VLDB 2026 Research / reviewers in the wild / expert
Mutian Shen
dblp:206/6538
· DBLP profile ↗
1ranked-venue papers
0as first author
1since 2021 · last 2024
—ORCID · unresolved
Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several
Artificial intelligence and machine learning · 1 · 1 since 2021Databases, data management, data science and information retrieval · 1 · 1 since 2021
Expertise — from the expertise taxonomy: the topics of the expert's papers under the CCF categories. A weight counts papers with recency: 1 for a paper about the topic, 0.3 when the topic is its context, halved every five years.
| Theoretical computer science
1 paper |
Mathematical optimization · 100% | |
| Artificial intelligence
1 paper |
Reinforcement learning · 100% |
Topics — the 3 heaviest of 3, each with the papers that count most for it
| Topic | Weight | Papers | Last | Evidence papers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Machine learning › Reinforcement learning
exploration |
0.8 | 1 | 2024 | Exploratory Combinatorial Optimization Problem Solving via Gauge Transformation · ICDM 2024 |
Mathematical optimization
combinatorial optimization |
0.8 | 1 | 2024 | Exploratory Combinatorial Optimization Problem Solving via Gauge Transformation · ICDM 2024 |
Mathematical optimization › combinatorial optimization
graph combinatorial optimization |
0.2 | 1 | 2024 | Exploratory Combinatorial Optimization Problem Solving via Gauge Transformation · ICDM 2024 |
Methods — techniques the papers use, named apart from their topics
markov decision process · 1.5gauge transformation · 1.5
| Year | Publication | Venue | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Exploratory Combinatorial Optimization Problem Solving via Gauge TransformationabstractThe combinatorial optimization problems (COPs) over graph are of great significance both in theory and practice, covering a wide range of scenarios in daily life and industrial production. Recent years, reinforcement learning (RL) based models have emerged as a promising direction, which treat solving the COPs as a heuristic learning problem. However, current finite-horizon Markov Decision Process (MDP) based RL models are not allowed to explore adquately for improving solutions at test time, which may be necessary given the complexity of NP-hard optimization tasks. Some recent attempts solve this issue by focusing on reward design and state feature engineering, which are tedious and ad-hoc. To address this challenge, we introduce a physics-inspired technique called gauge transformation (GT), which is highly effective in enabling RL agents to explore and continuously enhance solution quality during testing. GT seamlessly transforms any state within the MDP back to its initial state, allowing the RL agent to continue exploration within the transformed space. Empirically, we demonstrate that traditional RL models equipped with the GT technique achieve the SOTA performance on the MaxCut problem. Moreover, GT is exclusively applied during testing and does not alter the training phase of the model. It can be readily integrated into existing RL models, providing a pathway for more effective exploration in solving the COPs. Tianle Pu, Changjun Fan, Mutian Shen, Yizhou Lu, Zohar Nussinov |
ICDM | 3 |