publications

2026

1. ICML

   Token-Level LLM Collaboration via FusionRoute

   Nuoya Xiong, Yuhang Zhou, Hanqing Zeng, Zhaorun Chen, Furong Huang, Shuchao Bi, Zhuokai Zhao, and Lizhu Zhang^*

   In International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2026

   Conference Accepted

   Bib HTML

   @inproceedings{xiong2026fusionroute,
     title = {Token-Level LLM Collaboration via FusionRoute},
     author = {Xiong, Nuoya and Zhou, Yuhang and Zeng, Hanqing and Chen, Zhaorun and Huang, Furong and Bi, Shuchao and Zhao, Zhuokai and Zhang, Lizhu},
     booktitle = {International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML)},
     year = {2026},
     note = {Conference Accepted},
   }

2. ACL

   Mixture-of-Minds: Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Table Understanding

   Yuhang Zhou, Mingrui Zhang, Ke Li, Mingyi Wang, Qiao Liu, Qifei Wang, Jiayi Liu, Fei Liu, Serena Li, Weiwei Li, Mingze Gao, Abhishek Kumar, Xiangjun Fan, Zhuokai Zhao, and Lizhu Zhang^*

   In Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2026

   Main Conference

   Bib HTML

   @inproceedings{zhou2026mixtureofminds,
     title = {Mixture-of-Minds: Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Table Understanding},
     author = {Zhou, Yuhang and Zhang, Mingrui and Li, Ke and Wang, Mingyi and Liu, Qiao and Wang, Qifei and Liu, Jiayi and Liu, Fei and Li, Serena and Li, Weiwei and Gao, Mingze and Kumar, Abhishek and Fan, Xiangjun and Zhao, Zhuokai and Zhang, Lizhu},
     booktitle = {Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)},
     year = {2026},
     note = {Main Conference},
   }

3. ACL

   TARo: Token-level Adaptive Routing for LLM Test-time Alignment

   Arushi Rai, Qiang Zhang, Hanqing Zeng, Yunkai Zhang, Dipesh Tamboli, Xiangjun Fan, Zhuokai Zhao, and Lizhu Zhang^*

   In Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2026

   Findings

   Bib HTML

   @inproceedings{rai2026taro,
     title = {TARo: Token-level Adaptive Routing for LLM Test-time Alignment},
     author = {Rai, Arushi and Zhang, Qiang and Zeng, Hanqing and Zhang, Yunkai and Tamboli, Dipesh and Fan, Xiangjun and Zhao, Zhuokai and Zhang, Lizhu},
     booktitle = {Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)},
     year = {2026},
     note = {Findings},
   }

4. NeurIPS

   EBPO: Empirical Bayes Shrinkage for Stabilizing Group-Relative Policy Optimization

   Kevin Han, Yuhang Zhou, Mingze Gao, Gedi Zhou, Serena Li, Abhishek Kumar, Xiangjun Fan, Weiwei Li, and Lizhu Zhang^*

   In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2026

   Conference Submission

   Bib

   @inproceedings{han2026ebpo,
     title = {EBPO: Empirical Bayes Shrinkage for Stabilizing Group-Relative Policy Optimization},
     author = {Han, Kevin and Zhou, Yuhang and Gao, Mingze and Zhou, Gedi and Li, Serena and Kumar, Abhishek and Fan, Xiangjun and Li, Weiwei and Zhang, Lizhu},
     booktitle = {Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)},
     year = {2026},
     note = {Conference Submission},
   }

5. ICML

   StreamMem: Query-Agnostic KV Cache Memory for Streaming Video Understanding

   Yanlai Yang, Zhuokai Zhao, Satya Narayan Shukla, Aashu Singh, Shlok Kumar Mishra, Lizhu Zhang^*, and Mengye Ren

   In International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2026

   Conference Submission

   Bib HTML

   @inproceedings{yang2026streammem,
     title = {StreamMem: Query-Agnostic KV Cache Memory for Streaming Video Understanding},
     author = {Yang, Yanlai and Zhao, Zhuokai and Shukla, Satya Narayan and Singh, Aashu and Mishra, Shlok Kumar and Zhang, Lizhu and Ren, Mengye},
     booktitle = {International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML)},
     year = {2026},
     note = {Conference Submission},
   }

