Xikun Zhang 0002

dblp:38/326-2 · DBLP profile ↗
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11ranked-venue papers
9as first author
8since 2021 · last 2026
0000-0002-0694-3654ORCID · conflict

Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several

Artificial intelligence and machine learning · 10 · 9 first-author · 7 since 2021Databases, data management, data science and information retrieval · 3 · 2 first-author · 3 since 2021Graphics, computer vision, multimedia, augmented reality and games · 3 · 2 first-author · 1 since 2021Applied, interdisciplinary, general and emerging computing · 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.

Artificial intelligence
9 papers
Graph learning · 28% Learning paradigms · 23% Language models and text generation · 13%
Databases, data mining, and information retrieval
1 paper
Machine learning and data management · 100%

Topics — the 19 heaviest of 20, each with the papers that count most for it

TopicWeightPapersLastEvidence papers
Machine learning › Graph learning › graph neural network training
continual graph learning
1.932024
Topology-aware Embedding Memory for Continual Learning on Expanding Networks · KDD 2024
CGLB: Benchmark Tasks for Continual Graph Learning · NeurIPS 2022
Sparsified Subgraph Memory for Continual Graph Representation Learning · ICDM 2022
Machine learning › Learning paradigms
continual learning
1.522025
Learning system dynamics without forgetting · ICLR 2025
Hierarchical Prototype Networks for Continual Graph Representation Learning · IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 2023
Machine learning › Learning paradigms › continual learning
memory replay
1.322024
Topology-aware Embedding Memory for Continual Learning on Expanding Networks · KDD 2024
Sparsified Subgraph Memory for Continual Graph Representation Learning · ICDM 2022
Machine learning › Trustworthy machine learning
calibration
1.012026
When to Trust: A Causality-Aware Calibration Framework for Accurate Knowledge Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation · WWW 2026
Natural language and speech › Language models and text generation › retrieval-augmented generation
knowledge graph retrieval-augmented generation
1.012026
When to Trust: A Causality-Aware Calibration Framework for Accurate Knowledge Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation · WWW 2026
Natural language and speech › Language models and text generation
retrieval-augmented generation
1.012026
When to Trust: A Causality-Aware Calibration Framework for Accurate Knowledge Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation · WWW 2026
Machine learning › Time series and sequential data
dynamic system modeling
0.912025
Learning system dynamics without forgetting · ICLR 2025
Machine learning › Graph learning
graph neural network
0.822023
Hierarchical Prototype Networks for Continual Graph Representation Learning · IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 2023
CGLB: Benchmark Tasks for Continual Graph Learning · NeurIPS 2022
Machine learning › Time series and sequential data
large language model for time series
0.812024
Empowering Time Series Analysis with Large Language Models: A Survey · IJCAI 2024
Machine learning › Efficient and distributed learning › dynamic neural network
network expansion
0.812024
Topology-aware Embedding Memory for Continual Learning on Expanding Networks · KDD 2024
Machine learning › Learning paradigms › continual learning
catastrophic forgetting
0.712023
Hierarchical Prototype Networks for Continual Graph Representation Learning · IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 2023
Machine learning › Graph learning
graph representation learning
0.712023
Hierarchical Prototype Networks for Continual Graph Representation Learning · IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 2023
Machine learning › Learning theory › classification › prototype-based classification
prototypical network
0.712023
Hierarchical Prototype Networks for Continual Graph Representation Learning · IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 2023
Computer vision › Video understanding and tracking
action recognition
0.412020
Context Aware Graph Convolution for Skeleton-Based Action Recognition · CVPR 2020
Machine learning › Graph learning › graph neural network
graph convolution
0.412020
Context Aware Graph Convolution for Skeleton-Based Action Recognition · CVPR 2020
Machine learning › Graph learning › graph neural network
graph convolutional network
0.412020
On Dropping Clusters to Regularize Graph Convolutional Neural Networks · ECCV (21) 2020
Machine learning › Deep learning architectures and training
regularization
0.412020
On Dropping Clusters to Regularize Graph Convolutional Neural Networks · ECCV (21) 2020
Computer vision › Video understanding and tracking › action recognition
skeleton-based action recognition
0.412020
Context Aware Graph Convolution for Skeleton-Based Action Recognition · CVPR 2020
Machine learning › Time series and sequential data
time series analysis
0.212024
Empowering Time Series Analysis with Large Language Models: A Survey · IJCAI 2024

