Papers by Peiyang Liu
Learning from Contrasts: Synthesizing Reasoning Paths from Diverse Search Trajectories (2026.acl-long)
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| Challenge: | MCTS methods retain only the single highest-reward trajectory, discarding comparative signals present in the many explored paths. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that transforms supervision extraction into a synthesis procedure. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework matches or exceeds baselines on 60K CRPS-synthesized examples on out-of-domain benchmarks. |
SQL-ASTRA: Alleviating Sparse Feedback in Agentic SQL via Column-Set Matching and Trajectory Aggregation (2026.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Agentic SQL is a framework for multiturn agent learning, but it is limited to single-turn paradigms. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that provides a universal two-tiered reward mechanism for credit assignment . they propose 'Aggregated Trajectory Reward' to resolve multi-turn credit assignment. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework outperforms SOTA Arctic-Text2SQL-R1-7B on BIRD and Spider 2.0 using identical models. |
Parameter Importance is Not Static: Evolving Parameter Isolation for Supervised Fine-Tuning (2026.acl-long)
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Zekai Lin, Chao Xue, Di Liang, Xingsheng Han, Peiyang Liu, Xianjie Wu, Lei Jiang, Yu Lu, Bob Simons, Shuang Liang, Minlong Peng
| Challenge: | Recent approaches to fine-tuning of large language models suffer from task interference and catastrophic forgetting. |
| Approach: | They propose a fine-tuning framework that adapts isolation decisions based on online estimates of parameter importance. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework reduces interference and forgetting while releasing outdated parameters to recover plasticity. |
Why Supervised Fine-Tuning Fails to Learn: A Systematic Study of Incomplete Learning in Large Language Models (2026.acl-long)
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Chao Xue, Yao Wang, Mengqiao Liu, Di Liang, Xingsheng Han, Peiyang Liu, Xianjie Wu, Chenyao Lu, Lei Jiang, Yu Lu, Haibo Shi, Shuang Liang, Minlong Peng, Flora D. Salim
| Challenge: | Incomplete learning is widespread and heterogeneous in large language models . authors identify five recurrent sources of incomplete learning: missing prerequisite knowledge, conflicts between SFT supervision and pre-training knowledge, internal inconsistencies within SFT data, left-side forgetting during sequential fine-tuning, and insufficient optimization for rare or complex patterns. |
| Approach: | They propose a diagnostic-first framework that maps incomplete learning to causes . they identify five recurrent sources of incomplete learning: missing prerequisite knowledge, conflicts between supervision and pre-training knowledge, internal inconsistencies, left-side forgetting during sequential fine-tuning, and insufficient optimization for rare or complex patterns. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework maps incomplete learning to causes using observable training and inference signals. |
ToolSafe: Enhancing Tool Invocation Safety of LLM-based agents via Proactive Step-level Guardrail and Feedback (2026.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Unlike chatbots, autonomous agents act directly on external environments, making tool invocation safety critical for reliable deployment. |
| Approach: | They develop a benchmark for step-level tool invocation safety detection in LLM agents and a guardrail model that proactively detects unsafe tool invoking actions before execution using multi-task reinforcement learning. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model reduces harmful tool invocations of ReAct-style agents by 65% on average and improves benign task completion by 10% under prompt injection attacks. |
Improving Embedding-based Large-scale Retrieval via Label Enhancement (2021.findings-emnlp)
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| Challenge: | Existing methods for large-scale retrieval are trained with 0-1 hard labels that indicate whether a query is relevant to a document, ignoring rich information of the relevance degree. |
| Approach: | They propose to introduce label enhancement for the first time to characterize query-document relevance degree by embedding label distribution into contextual embeddables. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method significantly outperforms existing retrieval models and its counterparts equipped with two alternative methods on English and Chinese large-scale retrieval tasks. |
Reason Only When Needed: Efficient Generative Reward Modeling via Model-Internal Uncertainty (2026.findings-acl)
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Chao Xue, Yao Wang, Mengqiao Liu, Di Liang, Xingsheng Han, Peiyang Liu, Xianjie Wu, Chenyao Lu, Lei Jiang, Yu Lu, Haibo Shi, Shuang Liang, Minlong Peng, Flora D. Salim
| Challenge: | Existing approaches to generating reward models rely on voting-based mechanisms to evaluate CoT outputs. |
| Approach: | They propose an efficient generative reward modeling framework grounded in model-internal uncertainty. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework reduces inference cost while improving answer accuracy. |
NeuroSym-Cal: Bridging the Reasoning-Execution Gap in Code Generation via Hierarchical Calibration (2026.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Existing calibration methods rely on the assumption that consensus implies correctness . Existing methods fail under systematic errors, leading to miscalibrated high-confidence predictions. |
| Approach: | They propose a hierarchical calibration framework that measures confidence at two levels . they propose sensitivity analysis to measure local curvature of deductive process . |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework de-saturates overconfident errors and improves selective generation performance on OOD benchmarks. |
Structural Reward Model: Enhancing Interpretability, Efficiency, and Scalability in Reward Modeling (2025.emnlp-industry)
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Xiaoyu Liu, Di Liang, Hongyu Shan, Peiyang Liu, Yonghao Liu, Muling Wu, Yuntao Li, Xianjie Wu, Li Miao, Jiangrong Shen, Minlong Peng
| Challenge: | Generative RMs (GRMs) lack contextual and background information during inference, leading to incomplete evaluations. |
| Approach: | They propose a modular and interpretable framework that integrates side-branch models as auxiliary feature generators. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework outperforms scalar and saline reward models in robustness and alignment with human preferences. |
StructKV: Preserving the Structural Skeleton for Scalable Long-Context Inference (2026.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Existing compression approaches prioritize tokens based on local saliency metrics to decouple prefill computation from decoding memory. |
| Approach: | They propose a structure-aware KV cache compression framework that prioritizes tokens based on local saliency metrics to decouple prefill computation from decoding memory. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework preserves long-range dependencies and retrieval robustness. |
Label Smoothing for Text Mining (2022.coling-1)
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| Challenge: | Existing text mining models are trained with 0-1 hard label that indicates whether an instance belongs to a class, ignoring rich information of the relevance degree. |
| Approach: | They propose a keyword-based method to automatically generate soft labels from hard labels . they exploit relevance between labels and instances to incorporate them into models . |
| Outcome: | The proposed method improves models under balanced and unbalanced conditions. |
Exploring the Hidden Reasoning Process of Large Language Models by Misleading Them (2025.findings-emnlp)
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Guanyu Chen, Peiyang Wang, Yizhou Jiang, Yuqian Liu, Chujie Zhao, Ying Fang, Tianren Zhang, Feng Chen
| Challenge: | Existing large language models can perform abstract reasoning tasks but are they actually engaging in rule-based reasoning beyond mere memorization? |
| Approach: | They propose a method to examine whether large language models perform abstract reasoning . they fine-tune the model to learn those contradictory rules and assess its generalization ability . |
| Outcome: | The proposed approach examines whether large language models perform abstract reasoning by altering their original understanding of fundamental rules. |
QuadrupletBERT: An Efficient Model For Embedding-Based Large-Scale Retrieval (2021.naacl-main)
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| Challenge: | Existing methods for large-scale query-document retrieval are expensive and require sparse handcrafted features. |
| Approach: | They propose a quadrupletBERT model for effective and efficient retrieval using pre-trained language models like BERT. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model improves retrieval phase and leverages distances between simple negative and hard negative instances to obtain better embeddings. |