mutual knowledge transfer framework for large and small language models that allows for token alignment and selective knowledge transfer between client-side LLMs and a server-side SLM. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework enhances the performance of both LLMs and SLMs with clients' unique domain insights while preserving the server's LLM and client's unique domain insight. |
FedProxy: Federated Fine-Tuning of LLMs via Proxy SLMs and Heterogeneity-Aware Fusion (2026.acl-long)
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| Challenge: | Existing methods for fine-tuning Large Language Models (LLMs) suffer from a performance bottleneck . Existing approaches like Offsite-Tuning (OT) secure the LLMs IP . |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that replaces weak adapters with a unified, powerful Proxy Small Language Model (SLM) they propose 'resource-friendly' compression and 'robust optimization' to handle data heterogeneity. |
| Outcome: | Experiments show that FedProxy outperforms OT and centralized fine-tuning methods. |