Papers by Zhuofeng Li
Mitigating Lost in Multi-turn Conversation via Curriculum RL with Verifiable Accuracy and Abstention Rewards (2026.acl-long)
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Ming Li, Pei Chen, Zhenhao Zhang, Tao Yang, Xinyang Zhang, Han Li, Tianyu Cao, Ming Zeng, Zhuofeng Wu, Meng Jiang, Huasheng Li, Lihong Li, Bing Yin
| Challenge: | Large Language Models exhibit strong capabilities in single-turn instruction following but suffer from Lost-in-Conversation (LiC) when instructions are revealed progressively in multi-turn settings, models get "Lost in Conversation" |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that encourages models to generate correct answers and judge solvability in multi-turn conversations. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework improves models' ability to balance problem-solving with abstention . it reduces premature answering behaviors that cause lost-in-conversation (LiC) |
Defending against Insertion-based Textual Backdoor Attacks via Attribution (2023.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Textual backdoor attacks are vulnerable to backdoors and can be used to infect models trained on poisoned data. |
| Approach: | They propose an efficient attribution-based pipeline to defend against two insertion-based poisoning attacks, BadNL and InSent. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method can generalize sufficiently well in two common attack scenarios, which consistently improves previous methods. |
UniConv: Unifying Retrieval and Response Generation for Large Language Models in Conversations (2025.acl-long)
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Fengran Mo, Yifan Gao, Chuan Meng, Xin Liu, Zhuofeng Wu, Kelong Mao, Zhengyang Wang, Pei Chen, Zheng Li, Xian Li, Bing Yin, Meng Jiang
| Challenge: | Existing conversational search systems are usually built with two different models . this separation restricts the system from leveraging the model's intrinsic knowledge simultaneously . Existing studies for developing unified models cannot fully address the aspects of understanding conversational context, managing retrieval independently, and generating responses. |
| Approach: | They propose to unify dense retrieval and response generation for large language models in conversation by fine-tuning and mitigating data discrepancy. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model can outperform existing models on five conversational search datasets and reduce inconsistency risks while mitigating data discrepancy. |
Improving Large Language Models Function Calling and Interpretability via Guided-Structured Templates (2025.emnlp-main)
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Hy Dang, Tianyi Liu, Zhuofeng Wu, Jingfeng Yang, Haoming Jiang, Tao Yang, Pei Chen, Zhengyang Wang, Helen Wang, Huasheng Li, Bing Yin, Meng Jiang
| Challenge: | Large language models (LLMs) have strong reasoning and tool-use capabilities, yet fail in real-world tool-interactions due to incorrect parameterization, poor tool selection, or misinterpretation of user intent. |
| Approach: | They propose a curriculum-inspired framework that leverages structured reasoning templates to guide LLMs through more deliberate step-by-step instructions for generating function calls. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework reduces tool-use errors and improves interpretability and transparency of tool-using agents. |
ChatGPT as an Attack Tool: Stealthy Textual Backdoor Attack via Blackbox Generative Model Trigger (2024.naacl-long)
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| Challenge: | Textual backdoor attacks are increasingly challenging to detect due to the use of advanced generative models such as GPT-4. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that harnesses advanced generative models to execute stealthier backdoor attacks on text classifiers. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework achieves state-of-the-art attack success rate of 97.35% over four sentiment classification tasks and four human cognition stealthiness tests. |
ReviewGrounder: Improving Review Substantiveness with Rubric-Guided, Tool-Integrated Agents (2026.acl-long)
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Zhuofeng Li, Yi Lu, Dongfu Jiang, Haoxiang Zhang, Yuyang Bai, Chuan Li, Yu Wang, Shuiwang Ji, Jianwen Xie, Yu Zhang
| Challenge: | Rapid rise in AI conference submissions has driven increasing exploration of large language models (LLMs) for peer review support. |
| Approach: | They propose a peer review benchmarking tool based on paper-specific rubrics and a rubric-guided framework that decomposes reviewing into drafting and grounding stages. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework outperforms baselines with stronger/larger backbones in both alignment with human judgments and rubric-based review quality across 8 dimensions. |