6. WWW

   RecoWorld: Building Simulated Environments for Agentic Recommender Systems

   Fei Liu, Xinyu Lin, Hanchao Yu, Mingze Gao, Qifan Wang, Lizhu Zhang, Benyu Zhang, and Xiangjun Fan

   In HCRS Workshop at The Web Conference, 2026

   Oral

   Bib

   @inproceedings{liu2026recoworld,
     title = {RecoWorld: Building Simulated Environments for Agentic Recommender Systems},
     author = {Liu, Fei and Lin, Xinyu and Yu, Hanchao and Gao, Mingze and Wang, Qifan and Zhang, Lizhu and Zhang, Benyu and Fan, Xiangjun},
     booktitle = {HCRS Workshop at The Web Conference},
     year = {2026},
     note = {Oral},
   }

7. WWW

   Guiding Generative Recommender Systems with Structured Human Priors via Multi-head Decoding

   Yunkai Zhang, Qiang Zhang, Diji Yang, Ryan Lin, Ruizhong Qiu, Benyu Zhang, Hanchao Yu, Jason Liu, Yinglong Xia, Zhuokai Zhao, Lizhu Zhang, and Xiangjun Fan

   In The Web Conference (WWW), 2026

   Oral

   Bib

   @inproceedings{zhang2026genrec,
     title = {Guiding Generative Recommender Systems with Structured Human Priors via Multi-head Decoding},
     author = {Zhang, Yunkai and Zhang, Qiang and Yang, Diji and Lin, Ryan and Qiu, Ruizhong and Zhang, Benyu and Yu, Hanchao and Liu, Jason and Xia, Yinglong and Zhao, Zhuokai and Zhang, Lizhu and Fan, Xiangjun},
     booktitle = {The Web Conference (WWW)},
     year = {2026},
     note = {Oral},
   }

8. NeurIPS

   Let it Calm: Exploratory Annealed Decoding for Verifiable Reinforcement Learning

   Chenghao Yang, Lin Gui, Chenxiao Yang, Victor Veitch, Lizhu Zhang^*, and Zhuokai Zhao

   In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2026

   Conference Submission

   Bib

   @inproceedings{yang2026calm,
     title = {Let it Calm: Exploratory Annealed Decoding for Verifiable Reinforcement Learning},
     author = {Yang, Chenghao and Gui, Lin and Yang, Chenxiao and Veitch, Victor and Zhang, Lizhu and Zhao, Zhuokai},
     booktitle = {Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)},
     year = {2026},
     note = {Conference Submission},
   }

9. NeurIPS

   Exploring System-1 and System-2 Communication for Latent Reasoning in LLMs

   Julian Coda-Forno, Zhuokai Zhao, Qiang Zhang, Dipesh Tamboli, Weiwei Li, Xiangjun Fan, Lizhu Zhang, Eric Schulz, and Hsiao-Ping Tseng

   In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2026

   Conference Submission

   Bib HTML

   @inproceedings{codaforno2026system12,
     title = {Exploring System-1 and System-2 Communication for Latent Reasoning in LLMs},
     author = {Coda-Forno, Julian and Zhao, Zhuokai and Zhang, Qiang and Tamboli, Dipesh and Li, Weiwei and Fan, Xiangjun and Zhang, Lizhu and Schulz, Eric and Tseng, Hsiao-Ping},
     booktitle = {Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)},
     year = {2026},
     note = {Conference Submission},
   }

10. ACL

    MOFA: LLM-Driven Reasoning for Constraint-Aware Feature Selection in Industrial ML Systems

    Yuhang Zhou, Zhuokai Zhao, Ke Li, Spilios Evmorfos, Gökalp Demirci, Mingyi Wang, Qiao Liu, Qifei Wang, Serena Li, Weiwei Li, Mingze Gao, Gedi Zhou, Abhishek Kumar, Xiangjun Fan, Lizhu Zhang, and Jiayi Liu