Methods — techniques the papers use, named apart from their topics

panel-based re-scoring · 1.0counterfactual prompting · 1.0sub-network learning · 0.9mode-switching · 0.9graph convolutional network · 0.9graph ODE · 0.9survey · 0.8parameter decoupled graph neural network · 0.8coverage maximization sampling · 0.8atomic feature extractor · 0.7
YearPublicationVenuePosition
2026 When to Trust: A Causality-Aware Calibration Framework for Accurate Knowledge Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation
abstract
Knowledge Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation (KG-RAG) extends the RAG paradigm by incorporating structured knowledge from knowledge graphs, enabling Large Language Models (LLMs) to perform more precise and explainable reasoning. While KG-RAG improves factual accuracy in complex tasks, existing KG-RAG models are often severely overconfident, producing high-confidence predictions even when retrieved sub-graphs are incomplete or unreliable, which raises concerns for deployment in high-stakes domains. To address this issue, we propose Ca2KG, a Causality-aware Calibration framework for KG-RAG. Ca2KG integrates counterfactual prompting, which exposes retrieval-dependent uncertainties in knowledge quality and reasoning reliability, with a panel-based re-scoring mechanism that stabilises predictions across interventions. Extensive experiments on two complex QA datasets demonstrate that Ca2KG consistently improves calibration while maintaining or even enhancing predictive accuracy. The source code can be found at~ https://aisuko.github.io/ca2kg/.
Jing Ren 0001, Bowen Li 0012, Ziqi Xu 0001, Xikun Zhang 0002, Haytham M. Fayek, Xiaodong Li 0001
WWW4
2025 Learning system dynamics without forgetting
abstract
Observation-based trajectory prediction for systems with unknown dynamics is essential in fields such as physics and biology. Most existing approaches are limited to learning within a single system with fixed dynamics patterns. However, many real-world applications require learning across systems with evolving dynamics patterns, a challenge that has been largely overlooked. To address this, we systematically investigate the problem of Continual Dynamics Learning (CDL), examining task configurations and evaluating the applicability of existing techniques, while identifying key challenges. In response, we propose the Mode-switching Graph ODE (MS-GODE) model, which integrates the strengths LG-ODE and sub-network learning with a mode-switching module, enabling efficient learning over varying dynamics. Moreover, we construct a novel benchmark of biological dynamic systems for CDL, Bio-CDL, featuring diverse systems with disparate dynamics and significantly enriching the research field of machine learning for dynamic systems. Our code available at \url{https://github.com/QueuQ/MS-GODE}.
Xikun Zhang 0002, Dongjin Song, Yushan Jiang, Yixin Chen 0001, Dacheng Tao
ICLR1
2024 Empowering Time Series Analysis with Large Language Models: A Survey
Yushan Jiang, Zijie Pan, Xikun Zhang 0002, Sahil Garg, Anderson Schneider, Yuriy Nevmyvaka, Dongjin Song
IJCAI3
2024 Topology-aware Embedding Memory for Continual Learning on Expanding Networks
abstract
Memory replay based techniques have shown great success for continual learning with incrementally accumulated Euclidean data. Directly applying them to continually expanding networks, however, leads to the potential memory explosion problem due to the need to buffer representative nodes and their associated topological neighborhood structures. To this end, we systematically analyze the key challenges in the memory explosion problem, and present a general framework,i.e., Parameter Decoupled Graph Neural Networks (PDGNNs) with Topology-aware Embedding Memory (TEM), to tackle this issue. The proposed framework not only reduces the memory space complexity from O (ndL) to O (n)1: memory budget, d: average node degree, L: the radius of the GNN receptive field, but also fully utilizes the topological information for memory replay. Specifically, PDGNNs decouple trainable parameters from the computation ego-subnetwork viaTopology-aware Embeddings (TEs), which compress ego-subnetworks into compact vectors (i.e., TEs) to reduce the memory consumption. Based on this framework, we discover a unique pseudo-training effect in continual learning on expanding networks and this effect motivates us to develop a novel coverage maximization sampling strategy that can enhance the performance with a tight memory budget. Thorough empirical studies demonstrate that, by tackling the memory explosion problem and incorporating topological information into memory replay, PDGNNs with TEM significantly outperform state-of-the-art techniques, especially in the challenging class-incremental setting.
Xikun Zhang 0002, Dongjin Song, Yixin Chen 0001, Dacheng Tao
KDD1
2024 Ricci Curvature-Based Graph Sparsification for Continual Graph Representation Learning
abstract
