Papers by Yi Gao
ASPO: Adaptive Sentence-Level Preference Optimization for Fine-Grained Multimodal Reasoning (2025.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Recent advances have extended DPO to multimodal scenarios, achieving strong performance. |
| Approach: | They propose to use a sentence-level preference optimization technique to optimize individual sentences for more precise preference optimization without additional models or parameters. |
| Outcome: | Experiments show that Adaptive Sentence-level Preference Optimization significantly improves the alignment of multimodal models. |
Knowledge-Grounded Dialogue Generation with a Unified Knowledge Representation (2022.naacl-main)
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| Challenge: | Existing knowledge-grounded dialogue systems perform poorly on unseen topics due to limited topics covered in training data. |
| Approach: | They propose a language model that homogenizes different knowledge sources to a unified knowledge representation for knowledge-grounded dialogue generation tasks. |
| Outcome: | The proposed language model generalizes well across knowledge-grounded dialogue tasks. |
SDBench: A Survey-based Domain-specific LLM Benchmarking and Optimization Framework (2025.acl-long)
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| Challenge: | acquiring domain-specific knowledge often requires professional expert manpower. |
| Approach: | They propose a generic framework for generating evaluation datasets for domain-specific LLMs. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework reduces the reliance on expert manpower while ensuring that the collected data is uniformly distributed. |
Distributed LLM Serving on Consumer-Grade GPUs by Reconciling Computation and Communication (2025.findings-emnlp)
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Lewei Jin, Kui Zhang, Yongqi Chen, null Zhuoyifan, Renjie Li, Yi Gao, Bowei Yang, Zhengong Cai, Wei Dong
| Challenge: | Large language models are reshaping internet services, and serving them is costly. |
| Approach: | They propose an efficient distributed LLM serving system that splits prefill and decode requests into smaller chunks . |
| Outcome: | The proposed system reduces TTFT, TPOT, and latency compared to the state-of-the-art system. |
Rethinking Multi-Modal Alignment in Multi-Choice VideoQA from Feature and Sample Perspectives (2022.emnlp-main)
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| Challenge: | Existing approaches to VideoQA focus on utilizing frame- or object-level visual representations, but they neglect visual-language interactions. |
| Approach: | They propose to break down video into trajectories and first leverage trajectory feature in VideoQA to enhance alignment between two modalities. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method outperforms all the state-of-the-art models on the NExT-QA benchmark. |
RL-Guider: Leveraging Historical Decisions and Feedback for Drug Editing with Large Language Models (2025.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | RLs can be used to refine drugs by iterative conversations with domain experts . existing methods do not leverage past knowledge, but human experts develop intuition over time through historical experience . |
| Approach: | They propose a reinforcement-learning agent to provide suggestions to large language models . RL-Guider leverages the “world-level” knowledge of LLMs and historical feedback . |
| Outcome: | a new reinforcement-learning agent improves the performance of large language models . the proposed agent leverages the “world-level” knowledge of LLMs and historical feedback . |
Bootstrapping LLM-based Task-Oriented Dialogue Agents via Self-Talk (2024.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Large language models (LLMs) are powerful dialogue agents, but specializing them towards fulfilling a specific function can be prohibitive in terms of feasibility, time, and resources. |
| Approach: | They propose a method for training large language models by enabling "self-talk" they propose supervised fine-tuning of LLMs to improve quality of dialogues . |
| Outcome: | The proposed method generates training data via "self-talk" of LLMs that can be refined and utilized for supervised fine-tuning. |
MMAC: A Multilingual, Multimodal Alignment Framework for Cultural Grounding Evaluation (2026.acl-long)
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Weihua Zheng, Zhengyuan Liu, Tanmoy Chakraborty, Weiwen Xu, Xiaoxue Gao, Bryan Chen Zhengyu Tan, Bowei Zou, Chang Liu, Yujia Hu, Xing Xie, Xiaoyuan Yi, Jing Yao, Chaojun Wang, Long Li, Rui Liu, Huiyao Liu, Koji Inoue, Ryuichi Sumida, Tatsuya Kawahara, Fan Xu, Lingyu Ye, Wei Tian, Dongjun Kim, Jimin Jung, Jaehyung Seo, Nadya Yuki Wangsajaya, Pham Minh Duc, Ojasva Saxena, Palash Nandi, Xiyan Tao, Wiwik Karlina, Tuan Luong, Keertana Arun Vasan, Roy Ka-Wei Lee, Nancy F. Chen