    In Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2026

    Industry Track Submission

    Bib

    @inproceedings{zhou2026mofa,
      title = {MOFA: LLM-Driven Reasoning for Constraint-Aware Feature Selection in Industrial ML Systems},
      author = {Zhou, Yuhang and Zhao, Zhuokai and Li, Ke and Evmorfos, Spilios and Demirci, Gökalp and Wang, Mingyi and Liu, Qiao and Wang, Qifei and Li, Serena and Li, Weiwei and Gao, Mingze and Zhou, Gedi and Kumar, Abhishek and Fan, Xiangjun and Zhang, Lizhu and Liu, Jiayi},
      booktitle = {Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)},
      year = {2026},
      note = {Industry Track Submission},
    }

11. KDD

    NEXT: Causality-Driven Video Recommendation via Vision-Language Model Reasoning

    Yuming Liu, Hongye Yang, Harrison Zhao, Ellie Zhu, Bokai Cao, Lei Huang, Lizhu Zhang, and Xiangjun Fan

    In ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, 2026

    ADS Track Cycle 2 Submission

    Bib

    @inproceedings{liu2026next,
      title = {NEXT: Causality-Driven Video Recommendation via Vision-Language Model Reasoning},
      author = {Liu, Yuming and Yang, Hongye and Zhao, Harrison and Zhu, Ellie and Cao, Bokai and Huang, Lei and Zhang, Lizhu and Fan, Xiangjun},
      booktitle = {ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining},
      year = {2026},
      note = {ADS Track Cycle 2 Submission},
    }

12. KDD

    ConnectionMind: Leveraging Social Networks and Large Language Models for Personalized Recommendation at Meta

    Haoyu Han, Yuming Liu, Lei Huang, Lizhu Zhang, Jiliang Tang, and Xiangjun Fan

    In ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, 2026

    ADS Track Cycle 2 Submission

    Bib

    @inproceedings{han2026connectionmind,
      title = {ConnectionMind: Leveraging Social Networks and Large Language Models for Personalized Recommendation at Meta},
      author = {Han, Haoyu and Liu, Yuming and Huang, Lei and Zhang, Lizhu and Tang, Jiliang and Fan, Xiangjun},
      booktitle = {ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining},
      year = {2026},
      note = {ADS Track Cycle 2 Submission},
    }

13. Enhancing Generative Recommender Systems via Human Preference with Multi-task Decoding

    Yunkai Zhang, Qiang Zhang, Diji Yang, Zhuokai Zhao, Ruizhong Qiu, Ryan Feng Lin, Yinglong Xia, Jiayi Liu, Hanchao Yu, Lizhu Zhang, Xiangjun Fan, Zeyu Zheng, and Benyu Zhang

    In , 2026

    Bib

    @inproceedings{zhang2026multitask,
      title = {Enhancing Generative Recommender Systems via Human Preference with Multi-task Decoding},
      author = {Zhang, Yunkai and Zhang, Qiang and Yang, Diji and Zhao, Zhuokai and Qiu, Ruizhong and Lin, Ryan Feng and Xia, Yinglong and Liu, Jiayi and Yu, Hanchao and Zhang, Lizhu and Fan, Xiangjun and Zheng, Zeyu and Zhang, Benyu},
      year = {2026},
    }

2025

1. NeurIPS

   Thought Communication in Multiagent Collaboration

   Yujia Zheng, Zhuokai Zhao, Zijian Li, Yaqi Xie, Mingze Gao, Lizhu Zhang^*, and Kun Zhang

   In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2025

   Spotlight

   Bib HTML

   @inproceedings{zheng2025thought,
     title = {Thought Communication in Multiagent Collaboration},
     author = {Zheng, Yujia and Zhao, Zhuokai and Li, Zijian and Xie, Yaqi and Gao, Mingze and Zhang, Lizhu and Zhang, Kun},
     booktitle = {Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)},
     year = {2025},
     note = {Spotlight},
   }

2. NeurIPS

   S’MoRE: Structural Mixture of Residual Experts for Parameter-Efficient LLM Fine-tuning

   Hanqing Zeng, Yinglong Xia, Zhuokai Zhao, Lizhu Zhang, Xiangjun Fan, and Benyu Zhang

   In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2025

   Poster

   Bib HTML

   @inproceedings{zeng2025smore,
     title = {S'MoRE: Structural Mixture of Residual Experts for Parameter-Efficient LLM Fine-tuning},
     author = {Zeng, Hanqing and Xia, Yinglong and Zhao, Zhuokai and Zhang, Lizhu and Fan, Xiangjun and Zhang, Benyu},
     booktitle = {Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)},
     year = {2025},
     note = {Poster},
   }

