Papers by Qing Zhao
Generalizable Cross-Lingual Cognitive Distortion Detection with Standardized Annotations and Multi-Task Learning (2025.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Existing studies on cognitive distortion have limited generalizability and performance of models in large-scale and cross-linguistic contexts. |
| Approach: | They propose a multi-task learning model based on teacher student architecture solution which improves generalization performance. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model improves generalizability and interpretability of the proposed model. |
Recurrent Attention Networks for Long-text Modeling (2023.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Existing approaches to encoding long documents using self-attention have been limited by quadratic computational complexities and limited application in long text processing. |
| Approach: | They propose a long-document encoding model that allows the recurrent operation of self-attention. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model extracts global semantics in token-level and document-level representations, making it inherently compatible with both sequential and sequential tasks. |
Modeling Multi-Dimensional Cognitive States in Large Language Models under Cognitive Crowding (2026.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Existing Large Language Models (LLMs) mainly address isolated tasks such as emotion analysis or stance detection. |
| Approach: | They propose a large-scale model that combines large-level annotations with hyperbolic space to model human cognitive states. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model outperforms baseline models on cognitive dimensions on single dimension tasks while retaining strong hierarchical structure. |
Beyond Similarity: A Gradient-based Graph Method for Instruction Tuning Data Selection (2025.acl-long)
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Yang Zhao, Li Du, Xiao Ding, Yangou Ouyang, Hepeng Wang, Kai Xiong, Jinglong Gao, Zhouhao Sun, Dongliang Xu, Qing Yang, Dongchen Li, Bing Qin, Ting Liu
| Challenge: | Existing methods for selecting training data from general datasets fail to account for the joint distribution of instructions, resulting in inefficient learning and suboptimal knowledge transfer. |
| Approach: | They propose a method that constructs a mixed gradient-based instruction graph to capture the joint distribution and interdependencies among instructions. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method outperforms existing methods on domain adaptation tasks and in complex, data-scarce scenarios. |
Incorporating Global Information in Local Attention for Knowledge Representation Learning (2021.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Graph Attention Networks (GATs) are a promising model that takes advantage of localized attention mechanism to perform knowledge representation learning (KRL) on graph-structure data. |
| Approach: | They propose to incorporate global information into the GAT family of models by using an attention-based global random walk algorithm. |
| Outcome: | Experimental results on KG entity prediction against the state-of-the-arts demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model. |
MentalGLM Series: Explainable Large Language Models for Mental Health Analysis on Chinese Social Media (2025.emnlp-main)
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Wei Zhai, Nan Bai, Qing Zhao, Jianqiang Li, Fan Wang, Hongzhi Qi, Meng Jiang, Xiaoqin Wang, Bing Xiang Yang, Guanghui Fu
| Challenge: | Social media is a key platform for emotional expression, yet deep learning lacks flexibility and interpretability. |
| Approach: | They propose to use Chinese social media to train interpretable mental health instruction datasets to test models' ability to explain their decisions. |
| Outcome: | The proposed models outperform deep learning and LLMs on three mental health downstream tasks and demonstrate their potential for clinical applications. |
Knowledge Graph Embedding with Hierarchical Relation Structure (D18-1)
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| Challenge: | Existing knowledge graph embedding models embed entities and relations into latent vectors without leveraging rich information from relation structure. |
| Approach: | They extend existing KGE models to learn knowledge representations by leveraging relation structure . authors say their approach is capable of extending other KGEs . |
| Outcome: | The proposed approach can extend existing KGE models, and validates against baselines. |
Marco-Bench-MIF: On Multilingual Instruction-Following Capability of Large Language (2025.acl-long)
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Bo Zeng, Chenyang Lyu, Sinuo Liu, Mingyan Zeng, Minghao Wu, Xuanfan Ni, Tianqi Shi, Yu Zhao, Yefeng Liu, Chenyu Zhu, Ruizhe Li, Jiahui Geng, Qing Li, Yu Tong, Longyue Wang, Weihua Luo, Kaifu Zhang
| Challenge: | Existing datasets for instruction-following are monolingual and centered on English . existing data are unable to capture linguistic and cultural subtle differences . |
| Approach: | They propose an extension of IFEval to a localized multilingual version called Marco-Bench-MIF . their benchmark addresses linguistic constraints and cultural references via translation and verification . |
| Outcome: | The proposed extension of IFEval to a localized multilingual version covers 30 languages with varying levels of localization. |
LipoAgent: Coordinating Fine-Tuned LLM Agents for Safer Lipid Design (2026.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) are among the most clinically mature platforms for nucleic acid delivery, yet designing lipids that are effective and biologically safe remains a major bottleneck. |