Memory replay, which stores a subset of historical data from previous tasks to replay while learning new tasks, exhibits state-of-the-art performance for various continual learning applications on the Euclidean data. While topological information plays a critical role in characterizing graph data, existing memory replay-based graph learning techniques only store individual nodes for replay and do not consider their associated edge information. To this end, based on the message-passing mechanism in graph neural networks (GNNs), we present the Ricci curvature-based graph sparsification technique to perform continual graph representation learning. Specifically, we first develop the subgraph episodic memory (SEM) to store the topological information in the form of computation subgraphs. Next, we sparsify the subgraphs such that they only contain the most informative structures (nodes and edges). The informativeness is evaluated with the Ricci curvature, a theoretically justified metric to estimate the contribution of neighbors to represent a target node. In this way, we can reduce the memory consumption of a computation subgraph from to and enable GNNs to fully utilize the most informative topological information for memory replay. Besides, to ensure the applicability on large graphs, we also provide the theoretically justified surrogate for the Ricci curvature in the sparsification process, which can greatly facilitate the computation. Finally, our empirical studies show that SEM outperforms state-of-the-art approaches significantly on four different public datasets. Unlike existing methods, which mainly focus on task incremental learning (task-IL) setting, SEM also succeeds in the challenging class incremental learning (class-IL) setting in which the model is required to distinguish all learned classes without task indicators and even achieves comparable performance to joint training, which is the performance upper bound for continual learning.
Xikun Zhang 0002, Dongjin Song, Dacheng Tao
IEEE Trans. Neural Networks Learn. Syst.1
2023 Hierarchical Prototype Networks for Continual Graph Representation Learning
abstract
Despite significant advances in graph representation learning, little attention has been paid to the more practical continual learning scenario in which new categories of nodes (e.g., new research areas in citation networks, or new types of products in co-purchasing networks) and their associated edges are continuously emerging, causing catastrophic forgetting on previous categories. Existing methods either ignore the rich topological information or sacrifice plasticity for stability. To this end, we present Hierarchical Prototype Networks (HPNs) which extract different levels of abstract knowledge in the form of prototypes to represent the continuously expanded graphs. Specifically, we first leverage a set of Atomic Feature Extractors (AFEs) to encode both the elemental attribute information and the topological structure of the target node. Next, we develop HPNs to adaptively select relevant AFEs and represent each node with three levels of prototypes. In this way, whenever a new category of nodes is given, only the relevant AFEs and prototypes at each level will be activated and refined, while others remain uninterrupted to maintain the performance over existing nodes. Theoretically, we first demonstrate that the memory consumption of HPNs is bounded regardless of how many tasks are encountered. Then, we prove that under mild constraints, learning new tasks will not alter the prototypes matched to previous data, thereby eliminating the forgetting problem. The theoretical results are supported by experiments on five datasets, showing that HPNs not only outperform state-of-the-art baseline techniques but also consume relatively less memory. Code and datasets are available at https://github.com/QueuQ/HPNs.
Xikun Zhang 0002, Dongjin Song, Dacheng Tao
IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell.1
2022 Sparsified Subgraph Memory for Continual Graph Representation Learning
abstract
Memory replay, which stores a subset of representative historical data from previous tasks to replay while learning new tasks, exhibits state-of-the-art performance for various continual learning applications on Euclidean data. While topological information plays a critical role in characterizing graph data, existing memory replay based graph learning techniques only store individual nodes for replay and do not consider their associated edge information. To this end, we propose a sparsified subgraph memory (SSM), which sparsifies the selected computation graphs into fixed size before storing them into the memory. In this way, we can reduce the memory consumption of a computation subgraph from $\mathcal{O}(d^{L})$ to $\mathcal{O}(1)$, and for the first time enable GNNs to utilize the explicit topological information for memory replay. Finally, our empirical studies show that SSM outperforms state-of-the-art approaches by up to 27.8% on four different public datasets. Unlike existing methods which focus on task incremental learning (task-IL) setting, SSM succeeds in the challenging class incremental learning (class-IL) setting in which a model is required to distinguish all learned classes without task indicators, and even achieves comparable performance to joint training which is the performance upper bound for continual learning. Our code is available at https://github.com/QueuQ/SSM.
Xikun Zhang 0002, Dongjin Song, Dacheng Tao
ICDM1
2022 CGLB: Benchmark Tasks for Continual Graph Learning
abstract
