VLDB 2026 Research / reviewers in the wild / expert
Yikai Zhang 0004
dblp:215/3962-4
· DBLP profile ↗
9ranked-venue papers
1as first author
9since 2021 · last 2026
0000-0003-4924-7824ORCID · corroborated
Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several
Artificial intelligence and machine learning · 9 · 1 first-author · 9 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.
| Artificial intelligence
7 papers |
Language models and text generation · 31% Reinforcement learning · 25% Question answering and dialogue systems · 13% |
Topics — the 17 heaviest of 19, each with the papers that count most for it
| Topic | Weight | Papers | Last | Evidence papers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Machine learning › Reinforcement learning
policy optimization |
1.7 | 2 | 2025 | ARIA: Training Language Agents with Intention-driven Reward Aggregation · NeurIPS 2025 ARM: Adaptive Reasoning Model · NeurIPS 2025 |
Natural language and speech › Language models and text generation
LLM agents |
1.6 | 2 | 2025 | ARIA: Training Language Agents with Intention-driven Reward Aggregation · NeurIPS 2025 TimeArena: Shaping Efficient Multitasking Language Agents in a Time-Aware Simulation · ACL (1) 2024 |
Computer vision › Vision and language › multimodal reasoning
language-spatial reasoning |
1.0 | 1 | 2026 | Can LLMs Learn to Map the World from Local Descriptions? · ACL (1) 2026 |
Knowledge, reasoning and agents › Knowledge representation and reasoning › analogical reasoning
metaphorical reasoning |
1.0 | 1 | 2026 | Metaphor Reasoning is Meta-reasoning · ACL (1) 2026 |
Knowledge, reasoning and agents › Planning, search and constraint satisfaction
metareasoning |
1.0 | 1 | 2026 | Metaphor Reasoning is Meta-reasoning · ACL (1) 2026 |
Natural language and speech › Language models and text generation › large language model reasoning
adaptive reasoning |
0.9 | 1 | 2025 | ARM: Adaptive Reasoning Model · NeurIPS 2025 |
Machine learning › Reinforcement learning › policy optimization
group relative policy optimization |
0.9 | 1 | 2025 | ARM: Adaptive Reasoning Model · NeurIPS 2025 |
Natural language and speech › Question answering and dialogue systems
personalized dialogue |
0.9 | 1 | 2025 | DEEPER Insight into Your User: Directed Persona Refinement for Dynamic Persona Modeling · ACL (1) 2025 |
Natural language and speech › Question answering and dialogue systems › personalized dialogue
persona modeling |
0.9 | 1 | 2025 | DEEPER Insight into Your User: Directed Persona Refinement for Dynamic Persona Modeling · ACL (1) 2025 |
Machine learning › Reinforcement learning › reward design
reward shaping |
0.9 | 1 | 2025 | ARIA: Training Language Agents with Intention-driven Reward Aggregation · NeurIPS 2025 |
Natural language and speech › Language models and text generation › text generation › figurative language generation
simile generation |
0.7 | 1 | 2023 | HAUSER: Towards Holistic and Automatic Evaluation of Simile Generation · ACL (1) 2023 |
Robotics › Robot navigation and mapping › spatial cognition
spatial knowledge |
0.3 | 1 | 2026 | Can LLMs Learn to Map the World from Local Descriptions? · ACL (1) 2026 |
Knowledge, reasoning and agents › Multi-agent systems
agent |
0.3 | 1 | 2025 | ARIA: Training Language Agents with Intention-driven Reward Aggregation · NeurIPS 2025 |
Natural language and speech › Language models and text generation
large language model |
0.3 | 1 | 2025 | ARIA: Training Language Agents with Intention-driven Reward Aggregation · NeurIPS 2025 |
Knowledge, reasoning and agents › Planning, search and constraint satisfaction
temporal planning |
0.2 | 1 | 2024 | TimeArena: Shaping Efficient Multitasking Language Agents in a Time-Aware Simulation · ACL (1) 2024 |
Knowledge, reasoning and agents › Planning, search and constraint satisfaction › temporal planning
time-dependent planning |
0.2 | 1 | 2024 | TimeArena: Shaping Efficient Multitasking Language Agents in a Time-Aware Simulation · ACL (1) 2024 |
