EDBT 2026 Demo / reviewers in the wild / expert
Zhen Liao
dblp:39/4131
· DBLP profile ↗
12ranked-venue papers
5as first author
4since 2021 · last 2025
—ORCID · conflict
Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several
Databases, data management, data science and information retrieval · 9 · 5 first-author · 1 since 2021Applied, interdisciplinary, general and emerging computing · 4 · 1 first-author · 3 since 2021Artificial intelligence and machine learning · 3 · 1 first-author
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.
| Databases, data mining, and information retrieval
6 papers |
Information retrieval · 94% Data mining · 6% |
Topics — the 16 heaviest of 17, each with the papers that count most for it
| Topic | Weight | Papers | Last | Evidence papers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Information retrieval
web search |
0.7 | 1 | 2023 | Facebook Content Search: Efficient and Effective Adapting Search on A Large Scale · SIGIR 2023 |
Information retrieval
query suggestion |
0.5 | 4 | 2014 | Task Trail: An Effective Segmentation of User Search Behavior · IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng. 2014 Evaluating the effectiveness of search task trails · WWW 2012 Web Query Recommendation via Sequential Query Prediction · ICDE 2009 |
Information retrieval
query log analysis |
0.4 | 3 | 2012 | Evaluating the effectiveness of search task trails · WWW 2012 Multidimensional mining of large-scale search logs: a topic-concept cube approach · WSDM 2011 Context-aware query suggestion by mining click-through and session data · KDD 2008 |
Information retrieval
large-scale retrieval |
0.2 | 1 | 2023 | Facebook Content Search: Efficient and Effective Adapting Search on A Large Scale · SIGIR 2023 |
Information retrieval › query understanding
query intent understanding |
0.2 | 1 | 2023 | Facebook Content Search: Efficient and Effective Adapting Search on A Large Scale · SIGIR 2023 |
Information retrieval
query understanding |
0.2 | 1 | 2023 | Facebook Content Search: Efficient and Effective Adapting Search on A Large Scale · SIGIR 2023 |
Information retrieval › user behavior
search behavior analysis |
0.2 | 1 | 2014 | Task Trail: An Effective Segmentation of User Search Behavior · IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng. 2014 |
Information retrieval › interactive information retrieval › search tasks
search task identification |
0.1 | 1 | 2012 | Evaluating the effectiveness of search task trails · WWW 2012 |
Data mining › multidimensional data analysis
multidimensional data mining |
0.1 | 1 | 2011 | Multidimensional mining of large-scale search logs: a topic-concept cube approach · WSDM 2011 |
Information retrieval › document processing › document analysis
topic hierarchy generation |
0.1 | 1 | 2011 | Multidimensional mining of large-scale search logs: a topic-concept cube approach · WSDM 2011 |
Information retrieval › query suggestion
next-query prediction |
0.1 | 1 | 2009 | Web Query Recommendation via Sequential Query Prediction · ICDE 2009 |
Information retrieval › query understanding › query intent understanding
search intent prediction |
0.1 | 1 | 2009 | Web Query Recommendation via Sequential Query Prediction · ICDE 2009 |
Information retrieval › query log analysis › clickthrough data
click-through data mining |
0.1 | 1 | 2008 | Context-aware query suggestion by mining click-through and session data · KDD 2008 |
Information retrieval › query suggestion
context-aware query suggestion |
0.1 | 1 | 2008 | Context-aware query suggestion by mining click-through and session data · KDD 2008 |
Data mining
pattern mining |
0.0 | 1 | 2011 | Multidimensional mining of large-scale search logs: a topic-concept cube approach · WSDM 2011 |
Data mining › text mining
topic modeling |
0.0 | 1 | 2011 | Multidimensional mining of large-scale search logs: a topic-concept cube approach · WSDM 2011 |
Methods — techniques the papers use, named apart from their topics
machine learning · 0.7search log analysis · 0.2log analysis · 0.1topic-concept model · 0.1distributed parameter learning · 0.1variable memory markov model · 0.1n-gram model · 0.1mixture variable memory markov model · 0.1suffix tree · 0.1clustering · 0.1
| Year | Publication | Venue | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Carmna: classification and regression models for nitrogenase activity based on a pretrained large protein language modelabstractNitrogen-fixing microorganisms play a critical role in the global nitrogen cycle by converting atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia through the action of nitrogenase (EC 1.18.6.1). In this study, we employed six machine learning algorithms to model the classification and regression of nitrogenase activity (Carmna). Carmna utilized the pretrained large-scale model ProtT5 for feature extraction from nitrogenase sequences and incorporated additional features, such as gene expression and codon preference, for model training. The optimal classification model, based on XGBoost, achieved an average area under receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.9365 and an F1 score of 0.85 in five-fold cross-validation. For regression, the best-performing model was a stacking approach based on support vector regression, with an average R2 of 0.5572 and a mean absolute error of 0.3351. Further interpretability analysis of the optimal regression model revealed that not only the proportion and codon preferences of standard amino acids, but also the expression levels and spatial distance of nitrogenase genes were associated with nitrogenase activity. We also obtained the minimum nitrogen-fixing nif cluster. This study deepens our understanding of the complex mechanisms regulating nitrogenase activity and contributes to the development of efficient bio-fertilizers. Anqiang Ye, Ji-Yun Zhang, Hai-Xia Guo, Zhen Liao, Hongtu Cui, Feng-Biao Guo |