| Challenge: | Existing models lack cultural alignment across modalities and languages . a new framework to assess cultural awareness across linguistics and languages is needed . |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that integrates tri-modally aligned cultural benchmarks and a five-dimensional evaluation protocol to assess cross-country awareness disparities. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework assesses cultural awareness disparities across modalities and languages . it is the first dataset aligned at the input level across text, image, and speech . |
Alexa Conversations: An Extensible Data-driven Approach for Building Task-oriented Dialogue Systems (2021.naacl-demos)
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Anish Acharya, Suranjit Adhikari, Sanchit Agarwal, Vincent Auvray, Nehal Belgamwar, Arijit Biswas, Shubhra Chandra, Tagyoung Chung, Maryam Fazel-Zarandi, Raefer Gabriel, Shuyang Gao, Rahul Goel, Dilek Hakkani-Tur, Jan Jezabek, Abhay Jha, Jiun-Yu Kao, Prakash Krishnan, Peter Ku, Anuj Goyal, Chien-Wei Lin, Qing Liu, Arindam Mandal, Angeliki Metallinou, Vishal Naik, Yi Pan, Shachi Paul, Vittorio Perera, Abhishek Sethi, Minmin Shen, Nikko Strom, Eddie Wang
| Challenge: | Traditional goal-oriented dialogue systems require annotations which are hard to obtain for every new domain, limiting scalability. |
| Approach: | They propose a data-driven approach to building goal-oriented dialogue systems . they use a seed dialogue simulator to generate annotated conversations instead of collecting annotations . |
| Outcome: | The proposed system improves turn-level action signature prediction accuracy by 50% . the system is scalable, extensible and data efficient . |
D2PCM:A Multi-Turn Dialogue Dataset with Personalized Contextual Memory (2026.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Conventional interactive algorithms have predominantly treated memory as a contextual element, neglecting the nuanced cognitive processes involved in individualized memory encoding and retrieval. |
| Approach: | They propose a multi-turn dialogue dataset with Personalized Contextual Memory to facilitate advanced research on personalized memory processing. |
| Outcome: | The proposed datasets provide a comprehensive benchmark to facilitate advanced research on personalized memory processing. |
AutoPKG: An Automated Framework for Dynamic E-commerce Product-Attribute Knowledge Graph Construction (2026.findings-acl)
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Pollawat Hongwimol, Haoning Shang, Chutong Wang, Zhichao Wan, Yi Gao, Yuanming Li, Lin Gui, Wenhao Sun, Cheng Yu
| Challenge: | Product attribute extraction in e-commerce is bottlenecked by ontologies that are inconsistent, incomplete, and costly to maintain. |
| Approach: | They propose a multi-agent Large Language Model framework that constructs a Product-attribute Knowledge Graph from multimodal product content. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework achieves 0.953 WKE for product types, 0.724 WKEs for attribute keys, and 0.531 edge-level accuracy for value assertions after canonicalization on a large real-world marketplace catalog dataset from Lazada (Alibaba). |
Reinforcement Learning on Pre-Training Data (2026.acl-long)
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Siheng Li, Kejiao Li, Zenan Xu, Guanhua Huang, Kun Li, Haoyuan Wu, null Wujiajia, Zihao Zheng, Chenchen Zhang, Kun Shi, Xue Gong, Qi Yi, Ruibin Xiong, Tingqiang Xu, Yuhao Jiang, Jianfeng Yan, Yuyuan Zeng, Guanghui Xu, Jinbao Xue, Zhijiang xu, Zheng Fang, Shuai LI, Qibin Liu, Xiaoxue Li, Zhuoyu Li, Yangyu Tao, Fei Gao, Cheng Jiang, Bochao Wang, Kai Liu, Jianchen Zhu, Wai Lam, Bo Zhou, Di Wang
| Challenge: | Recent progress in large language models is driven by scaling of training compute through pre-training with nexttoken prediction (NTP) or post-training (RL) Pre-training using NTP enables models to acquire extensive knowledge and skills from general data, but it suffers from data inefficiency and catastrophic forgetting in continual learning settings. |
| Approach: | They propose to scale training compute through pre-training with next-token prediction (NTP) or post-training by scaling reinforcement learning (RL) to improve learning from general data. |
| Outcome: | Experiments on multiple benchmarks and models show that the proposed approach improves continual pre-training and provides a strong foundation for post-training on Qwen3-8B-Base. |
EverMemOS: A Self-Organizing Memory Operating System for Structured Long-Horizon Reasoning (2026.acl-long)
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Chuanrui Hu, Xingze Gao, Zuyi Zhou, Dannong Xu, Yi Bai, Xintong Li, Hui Zhang, Tong Li, Chong Zhang, Lidong Bing, Yafeng Deng
| Challenge: | Existing memory systems for LLMs store isolated records and retrieve fragments . Existing systems store isolated data and fragments, limiting their ability to consolidate evolving experience and resolve conflicts. |