Natural language and speech › Language models and text generation
text generation |
0.2 | 1 | 2023 | HAUSER: Towards Holistic and Automatic Evaluation of Simile Generation · ACL (1) 2023 |
Methods — techniques the papers use, named apart from their topics
large language model · 1.6reward aggregation · 0.9reinforcement learning · 0.9intention space projection · 0.9format selection · 0.9consensus-guided reasoning · 0.9Ada-GRPO · 0.9textual simulation · 0.8human correlation study · 0.7
| Year | Publication | Venue | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Metaphor Reasoning is Meta-reasoningabstractQianyu He, Junting Lu, Yikai Zhang, Siyu Yuan, Xiaojun Meng, Jiansheng Wei, Jiaqing Liang, Yanghua Xiao. Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers). 2026. Qianyu He, Junting Lu, Yikai Zhang 0004, Xiaojun Meng, Jiansheng Wei, Jiaqing Liang, Yanghua Xiao |
ACL (1) | 3 |
| 2026 | Can LLMs Learn to Map the World from Local Descriptions?abstractSirui Xia, Aili Chen, Xintao Wang, Tinghui Zhu, Yikai Zhang, Jiangjie Chen, Yanghua Xiao. Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers). 2026. Sirui Xia, Aili Chen, Xintao Wang 0001, Tinghui Zhu, Yikai Zhang 0004, Jiangjie Chen, Yanghua Xiao |
ACL (1) | 5 |
| 2025 | DEEPER Insight into Your User: Directed Persona Refinement for Dynamic Persona ModelingabstractAili Chen, Chengyu Du, Jiangjie Chen, Jinghan Xu, Yikai Zhang, Siyu Yuan, Zulong Chen, Liangyue Li, Yanghua Xiao. Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers). 2025. Aili Chen, Chengyu Du, Jiangjie Chen, Yikai Zhang 0004, Zulong Chen, Liangyue Li, Yanghua Xiao |
ACL (1) | 5 |
| 2025 | Revealing the Barriers of Language Agents in PlanningabstractJian Xie, Kexun Zhang, Jiangjie Chen, Siyu Yuan, Kai Zhang, Yikai Zhang, Lei Li, Yanghua Xiao. Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers). 2025. Kexun Zhang, Jiangjie Chen, Kai Zhang 0033, Yikai Zhang 0004, Lei Li 0005, Yanghua Xiao |
NAACL (Long Papers) | 6 |
| 2025 | SELFGOAL: Your Language Agents Already Know How to Achieve High-level GoalsabstractRuihan Yang, Jiangjie Chen, Yikai Zhang, Siyu Yuan, Aili Chen, Kyle Richardson, Yanghua Xiao, Deqing Yang. Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers). 2025. Ruihan Yang, Jiangjie Chen, Yikai Zhang 0004, Aili Chen, Kyle Richardson 0001, Yanghua Xiao, Deqing Yang |
NAACL (Long Papers) | 3 |
| 2025 | ARM: Adaptive Reasoning ModelabstractWhile large reasoning models demonstrate strong performance on complex tasks, they lack the ability to adjust reasoning token usage based on task difficulty. This often leads to the "overthinking" problem—excessive and unnecessary reasoning—which, although potentially mitigated by human intervention to control the token budget, still fundamentally contradicts the goal of achieving fully autonomous AI. In this work, we propose Adaptive Reasoning Model (ARM), a reasoning model capable of adaptively selecting appropriate reasoning formats based on the task at hand. These formats include three efficient ones—Direct Answer, Short CoT, and Code—as well as a more elaborate format, Long CoT. To train ARM, we introduce Ada-GRPO, an adaptation of Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), which addresses the format collapse issue in traditional GRPO. Ada-GRPO enables ARM to achieve high token efficiency, reducing tokens by an average of $\sim$30%, and up to $\sim$70%, while maintaining performance comparable to the model that relies solely on Long CoT. Furthermore, not only does it improve inference efficiency through reduced token generation, but it also brings a $\sim$2$\times$ speedup in training. In addition to the default Adaptive Mode, ARM supports two additional reasoning modes: 1) Instruction-Guided Mode, which allows users to explicitly specify the reasoning format via special tokens—ideal when the appropriate format is known for a batch of tasks. 2) Consensus-Guided Mode, which aggregates the outputs of the three efficient formats and resorts to Long CoT in case of disagreement, prioritizing performance with higher token usage. All the resources will be released. Siye Wu, Yikai Zhang 0004, Aili Chen, Kai Zhang 0033, Yu Su 0001, Yanghua Xiao |