| Approach: | They propose a safety-aware multi-agent LLM framework for lipid discovery that enforces toxicity as a prerequisite for efficiency prediction. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework achieves an average improvement in mRNA transfection efficiency prediction across multiple foundation models. |
Enhancing Text-to-SQL Capabilities of Large Language Models through Tailored Promptings (2024.lrec-main)
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| Challenge: | Large language models with prompting have achieved encouraging results on many natural language processing tasks due to the absence of task-tailored promptings. |
| Approach: | They propose three promptings specifically designed for Text-to-SQL: SL-prompt, CC-promped, and SL+CC prompt. |
| Outcome: | The proposed promptings achieve execution accuracy of 86.2% and test-suite accuracy of 76% . the granularity of schema linking and the order of clause generation have great impact on performance, which are considered little in previous research. |
More Than Catastrophic Forgetting: Integrating General Capabilities For Domain-Specific LLMs (2024.emnlp-main)
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Chengyuan Liu, Yangyang Kang, Shihang Wang, Lizhi Qing, Fubang Zhao, Chao Wu, Changlong Sun, Kun Kuang, Fei Wu
| Challenge: | a recent study shows that performance on general tasks decreases after Large Language Models are fine-tuned on domain-specific tasks. |
| Approach: | They propose a general capability integration approach to integrate general capabilities and domain knowledge within a single instance. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method improves performance on domain-specific tasks by integrating general capabilities and domain knowledge. |
CARE-CR: Context-Aware Routing and Expert Fusion for Multi-Preference Cognitive Restructuring (2026.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Large Language Models (LLMs) offer promising avenues for automated cognitive restructuring in mental health settings, but current approaches lack the adaptability to balance conflicting therapeutic dimensions, such as empathy and rationality. |
| Approach: | They propose a decoupled optimization framework that implements a dimension-guided Monte Carlo tree search to train expert policies specialized for distinct therapeutic attributes rather than relying on a monolithic alignment strategy. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework achieves consistent improvements over baselines across multiple evaluation dimensions, including diagnostic accuracy, contextual appropriateness, task effectiveness, and overall helpfulness, while enabling controllable cognitive restructuring generation. |
TPTU-v2: Boosting Task Planning and Tool Usage of Large Language Model-based Agents in Real-world Industry Systems (2024.emnlp-industry)
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Yilun Kong, Jingqing Ruan, YiHong Chen, Bin Zhang, Tianpeng Bao, Shi Shiwei, Du Qing, Xiaoru Hu, Hangyu Mao, Ziyue Li, Xingyu Zeng, Rui Zhao, Xueqian Wang
| Challenge: | Large language models have demonstrated proficiency in addressing tasks that necessitate a combination of task planning and the usage of external tools. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework to enhance the task planning and tool usage abilities of LLMs in industrial systems. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework enhances the task planning and tool usage abilities of LLM-based agents in industrial systems. |
Unilaw-R1: A Large Language Model for Legal Reasoning with Reinforcement Learning and Iterative Inference (2025.emnlp-main)
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| Challenge: | Reasoning-focused large language models (LLMs) are rapidly evolving across various domains, yet their capabilities in handling complex legal problems remain underexplored. |
| Approach: | They propose a large language model tailored for legal reasoning with a 7-billion parameter scale and a two-stage training strategy combining Supervised Fine-Tuning and Reinforcement Learning. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model outperforms all models of similar scale on authoritative benchmarks and outperformed Qwen-2.5-7B-Instruct (46.6%) by an average margin of 6.6%. |
Length Extrapolation of Transformers: A Survey from the Perspective of Positional Encoding (2024.findings-emnlp)
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Liang Zhao, Xiachong Feng, Xiaocheng Feng, Weihong Zhong, Dongliang Xu, Qing Yang, Hongtao Liu, Bing Qin, Ting Liu
| Challenge: | Existing methods to enhance length extrapolation of large language models have been developed, but a systematic survey is lacking. |
| Approach: | They propose to examine the effects of positional encoding on length extrapolation. |
| Outcome: | The proposed methods improve the extrapolation of large language models, but they are still lacking a systematic survey. |
Fin-STAR: Structure-as-Semantics to Resolve Implicitness in Financial Retrieval (2026.findings-acl)
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Yu Zou, Yan Chen, Lida He, Qi Zhou, Xiaorui Zhou, Aixi Zhong, Yi Wang, Wei Li, Qingyu Wang, Jiatao Li, Wei Gong, Jialei Zeng, Jingmei Zhao, Ke Jiang, Qing Li
| Challenge: | Existing Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems treat structure as a physical navigational skeleton rather than intrinsic semantic knowledge. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that redefining hierarchy as intrinsic semantics and uses snippets to enrich hierarchical lineage. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework outperforms state-of-the-art hierarchical and graph-based benchmarks on FinTierQA Gold. |
LongRecipe: Recipe for Efficient Long Context Generalization in Large Language Models (2025.acl-long)
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Zhiyuan Hu, Yuliang Liu, Jinman Zhao, Suyuchen Wang, WangYan WangYan, Wei Shen, Qing Gu, Anh Tuan Luu, See-Kiong Ng, Zhiwei Jiang, Bryan Hooi
