Research
I am interested in working on meaningful research on natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning. My goal is to build efficient, effective, and faithful systems to tackle the great ambiguity of natural languages.
Some interesting directions I am thinking of:
(1) Developing an efficient retrieval-augmented language model (RALM) system that can handle complex real tasks;
(2) Developing constraint-following systems with language models and external augmentation for complex planning;
(3) Developing efficient and effective model evaluation with compositional data, interactive tasks, and zero-shot signals
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preprint
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1. Dense X Retrieval: What Retrieval Granularity Should We Use?
Tong Chen, Hongwei Wang, Sihao Chen, Wenhao Yu, Kaixin Ma, Xinran Zhao, Dong Yu, Hongming Zhang
Tp appear in EMNLP 2024
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2. MixGR: Enhancing Retriever Generalization for Scientific Domain through Complementary Granularity
Fengyu Cai, Xinran Zhao, Tong Chen, Sihao Chen, Hongming Zhang, Iryna Gurevych, Heinz Koeppl
Tp appear in EMNLP 2024
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3. HiMemFormer: Hierarchical Memory-Aware Transformer for Multi-Agent Action Anticipation
Zirui Wang, Xinran Zhao, Simon Stepputtis, Woojun Kim, Tongshuang Wu, Katia P. Sycara, Yaqi Xie
Tp appear in Video-Language Models @ NeurIPS 2024
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peer-reviewed
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1. Beyond Relevance: Evaluate and Improve Retrievers on Perspective Awareness
Xinran Zhao, Tong Chen, Sihao Chen, Hongming Zhang, Tongshuang Wu
In Proceedings of COLM 2024
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2. "Merge Conflicts!" Exploring the Impacts of External Distractors to Parametric Knowledge Graphs
Cheng Qian, Xinran Zhao, Sherry Tongshuang Wu
In Proceedings of COLM 2024
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3. Fact-and-Reflection (FaR) Improves Confidence Calibration of Large Language Models
Xinran Zhao, Hongming Zhang, Xiaoman Pan, Wenlin Yao, Dong Yu, Tongshuang Wu, Jianshu Chen
In Findings of ACL 2024
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4. GeoHard: Towards Measuring Class-wise Hardness through Modelling Class Semantics
Fengyu Cai, Xinran Zhao, Hongming Zhang, Iryna Gurevych, Heinz Koeppl
In Findings of ACL 2024
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5. Thrust: Adaptively Propels Large Language Models with External Knowledge
Xinran Zhao, Hongming Zhang, Xiaoman Pan, Wenlin Yao, Dong Yu, and Jianshu Chen
In Proceedings of NeurIPS 2023
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6. Video State-changing Object Segmentation
Xiang Li, Jiangwei Yu,
Xinran Zhao, Hongming Zhang, and Yu-Xiong Wang
In Proceedings of ICCV 2023.
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7. Towards Reference-free Text Simplification Evaluation with a BERT Siamese Network Architecture
Xinran Zhao,
Esin Durmus, and
Dit-Yan Yeung
In Findings of ACL 2023.
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8. Beyond the Imitation Game: Quantifying and extrapolating the capabilities of language models (BIG-bench)
Aarohi Srivastava et al (100+ authors),
Xinran Zhao
In TMLR
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9. On Measuring the Intrinsic Few-Shot Hardness of Datasets
Xinran Zhao*,
Shikhar Murty*, and
Christopher Manning
(*: equal contribution)
In Proceedings of EMNLP 2022.
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10. Weakly Supervised Text Classification using Supervision Signals from a Language Model
Ziqian Zeng,
Weimin Nie,
Tianqing Fang,
Xiang Li,
Xinran Zhao,
and
Yangqiu Song
In Findings of NAACL 2022.
[details] 
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11. PCR4ALL: A Comprehensive Evaluation Benchmark for Pronoun Coreference Resolution
Xinran Zhao,
Hongming Zhang,
and
Yangqiu Song
In Proceedings of LREC 2022.
[paper] / 
[details] 
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12. Leveraging Topic Relatedness for Argument Persuasion
Xinran Zhao,
Esin Durmus,
Hongming Zhang,
and Claire Cardie
In Findings of ACL 2021.
[details] 
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13. Probing Toxic Content in Large Pre-Trained Language Models
Nedjma Ousidhoum,
Xinran Zhao,
Tianqing Fang,
Yangqiu Song, and
Dit-Yan Yeung
In Proceedings of ACL 2021.
[details] 
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14. WinoWhy: A Deep Diagnose of Essential Commonsense Knowledge for Answering Winograd Schema Challenge
Hongming Zhang*,
Xinran Zhao*, and
Yangqiu Song
(*: equal contribution)
In Proceedings of ACL 2020.
[paper] / 
[code & data] / 
[details] 
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15. A Brief Survey and Comparative Study of Recent Development of Pronoun Coreference Resolution
Hongming Zhang,
Xinran Zhao, and
Yangqiu Song
In CRAC @ EMNLP 2021.
[paper] / 
[code & data] / 
[details] 
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16. Learning Contextual Causality Between Daily Events from Time-consecutive Images
Hongming Zhang,
Yintong Huo,
Xinran Zhao,
Yangqiu Song, and
Dan Roth
In Causality in Vision @ CVPR 2021.
[details] 
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17. The Effects of Fear of Missing Out on Social Media Posting Preferences
Yue Xi, Jiale Huo,
Xinran Zhao, Yushi Jiang, Qiang Yang
In European Journal of Marketing.
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Academic Events
Invited to give a talk (topic: Towards Building Retrieval Systems in Complex Realistic Scenarios) for Samaya AI , Summer 2024.
Invited to serve as an area chair for ACL 2024, EMNLP 2024.
Invited to serve as a reviewer for ECCV 2022, EMNLP 2022, AAAI 2023, ACL 2023, AACL 2023, EMNLP 2023, AAAI 2024, EACL 2024, NAACL 2024, COLM 2024.
Invited to give a talk (topic: On Task Difficulty of Few-shot Learning) for ICML 2022 Commonsense Tutorial, Summer 2022.
Invited to give a talk (topic: NLP as a Tool for Scientific Discovery) for the Department of Marketing @ National University of Singapore, Spring 2022
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Miscellaneous
Besides researching, I am also keen on other activities:
I am an enthusiastic body-builder that can do 140 kg deadlift and 160 kg squat.
I am a member of HKUST Mandarin Debate team, where we won the First Prize for Bayarea Debate Championship
and Top 8 for the sixth and seventh International Madarin Debate Invitational in Singapore.
I am a traditional Chinese poem writer who got a few publishments on newspapers.
I am an active member of the HKUST Archery Club.
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