NeurIPS | 3 |
| 2025 | ARIA: Training Language Agents with Intention-driven Reward AggregationabstractLarge language models (LLMs) have enabled agents to perform complex reasoning and decision-making through free-form language interactions. However, in open-ended language action environments (e.g., negotiation or question-asking games), the action space can be formulated as a joint distribution over tokens, resulting in an extremely large and combinatorial action space. Sampling actions in such a space can lead to extreme reward sparsity, which brings large reward variance, hindering effective reinforcement learning (RL). To address this, we propose **ARIA**, a method that **A**ggregates **R**ewards in **I**ntention space to enable efficient and effective language **A**gents training. ARIA aims to project natural language actions from the high-dimensional joint token distribution space into a low-dimensional intention space, where semantically similar actions are clustered and assigned shared rewards. This intention-aware reward aggregation reduces reward variance by densifying reward signals, fostering efficient and effective policy optimization. Extensive experiments demonstrate that ARIA not only significantly reduces gradient variance, but also delivers substantial performance gains of average 9.95% across four downstream tasks (e.g., negotiation and text-based games), consistently outperforming strong offline and online RL baselines. Ruihan Yang, Yikai Zhang 0004, Aili Chen, Xintao Wang 0001, Jiangjie Chen, Deqing Yang, Yanghua Xiao |
NeurIPS | 2 |
| 2024 | TimeArena: Shaping Efficient Multitasking Language Agents in a Time-Aware SimulationabstractDespite remarkable advancements in emulating human-like behavior through Large Language Models (LLMs), current textual simulations do not adequately address the notion of time.To this end, we introduce TIMEARENA, a novel textual simulated environment that incorporates complex temporal dynamics and constraints that better reflect real-life planning scenarios.In TIMEARENA, agents are asked to complete multiple tasks as soon as possible, allowing for parallel processing to save time.We implement the dependency between actions, the time duration for each action, and the occupancy of the agent and the objects in the environment.TIMEARENA grounds to 30 real-world tasks in cooking, household activity, and laboratory work.We conduct extensive experiments with various LLMs using TIMEARENA.Our findings reveal that even the most powerful models, e.g., GPT-4, still lag behind humans in effective multitasking, underscoring the need for enhanced temporal awareness in the development of language agents. 1 Yikai Zhang 0004, Caiyu Hu, Kyle Richardson 0001, Yanghua Xiao, Jiangjie Chen |
ACL (1) | 1 |
| 2023 | HAUSER: Towards Holistic and Automatic Evaluation of Simile GenerationabstractSimiles play an imperative role in creative writing such as story and dialogue generation.Proper evaluation metrics are like a beacon guiding the research of simile generation (SG).However, it remains under-explored as to what criteria should be considered, how to quantify each criterion into metrics, and whether the metrics are effective for comprehensive, efficient, and reliable SG evaluation.To address the issues, we establish HAUSER, a holistic and automatic evaluation system for the SG task, which consists of five criteria from three perspectives and automatic metrics for each criterion.Through extensive experiments, we verify that our metrics are significantly more correlated with human ratings from each perspective compared with prior automatic metrics.Resources of HAUSER are publicly available at https://github.com/Abbey4799/HAUSER. Qianyu He, Yikai Zhang 0004, Jiaqing Liang, Yuncheng Huang, Yanghua Xiao, Yunwen Chen |
ACL (1) | 2 |