| Approach: | They propose an engram-inspired memory operating system that implements an 'engram'-inspired lifecycle for computational memory. |
| Outcome: | Experiments on LoCoMo, LongMemEval, and PersonaMeM-v2 show that EverMemeOS outperforms state-of-the-art methods on memory-augmented reasoning tasks. |
Feedback to Reasoning: LLM-Assisted Molecular Optimization with Domain Feedback and Historical Reasoning (2026.findings-acl)
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Wenhan Gao, Xiran Fan, Chin-Chia Michael Yeh, Jiarui Sun, Yuzhong Chen, Menghai Pan, Mahashweta Das, Yi Liu
| Challenge: | Existing methods for molecular optimization do not leverage domain feedback and historical knowledge with reasoning traces and chemical insights. |
| Approach: | They propose a conversational molecular optimization pipeline that enables LLMs to accumulate and retrieve past actions, rationales, and feedback. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework transforms LLMs from passive text generators into agentic experts that learn both actions and reasoning from experience. |
Backward Compatibility During Data Updates by Weight Interpolation (2024.eacl-long)
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| Challenge: | Retraining a model with a larger amount of training data introduces negative flips . retraining the model with the updated data introduce negative flipping . |
| Approach: | They propose a backward compatible weight interpolation method to improve model predictions without regression bugs. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method reduces negative flips without sacrificing accuracy . it is straight forward to implement and does not increase inference cost. |
Enhancing Emotion Prediction in News Headlines: Insights from ChatGPT and Seq2Seq Models for Free-Text Generation (2024.lrec-main)
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Ge Gao, Jongin Kim, Sejin Paik, Ekaterina Novozhilova, Yi Liu, Sarah T. Bonna, Margrit Betke, Derry Tanti Wijaya
| Challenge: | Existing methods for classifying discrete emotions from news headlines have been limited to using headlines. |
| Approach: | They propose to use people’s free-text explanations to classify emotions elicited by news headlines to generate emotion explanations from headlines. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method improves on methods that only use headlines and train a pretrained model for explanation generation. |
MultiFinBen: Benchmarking Large Language Models for Multilingual and Multimodal Financial Application (2026.acl-long)
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Xueqing Peng, Lingfei Qian, Yan Wang, Ruoyu Xiang, Yueru He, Yang Ren, Mingyang Jiang, Vincent Jim Zhang, Yuqing Guo, Jeff Zhao, Huan He, Yi Han, Yun Feng, Yuechen Jiang, Yupeng Cao, Haohang Li, Yangyang Yu, Xiaoyu Wang, Penglei Gao, Shengyuan Lin, Keyi Wang, Shanshan Yang, Yilun Zhao, Zhiwei Liu, Peng Lu, Jerry Huang, Suyuchen Wang, Triantafillos Papadopoulos, Polydoros Giannouris, Efstathia Soufleri, Nuo Chen, Zhiyang Deng, Heming Fu, Yijia Zhao, Mingquan Lin, Meikang Qiu, Kaleb E Smith, Arman Cohan, Xiao-Yang Liu, Jimin Huang, Guojun Xiong, Alejandro Lopez-Lira, Xi Chen, Junichi Tsujii, Jian-Yun Nie, Sophia Ananiadou, Qianqian Xie
| Challenge: | Existing evaluations of LLMs in finance are text-only, monolingual, and largely saturated by current models. |
| Approach: | They propose a multilingual and multimodal benchmark for evaluating LLMs in real financial contexts. |
| Outcome: | The first expert-annotated multilingual and multimodal benchmark is released . it evaluates 21 leading LLMs and shows they perform better in multilingual settings . |
Learning to Maximize Mutual Information for Chain-of-Thought Distillation (2024.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Knowledge distillation is a technique of transferring knowledge from large, complex models to smaller ones. |
| Approach: | They propose a method utilizing chain-of-thought distillation to transfer knowledge from large, complex models to smaller ones by maximizing mutual information of the representation features of the two tasks. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art knowledge distillation method on four datasets. |
WebSynthesis: World Model-Guided Monte Carlo Tree Search for Efficient WebAgent Trajectory Synthesis (2026.acl-long)
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| Challenge: | Recent advances in large language models have enabled increasingly capable web agents . however, training such agents at scale still relies on high-quality interaction trajectories that are difficult to obtain at scale. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework for scalable trajectory synthesis that simulates state transitions without network dependencies and integrates Monte Carlo Tree Search to enable reversible exploration over the simulated state space. |
