Welcome to my homepage! I am now a research professor and also a Ph.D. advisor in the School of Data Science and Engineering at East China Normal University, leading the PLANING lab (graPh mining and LANguage processING ☺). Before that, I received my Ph.D. degree from The University of Hong Kong in 2018, M.Eng. degree from University of Science and Technology of China in 2014 and B.Eng. degree from Nanchang University in 2011, respectively. Previously, I worked as a research scientist in the Data Science Lab at JD.com from Aug 2018 to July 2019 and a postdoc researcher in The University of Hong Kong from July 2019 to Dec 2020. I was also lucky to visit Microsoft Research Asia, Shanghai from Dec. 2021 to March 2022, and Baidu Search BU from June to August 2023.

My research lies at the intersection of graph machine learning, large language models, and intelligent data systems. My goal is to develop AI methods that combine structured knowledge and unstructured information for robust learning, reasoning, and decision-making.

Specifically, my research includes:

  • Graph Machine Learning: graph neural networks, heterogeneous information networks, and knowledge graphs.
  • Foundation Models and Agents: large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, reasoning, and agents.
  • AI-powered Data Applications: content understanding and governance, search and deep research.

★★★For students who are interested in working and collaborating with me, feel free to reach out to me if you want to conduct cutting-edge researches.

🔥 News

  • 2024.08: 🥂🥂 Attend KDD 2024@Barcelona!
  • 2024.08: 🥂🥂 Attend ACL 2024@Bangkok!
  • 2024.08: 🥂🥂 Host a forum on large-scale graph-structured data analysis and management at NDBC 2024@Urumqi!
  • 2024.07: 🥂🥂 Give a talk at CSIAM-BDAI 2024@Yinchuan on Heterophilous graph learning!
  • 2024.07: 🥂🥂 Give a talk at NUDT on Federated Learning with data and model heterogeneity!
  • 2024.06: 🥂🥂 Give a talk at SDU on Heterophilous graph learning!
  • 2024.06: 🥂🥂 Three papers are accepted by ECML-PKDD 2024!
  • 2024.05: 🥂🥂 One paper is accepted by KDD 2024! See you in Barcelona!
  • 2024.05: 🥂🥂 One paper is accepted by ACL 2024! See you in Bangkok!
  • 2024.03: 📑📑 Check out our Code Intelligence Survey Paper🔥
  • 2024.01: 📑📑 Check out our survey paper: Learning from Graphs with Heterophily: Progress and Future🔥

📝 Publications

🧑‍🏫 Teaching

  • (Spring 2023-2024) Instructor @ Deep Learning and Reinforcement Learning, postgraduate level, ECNU, China.
  • (Fall 2023-2024) Instructor @ Contemporary Artificial Intelligence, undergraduate level, ECNU, China.
  • (Spring 2022-2023) Instructor @ Contemporary Artificial Intelligence, undergraduate level, ECNU, China.
  • (Spring 2022-2023) Instructor @ Deep Learning and Reinforcement Learning, postgraduate level, ECNU, China.
  • (Spring 2021-2022) Instructor @ Contemporary Artificial Intelligence, undergraduate level, ECNU, China.
  • (Spring 2021-2022) Instructor @ Deep Learning and Reinforcement Learning, postgraduate level, ECNU, China.
  • (Fall 2021-2022) Instructor @ Contemporary Artificial Intelligence, undergraduate level, ECNU, China.
  • (Spring 2020-2021) Instructor @ Deep Learning and Reinforcement Learning, postgraduate level, ECNU, China.

🔍 Services

  • I serve(d) as a program committee member / reviewer for the following conferences and journals:
    • Conferences
      • 2025: NeurIPS, ICML, ICDE, KDD, ICLR, AAAI, WebConf, CIKM, ECML-PKDD, LOG, ARR Rolling Review
      • 2024: NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, KDD, WebConf, CVPR, ACL, AAAI, IJCAI, CIKM, ECML-PKDD, SDM, LOG, ARR Rolling Review
      • 2023: NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, KDD, WebConf, AAAI, IJCAI, CIKM, SDM, DASFAA, LOG, ARR Rolling Review
      • 2022: NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, KDD, WebConf, AAAI, CIKM, ARR Rolling Review
      • 2021 & before: NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, KDD, WebConf, AAAI, ICDE, etc.
    • Journals: Frontiers of Computer Science (AE), TKDE, TNNLS, TBD, etc.

💻 Alumni

I am so fortunate to have these students as my friends:

  • 2026:
    • Master: Long Zeng (ByteDance SSP, Algorithm Engineer), Jiaqi Tan (Meituan, Algorithm Engineer), Renjing Cui (China Baowu)
  • 2025:
    • Ph.D.: Yao Cheng (Postdoc@NTU)
    • Master: Zeyuan Zhao (Meituan/Alibaba/Ant SSP -> JD.com SSP, Algorithm Engineer), Qingqing Ge (Baidu SSP -> Meituan SSP, Algorithm Engineer), Yige Zhao (Baidu SSP -> C919), Zichen Ding (ByteDance SSP -> Shanghai AI lab, researcher), Yuling Chen (Morgan Stanley, Algorithm Engineer), Jinao Liu (Baidu, Algorithm Engineer), Chenghua Gong (Ph.D.@USTC)
  • 2024:
    • Ph.D.: Jianing Wang (Tencent Daka, Alistar -> Meituan Beidou), Chengcheng Han (Alistar -> Meituan Beidou -> MiniMax), Kangyang Luo (Postdoc@THU).
    • Master: Minjie Chen (Baidu SSP -> Meituan SSP, Algorithm Engineer), Zhihui Zhang (Meituan, Algorithm Engineer), Mengyi Yuan (ABC@Hangzhou), Yueqi Ma (Huawei), Jianxiang Yu (PhD@ECNU)