3. Beyond Reward Hacking: Causal Rewards for Large Language Model Alignment

   Chaoqi Wang, Zhuokai Zhao, Yibo Jiang, Zhaorun Chen, Chen Zhu, Yuxin Chen, Jiayi Liu, Lizhu Zhang, Xiangjun Fan, Hao Ma, and Sinong Wang

   In , 2025

   Bib HTML

   @inproceedings{wang2025causalrewards,
     title = {Beyond Reward Hacking: Causal Rewards for Large Language Model Alignment},
     author = {Wang, Chaoqi and Zhao, Zhuokai and Jiang, Yibo and Chen, Zhaorun and Zhu, Chen and Chen, Yuxin and Liu, Jiayi and Zhang, Lizhu and Fan, Xiangjun and Ma, Hao and Wang, Sinong},
     year = {2025},
   }

4. ICDM

   Efficient Sequential Recommendation for Long Term User Interest Via Personalization

   Qiang Zhang, Hanchao Yu, Ivan Ji, Chen Yuan, Renqin Cai, Rui Li, Lizhu Zhang, Xiangjun Fan, and Benyu Zhang

   In IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM), 2025

   Bib

   @inproceedings{zhang2025seqrec,
     title = {Efficient Sequential Recommendation for Long Term User Interest Via Personalization},
     author = {Zhang, Qiang and Yu, Hanchao and Ji, Ivan and Yuan, Chen and Cai, Renqin and Li, Rui and Zhang, Lizhu and Fan, Xiangjun and Zhang, Benyu},
     booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM)},
     year = {2025},
   }

5. ICCV

   CAFE: Unifying Representation and Generation with Contrastive Autoregressive Fine-tuning

   Hao Yu, Zhuokai Zhao, Shen Yan, Lukasz Korycki, Jianyu Wang, Baosheng He, Jiayi Liu, Lizhu Zhang, Xiangjun Fan, and Hanchao Yu

   In ICCV Workshop on Findings, 2025

   Bib HTML

   @inproceedings{yu2025cafe,
     title = {CAFE: Unifying Representation and Generation with Contrastive Autoregressive Fine-tuning},
     author = {Yu, Hao and Zhao, Zhuokai and Yan, Shen and Korycki, Lukasz and Wang, Jianyu and He, Baosheng and Liu, Jiayi and Zhang, Lizhu and Fan, Xiangjun and Yu, Hanchao},
     booktitle = {ICCV Workshop on Findings},
     year = {2025},
   }

6. GEM: Empowering LLM for both Embedding Generation and Language Understanding

   Caojin Zhang, Qiang Zhang, Ke Li, Sai Vidyaranya Nuthalapati, Benyu Zhang, Serena Li, Lizhu Zhang, and Xiangjun Fan

   In , 2025

   Bib

   @inproceedings{zhang2025gem,
     title = {GEM: Empowering LLM for both Embedding Generation and Language Understanding},
     author = {Zhang, Caojin and Zhang, Qiang and Li, Ke and Nuthalapati, Sai Vidyaranya and Zhang, Benyu and Li, Serena and Zhang, Lizhu and Fan, Xiangjun},
     year = {2025},
   }

7. Accelerating LLM-Based Embeddings: Empowering Global Lens for Efficient Token Reduction

   Shichao Pei, Ruizhe Zhang, Xiaohui Chen, Feijie Wu, Lizhu Zhang, Xiangjun Fan, Duen Horng Chau, and David Yang

   In , 2025

   Bib

   @inproceedings{pei2025accelerating,
     title = {Accelerating LLM-Based Embeddings: Empowering Global Lens for Efficient Token Reduction},
     author = {Pei, Shichao and Zhang, Ruizhe and Chen, Xiaohui and Wu, Feijie and Zhang, Lizhu and Fan, Xiangjun and Chau, Duen Horng and Yang, David},
     year = {2025},
   }