Briefings Bioinform. | 5 |
| 2025 | Simultaneous Suppression of Random Noise and Ground Roll With a Fuzzy Logic-Guided Deep NetworkabstractSeismic data are frequently contaminated by incoherent random noise and coherent surface waves; both severely degrade subsurface data quality. While random noise is statistically irregular and uncorrelated, surface waves exhibit structured regularity in both temporal and spatial domains. Their coherent low-frequency propagation makes them fundamentally distinct from random noise, posing significant challenges to simultaneous suppression. This letter presents a Deep Adaptive Signal Denoising network (DASDNet) designed for random and ground roll simultaneous suppression using weakly supervised training on synthetic clean-noisy pairs. The architecture incorporates short-time Fourier transform (STFT) and discrete wavelet transform (DWT) for multiscale time-frequency decomposition. A fuzzy logic-based encoder is employed to mitigate feature uncertainty, complemented by a time-frequency regularization module that preserves structural coherence. A unified loss function across time, frequency, and spatial domains guides robust training. DASDNet demonstrates remarkable generalization capability to both synthetic and field-recorded datasets, achieving robust performance without reliance on labeled field data or manual post-hoc parameter tuning. Experimental results show that DASDNet improves signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by 6.86 dB, reduces mean squared error (MSE) by 4433, and increases structural similarity index (SSIM) by 0.22, outperforming other methods. Qualitative analysis further demonstrates its advantage in preserving primary fidelity while suppressing noises. Xuebin Zuo, Jitao Ma, Zhen Liao, Xiaohong Chen 0003 |
IEEE Geosci. Remote. Sens. Lett. | 3 |
| 2025 | GTSNet: A Generalized Traffic Scheduler for Time-Sensitive Networking Based on Graph Neural NetworkabstractTime-sensitive networking is a promising real-time network protocol, especially because it can utilize a time awareness shaping mechanism to realize very low delay and jitter transmission of control data traffic (CDT). Nowadays, deep learning methods have been widely applied in CDT scheduling to improve the scheduling performance. However, these trained models can only schedule for fixed networking with limited change. They have low generalization and cannot adapt to diverse application situations. To address this challenge, we propose GTSNet, a novel scheduler with strong generalization capabilities. We design the deep learning model based on a graph neural network to overcome the lack of generalization performance. Moreover, we transform the problem into a continuous node classification problem to enhance the scheduling ability and generalization. Compared with existing methods(heuristic and reinforcement learning methods), GTSNet demonstrates strong generalizability for the first time and avoids more than 50% nonschedulable flows in many generalization ability evaluation cases. Zelong Tian, Zhen Liao, Moran Sun, Feng He 0007 |
IEEE Trans. Ind. Informatics | 3 |
| 2023 | Facebook Content Search: Efficient and Effective Adapting Search on A Large ScaleabstractFacebook content search is a critical channel that enables people to discover the best content to deepen their engagement with friends and family, creators, and communities. Building a highly personalized search engine to serve billions of daily active users to find the best results from a large scale of candidates is a challenging task. The search engine must take multiple dimensions into consideration, including different content types, different query intents, and user social graph, etc. In this paper, we discuss the challenges of Facebook content search in depth, and then describe our novel approach to efficiently handling a massive number of documents with advanced query understanding, retrieval, and machine learning techniques. The proposed system has been fully verified and applied to the production system of Facebook Search, which serves billions of users. Xiangyu Niu, Gautam Nagpal, Philip Pronin, Kecheng Hao, Zhen Liao, Guangdeng Liao |
SIGIR | 7 |