Continual learning on graph data, which aims to accommodate new tasks over newly emerged graph data while maintaining the model performance over existing tasks, is attracting increasing attention from the community. Unlike continual learning on Euclidean data ($\textit{e.g.}$, images, texts, etc.) that has established benchmarks and unified experimental settings, benchmark tasks are rare for Continual Graph Learning (CGL). Moreover, due to the variety of graph data and its complex topological structures, existing works adopt different protocols to configure datasets and experimental settings. This creates a great obstacle to compare different techniques and thus hinders the development of CGL. To this end, we systematically study the task configurations in different application scenarios and develop a comprehensive Continual Graph Learning Benchmark (CGLB) curated from different public datasets. Specifically, CGLB contains both node-level and graph-level continual graph learning tasks under task-incremental (currently widely adopted) and class-incremental (more practical, challenging, yet underexplored) settings, as well as a toolkit for training, evaluating, and visualizing different CGL methods. Within CGLB, we also systematically explain the difference among these task configurations by comparing them to classical continual learning settings. Finally, we comprehensively compare state-of-the-art baselines on CGLB to investigate their effectiveness. Given CGLB and the developed toolkit, the barrier to exploring CGL has been greatly lowered and researchers can focus more on the model development without worrying about tedious work on pre-processing of datasets or encountering unseen pitfalls. The benchmark and the toolkit are available through https://github.com/QueuQ/CGLB.
Xikun Zhang 0002, Dongjin Song, Dacheng Tao
NeurIPS1
2020 Context Aware Graph Convolution for Skeleton-Based Action Recognition
abstract
Graph convolutional models have gained impressive successes on skeleton based human action recognition task. As graph convolution is a local operation, it cannot fully investigate non-local joints that could be vital to recognizing the action. For example, actions like typing and clapping request the cooperation of two hands, which are distant from each other in a human skeleton graph. Multiple graph convolutional layers thus tend to be stacked together to increase receptive field, which brings in computational inefficiency and optimization difficulty. But there is still no guarantee that distant joints (e.g. two hands) can be well integrated. In this paper, we propose a context aware graph convolutional network (CA-GCN). Besides the computation of localized graph convolution, CA-GCN considers a context term for each vertex by integrating information of all other vertices. Long range dependencies among joints are thus naturally integrated in context information, which then eliminates the need of stacking multiple layers to enlarge receptive field and greatly simplifies the network. Moreover, we further propose an advanced CA-GCN, in which asymmetric relevance measurement and higher level representation are utilized to compute context information for more flexibility and better performance. Besides the joint features, our CA-GCN could also be extended to handle graphs with edge (limb) features. Extensive experiments on two real-world datasets demonstrate the importance of context information and the effectiveness of the proposed CA-GCN in skeleton based action recognition.
Xikun Zhang 0002, Chang Xu 0002, Dacheng Tao
CVPR1
2020 On Dropping Clusters to Regularize Graph Convolutional Neural Networks
Xikun Zhang 0002, Chang Xu 0002, Dacheng Tao
ECCV (21)1
2020 Graph Edge Convolutional Neural Networks for Skeleton-Based Action Recognition
abstract
Body joints, directly obtained from a pose estimation model, have proven effective for action recognition. Existing works focus on analyzing the dynamics of human joints. However, except joints, humans also explore motions of limbs for understanding actions. Given this observation, we investigate the dynamics of human limbs for skeleton-based action recognition. Specifically, we represent an edge in a graph of a human skeleton by integrating its spatial neighboring edges (for encoding the cooperation between different limbs) and its temporal neighboring edges (for achieving the consistency of movements in an action). Based on this new edge representation, we devise a graph edge convolutional neural network (CNN). Considering the complementarity between graph node convolution and edge convolution, we further construct two hybrid networks by introducing different shared intermediate layers to integrate graph node and edge CNNs. Our contributions are twofold, graph edge convolution and hybrid networks for integrating the proposed edge convolution and the conventional node convolution. Experimental results on the Kinetics and NTU-RGB+D data sets demonstrate that our graph edge convolution is effective at capturing the characteristics of actions and that our graph edge CNN significantly outperforms the existing state-of-the-art skeleton-based action recognition methods.
Xikun Zhang 0002, Chang Xu 0002, Xinmei Tian 0001, Dacheng Tao
IEEE Trans. Neural Networks Learn. Syst.1