2016

1. Patent

   Image cache collaboration between clients in remote desktop environments

   Lizhu Zhang

   2016

   US Patent Application US20160246787A1

   Bib

   @misc{zhang2016image,
     title = {Image cache collaboration between clients in remote desktop environments},
     author = {Zhang, Lizhu},
     year = {2016},
     note = {US Patent Application US20160246787A1},
   }

2015

1. Patent

   Copying/pasting items in a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment

   Lizhu Zhang

   2015

   US Patent Application US20150095795A1

   Bib

   @misc{zhang2015vdi,
     title = {Copying/pasting items in a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment},
     author = {Zhang, Lizhu},
     year = {2015},
     note = {US Patent Application US20150095795A1},
   }

2013

1. VMware

   Providing Efficient and Seamless Desktop Services in Ubiquitous Computing Environments

   Lizhu Zhang, Wenlong Shao, and Jim Grandy

   VMware Technical Journal, 2013

   Bib

   @article{zhang2013vmware,
     title = {Providing Efficient and Seamless Desktop Services in Ubiquitous Computing Environments},
     author = {Zhang, Lizhu and Shao, Wenlong and Grandy, Jim},
     journal = {VMware Technical Journal},
     year = {2013},
   }

2012

1. Patent

   Multi-touch interface gestures for keyboard and/or mouse inputs

   Robert Lee Thompson, Xueliang Hua, Zheng Zhang, Juan Casares, Wenlong Shao, and Lizhu Zhang

   2012

   US Patent Application 20120054671

   Bib

   @misc{thompson2012multitouch,
     title = {Multi-touch interface gestures for keyboard and/or mouse inputs},
     author = {Thompson, Robert Lee and Hua, Xueliang and Zhang, Zheng and Casares, Juan and Shao, Wenlong and Zhang, Lizhu},
     year = {2012},
     note = {US Patent Application 20120054671},
   }

2011

1. TWEB

   Recommending friends and locations based on individual location history

   Yu Zheng, Lizhu Zhang, Zhengxin Ma, Xing Xie, and Wei-Ying Ma

   ACM Transactions on the Web, 2011

   Bib

   @article{zheng2011recommending,
     title = {Recommending friends and locations based on individual location history},
     author = {Zheng, Yu and Zhang, Lizhu and Ma, Zhengxin and Xie, Xing and Ma, Wei-Ying},
     journal = {ACM Transactions on the Web},
     year = {2011},
   }

2. Patent

   Mining Correlation Between Locations Using Location History

   Yu Zheng, Lizhu Zhang, and Xing Xie

   2011

   US Patent Application 20110208425

   Bib

   @misc{zheng2011correlation_patent,
     title = {Mining Correlation Between Locations Using Location History},
     author = {Zheng, Yu and Zhang, Lizhu and Xie, Xing},
     year = {2011},
     note = {US Patent Application 20110208425},
   }

2010

1. Patent

   Identifying Interesting Locations

   Yu Zheng, Lizhu Zhang, Xing Xie, and Wei-Ying Ma

   2010

   US Patent Application 20100211308

   Bib

   @misc{zheng2010identifying_patent,
     title = {Identifying Interesting Locations},
     author = {Zheng, Yu and Zhang, Lizhu and Xie, Xing and Ma, Wei-Ying},
     year = {2010},
     note = {US Patent Application 20100211308},
   }

2009

1. WWW

   Mining interesting locations and travel sequences from GPS trajectories

   Yu Zheng, Lizhu Zhang, Xing Xie, and Wei-Ying Ma

   In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on World Wide Web (WWW), 2009

   Bib

   @inproceedings{zheng2009mininglocations,
     title = {Mining interesting locations and travel sequences from GPS trajectories},
     author = {Zheng, Yu and Zhang, Lizhu and Xie, Xing and Ma, Wei-Ying},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on World Wide Web (WWW)},
     year = {2009},
   }

2. GIS

   Mining correlation between locations using human location history

   Yu Zheng, Lizhu Zhang, Xing Xie, and Wei-Ying Ma

   In Proceedings of the 17th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), 2009

   Bib

   @inproceedings{zheng2009correlation,
     title = {Mining correlation between locations using human location history},
     author = {Zheng, Yu and Zhang, Lizhu and Xie, Xing and Ma, Wei-Ying},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of the 17th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (GIS)},
     year = {2009},
   }