| Outcome: | Experiments on WebArena, WebVoyager, and Mind2Web-Online show that agents trained exclusively on synthesized trajectories outperform those trained on real-world data. |
Beyond Static Profiles: Capturing the Fluidity of User Preferences in Diverse Scenarios (2026.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Existing approaches to personalize Large Language Models often default to homogeneous behaviors . preferences can shift, and conflict, depending on context, authors argue . |
| Approach: | They propose a hierarchical taxonomy to differentiate between stable and situational preferences . they use a dataset of 10k meticulously curated preferences to test their taxonomies . |
| Outcome: | The proposed model differentiates between stable and situational preferences based on curated user preferences . it provides a practical testbed for advancing dynamic, context-aware personalization in conversational agents. |
Learning Joint Structural and Temporal Contextualized Knowledge Embeddings for Temporal Knowledge Graph Completion (2023.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Existing methods that incorporate time information into static knowledge graph embedding ignore the contextual nature of the TKG structure. |
| Approach: | They propose a method that employs pre-trained language models to learn joint Structural and Temporal Contextualized Knowledge Embeddings. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method is superior to existing methods that ignore the contextual nature of the TKG structure. |
Continual Relation Learning via Episodic Memory Activation and Reconsolidation (2020.acl-main)
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| Challenge: | Existing methods to learn incessantly emerging novel relations are overfitting the few memorized examples of old relations, causing confusion among existing relations. |
| Approach: | They introduce episodic memory activation and reconsolidation (EMAR) to continual relation learning. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art models in catastrophic forgetting old relations. |
OAgents: An Empirical Study of Building Effective Agents (2025.findings-emnlp)
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He Zhu, Tianrui Qin, King Zhu, Heyuan Huang, Yeyi Guan, Jinxiang Xia, Hanhao Li, Yi Yao, Ningning Wang, Pai Liu, Tianhao Peng, Xin Gui, Li Xiaowan, Yuhui Liu, Xiangru Tang, Jian Yang, Ge Zhang, Xitong Gao, Yuchen Eleanor Jiang, Changwang Zhang, Jun Wang, Jiaheng Liu, Wangchunshu Zhou
| Challenge: | a recent study shows that agent research practices are far from standard, rigorous . lack of a standard evaluation protocol makes previous works not reproducible, authors say . |
| Approach: | They conduct an empirical study on the GAIA benchmark to investigate agent design choices . they find that lack of a standard evaluation protocol makes previous works not reproducible . |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework achieves state-of-the-art performance among open-source projects. |
IoTMigrator: LLM-driven Embedded IoT Code Migration across Different OSes for Cloud-device Integration (2025.findings-emnlp)
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| Challenge: | Neither outline-based code generation nor common code translation techniques can adequately address this challenge, despite their prevalence in existing systems. |
| Approach: | They have developed an algorithm that employs a multi-agent pipeline to handle embedded code migration under the TSL paradigm. |
| Outcome: | The proposed algorithm outperforms the baseline by 50.5% for pass rate and 13.0% for completeness across all tasks in RIOT and Zephyr. |
VLMInferSlow: Evaluating the Efficiency Robustness of Large Vision-Language Models as a Service (2025.acl-long)
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| Challenge: | Existing studies evaluate efficiency robustness of vision-language models under unrealistic assumptions, requiring access to model architecture and parameters. |
| Approach: | They propose a novel approach to evaluate VLM efficiency robustness in a realistic black-box setting. |
| Outcome: | The proposed approach generates adversarial images with imperceptible perturbations, increasing the computational cost by up to 128.47%. |
Thinking Alignment of Scenario-Oriented User Simulation (2026.acl-long)
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| Challenge: | Existing user simulators based on prompting to role-play or SFT focus on imitating textual utterances without considering multi-faceted cognitive processes that underlie human decision-making during interactions. |
| Approach: | They construct a user-simulator dataset that augments 51k human–LLM conversations by reconstructing the user’s inner reasoning during and at the end of each dialogue. |
| Outcome: | The proposed user simulators augment 51k human–LLM conversations by reconstructing the user’s inner reasoning both during and at the end of each dialogue. |