| Challenge: | Large language models face significant challenges in handling long-context tasks because of their limited effective context window size during pretraining, which restricts their ability to generalize over extended sequences. |
| Approach: | They propose a training strategy for extending the context window of LLMs including impactful token analysis, position index transformation, and training optimization strategies. |
| Outcome: | Experiments on three types of LLMs show that LongRecipe can utilize long sequences while requiring only 30% of the target context window size. |
Judging with Many Minds: Do More Perspectives Mean Less Prejudice? On Bias Amplification and Resistance in Multi-Agent Based LLM-as-Judge (2025.findings-emnlp)
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Chiyu Ma, Enpei Zhang, Yilun Zhao, Wenjun Liu, Yaning Jia, Peijun Qing, Lin Shi, Arman Cohan, Yujun Yan, Soroush Vosoughi
| Challenge: | LLM-as-Judge frameworks provide scalable alternative to human evaluation . but the question of how intrinsic biases manifest in these settings remains unexplored . |
| Approach: | They conduct systematic analysis of four bias types in multi-agent LLM-as-Judge frameworks . they find debate framework amplifies biases sharply after initial debate . |
| Outcome: | The proposed frameworks amplify biases after debate and show they are stronger in meta-judge scenarios. |
Chinese MentalBERT: Domain-Adaptive Pre-training on Social Media for Chinese Mental Health Text Analysis (2024.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Existing models for language analysis are inadequate for specialized domains like psychology. |
| Approach: | They have enriched a Chinese social media database with psychological lexicons to enhance its applicability to psychological text analysis. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model performed better on six public datasets and provided relevant predictions given the masked sentences. |
Quantized Side Tuning: Fast and Memory-Efficient Tuning of Quantized Large Language Models (2024.acl-long)
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Zhengxin Zhang, Dan Zhao, Xupeng Miao, Gabriele Oliaro, Zhihao Zhang, Qing Li, Yong Jiang, Zhihao Jia
| Challenge: | Existing methods to finetun large language models (LLMs) only update a small number of trainable parameters, or attempt to reduce the memory footprint during the training phase of the finetune process. |
| Approach: | They propose quantized side tuing (QST) which quantizes an LLM’s model weights into 4-bit to reduce the memory footprint of the original weights. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method reduces the memory footprint of the model weights, optimizer states, and intermediate activations while reducing the memory requirements. |
Advancing Large Language Model Attribution through Self-Improving (2024.emnlp-main)
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Lei Huang, Xiaocheng Feng, Weitao Ma, Liang Zhao, Yuchun Fan, Weihong Zhong, Dongliang Xu, Qing Yang, Hongtao Liu, Bing Qin
| Challenge: | Teaching large language models to generate text with citations to evidence sources requires high-quality attribution data, which is costly and labor-intensive. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework for iteratively improving the attribution capability of large language models (LLMs) by attributing output to verifiable sources. |
| Outcome: | Experiments on three open-domain question-answering datasets show that START improves in aggregating information across multiple sources. |
Large Language Models are Complex Table Parsers (2023.emnlp-main)
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| Challenge: | Extensive experiments and results on Complex Table QA datasets, i.e., the open-domain dataset HiTAB and the aviation domain dataset AIT-QA show that our approach significantly outperforms previous work on both datasets. |
| Approach: | They propose to incorporate Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3.5 to address the specific challenges posed by Complex Table QA by reconstructing tables into tuples and using prompt templates to create dialogues. |
| Outcome: | The proposed approach outperforms previous work on complex table parsing datasets and leads to state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance. |
SAPT: A Shared Attention Framework for Parameter-Efficient Continual Learning of Large Language Models (2024.acl-long)
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Weixiang Zhao, Shilong Wang, Yulin Hu, Yanyan Zhao, Bing Qin, Xuanyu Zhang, Qing Yang, Dongliang Xu, Wanxiang Che
| Challenge: | Existing methods to address catastrophic forgetting and knowledge transfer in large language models (LLMs) ignore potential of aligning the two modules to effectively address catastrophic forgetting and knowledge transfers simultaneously. |
| Approach: | They propose a Shared Attentive Learning & Selection module to align the PET learning and selection modules to address catastrophic forgetting and knowledge transfer simultaneously. |
| Outcome: | Experiments on two CL benchmarks show that the proposed framework is superior when scaled to different model sizes, different model architectures and unseen tasks. |
SpecCoT: Accelerating Chain-of-Thought Reasoning through Speculative Exploration (2025.findings-emnlp)
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| Challenge: | Large Reasoning Models suffer from high inference latency due to lengthy reasoning chains. |
| Approach: | They propose a collaborative framework that combines large and small models for effective reasoning. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework reduces inference latency by 1.7-4.1 while maintaining comparable accuracy to standard large model inference. |