Papers by Zhijian Li
Generating Hard-Negative Out-of-Scope Data with ChatGPT for Intent Classification (2024.lrec-main)
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| Challenge: | Existing studies have not studied the performance of intent classifiers against hard-negative out-of-scope utterances. |
| Approach: | They propose to generate hard-negative OOS data using ChatGPT and evaluate them against three benchmark intent classifiers. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method improves classifiers' robustness against hard-negative out-of-scope utterances and general OOS data. |
Solve-Detect-Verify: Inference-Time Scaling with Flexible Generative Verifier (2026.acl-long)
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| Challenge: | Recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) have enhanced capabilities in complex reasoning through step-by-step trace generation. |
| Approach: | They propose a generative verifier that dynamically allocates compute between rapid fast thinking and deliberative slow thinking. |
| Outcome: | The proposed solution outperforms GenPRM-32B on ProcessBench while requiring 2.3x fewer TFLOPS and 15x less training data. |
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. |
From Implicit Exploration to Structured Reasoning: Guideline and Refinement for LLMs (2025.findings-emnlp)
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| Challenge: | Existing models rely on implicit exploration, which leads to unstable reasoning paths and lack of error correction. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that shifts from implicit exploration to structured reasoning through guideline and refinement. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model outperforms strong baselines on the Big-Bench Hard benchmark. |
ChemAmp: Amplified Chemistry Tools via Composable Agents (2026.findings-acl)
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Zhucong Li, Powei Chang, Jin Xiao, Zhijian Zhou, Qianyu He, Jiaqing Liang, Fenglei Cao, Xu Yinghui, Yuan Qi
| Challenge: | LLM-based agents are powerful tools for automating complex scientific workflows, especially in chemistry, but their single-task performance is limited by tool constraints. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that optimizes the collective capabilities of specialized tools by dynamic coordination within individual tasks. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework outperforms chemistry-specialized models, generalist LLMs, and agent systems with tool orchestration. |
Scaling is Not All You Need: Clinical-Oriented Reinforcement Learning Makes Parameter-Efficient Clinical Reasoning (2026.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Large language models are increasingly used in medicine, but expert-level clinical reasoning remains a high-complexity, high-stakes frontier. |
| Approach: | They propose to train clinical reasoning models using a Reasoning-Oriented Data Strategy based on topological synthesis and CoT cold-start. |
| Outcome: | The proposed pipeline outperforms existing models and outperformed the strongest open-source alternatives up to 671B in MedXpertQA. |
KG-RAG: Enhancing GUI Agent Decision-Making via Knowledge Graph-Driven Retrieval-Augmented Generation (2025.emnlp-main)
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Ziyi Guan, Jason Chun Lok Li, Zhijian Hou, Pingping Zhang, Donglai Xu, Yuzhi Zhao, Mengyang Wu, Jinpeng Chen, Thanh-Toan Nguyen, Pengfei Xian, Wenao Ma, Shengchao Qin, Graziano Chesi, Ngai Wong
| Challenge: | Recent advances in GUI agents have limited app-specific knowledge of complex mobile tasks. |
| Approach: | They propose a Knowledge Graph-driven Retrieval-Augmented Generation framework that transforms fragmented UTGs into structured vector databases for efficient real-time retrieval. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework outperforms existing methods in a 75.8% success rate and 84.6% decision accuracy test across mobile apps. |
Entriever: Energy-based Retriever for Knowledge-Grounded Dialog Systems (2025.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Existing knowledge retrieval methods fail to account for interrelationship between knowledge pieces . however, current methods fail in a situation where multiple knowledge pieces are relevant . |
| Approach: | They propose an energy-based retriever that directly models the candidate retrieval results as a whole instead of modeling the knowledge pieces separately. |
| Outcome: | The proposed retriever outperforms the baseline energy-based retriever in knowledge retrieval tasks. |
Dyve: Thinking Fast and Slow for Dynamic Process Verification (2025.emnlp-main)
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| Challenge: | Existing process verification methods struggle with reliably assessing incomplete reasoning traces and are limited by the cost of high-quality human annotations or the inherent noise in automatically generated labels. |
| Approach: | They propose a dynamic process verifier that integrates fast and slow thinking to enhance reasoning error detection in large language models. |
| Outcome: | The proposed system outperforms existing process-based verifiers and maintains computational efficiency while maintaining high performance. |
Your Stereotypical Mileage May Vary: Practical Challenges of Evaluating Biases in Multiple Languages and Cultural Contexts (2024.lrec-main)
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Karen Fort, Laura Alonso Alemany, Luciana Benotti, Julien Bezançon, Claudia Borg, Marthese Borg, Yongjian Chen, Fanny Ducel, Yoann Dupont, Guido Ivetta, Zhijian Li, Margot Mieskes, Marco Naguib, Yuyan Qian, Matteo Radaelli, Wolfgang S. Schmeisser-Nieto, Emma Raimundo Schulz, Thiziri Saci, Sarah Saidi, Javier Torroba Marchante, Shilin Xie, Sergio E. Zanotto, Aurélie Névéol
| Challenge: | Recent studies have identified a gap in the availability of tools and resources to study bias in languages other than English and social contexts outside the north of America. |
| Approach: | They use stereotypes to build a corpus of sentence pairs that cover biases in seven cultural contexts. |
| Outcome: | The proposed resource covers a wide range of languages and cultural settings . it favors sentences that express stereotypes in most bias categories . |
UniPCM: Universal Pre-trained Conversation Model with Task-aware Automatic Prompt (2024.lrec-main)
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| Challenge: | Recent studies have shown that multi-task instruction tuning after pre-training greatly improves the model’s robustness and transfer ability, which is crucial for building a high-quality dialog system. |
| Approach: | They propose to use Task-aware Automatic Prompt generation (TAP) to automatically generate high-quality prompts from 15 dialog-related tasks. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model is robust to input prompts and capable of various dialog-related tasks. |