| 2017 | Deep Context Modeling for Web Query Entity DisambiguationabstractIn this paper, we presented a new study for Web query entity disambiguation (QED), which is the task of disambiguating different candidate entities in a knowledge base given their mentions in a query. QED is particularly challenging because queries are often too short to provide rich contextual information that is required by traditional entity disambiguation methods. In this paper, we propose several methods to tackle the problem of QED. First, we explore the use of deep neural network (DNN) for capturing the character level textual information in queries. Our DNN approach maps queries and their candidate reference entities to feature vectors in a latent semantic space where the distance between a query and its correct reference entity is minimized. Second, we utilize the Web search result information of queries to help generate large amounts of weakly supervised training data for the DNN model. Third, we propose a two-stage training method to combine large-scale weakly supervised data with a small amount of human labeled data, which can significantly boost the performance of a DNN model. The effectiveness of our approach is demonstrated in the experiments using large-scale real-world datasets. Zhen Liao, Xinying Song, Yelong Shen, Saekoo Lee, Jianfeng Gao 0001, Ciya Liao |
CIKM | 1 |
| 2014 | Task Trail: An Effective Segmentation of User Search BehaviorabstractIn this paper, we introduce “task trail” to understand user search behaviors. We define a task to be an atomic user information need, whereas a task trail represents all user activities within that particular task, such as query reformulations, URL clicks. Previously, web search logs have been studied mainly at session or query level where users may submit several queries within one task and handle several tasks within one session. Although previous studies have addressed the problem of task identification, little is known about the advantage of using task over session or query for search applications. In this paper, we conduct extensive analyses and comparisons to evaluate the effectiveness of task trails in several search applications: determining user satisfaction, predicting user search interests, and suggesting related queries. Experiments on large scale data sets of a commercial search engine show that: (1) Task trail performs better than session and query trails in determining user satisfaction; (2) Task trail increases webpage utilities of end users comparing to session and query trails; (3) Task trails are comparable to query trails but more sensitive than session trails in measuring different ranking functions; (4) Query terms from the same task are more topically consistent to each other than query terms from different tasks; (5) Query suggestion based on task trail is a good complement of query suggestions based on session trail and click-through bipartite. The findings in this paper verify the need of extracting task trails from web search logs and enhance applications in search and recommendation systems. Zhen Liao, Yang Song 0008, Yalou Huang, Li-wei He, Qi He 0002 |
IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng. | 1 |
| 2013 | A vlHMM approach to context-aware searchabstractCapturing the context of a user's query from the previous queries and clicks in the same session leads to a better understanding of the user's information need. A context-aware approach to document reranking, URL recommendation, and query suggestion may substantially improve users' search experience. In this article, we propose a general approach to context-aware search by learning avariable length hidden Markov model(vlHMM) from search sessions extracted from log data. While the mathematical model is powerful, the huge amounts of log data present great challenges. We develop several distributed learning techniques to learn a very large vlHMM under themap-reduceframework. Moreover, we construct feature vectors for each state of the vlHMM model to handle users' novel queries not covered by the training data. We test our approach on a raw dataset consisting of 1.9 billion queries, 2.9 billion clicks, and 1.2 billion search sessions before filtering, and evaluate the effectiveness of the vlHMM learned from the real data on three search applications: document reranking, query suggestion, and URL recommendation. The experiment results validate the effectiveness of vlHMM in the applications of document reranking, URL recommendation, and query suggestion. Zhen Liao, Daxin Jiang, Jian Pei 0001, Yalou Huang, Enhong Chen, Huanhuan Cao, Hang Li 0001 |
ACM Trans. Web | 1 |
| 2012 | Evaluating the effectiveness of search task trailsabstractIn this paper, we introduce "task trail" as a new concept to understand user search behaviors. We define task to be an atomic user information need. Web search logs have been studied mainly at session or query level where users may submit several queries within one task and handle several tasks within one session. Although previous studies have addressed the problem of task identification, little is known about the advantage of using task over session and query for search applications. In this paper, we conduct extensive analyses and comparisons to evaluate the effectiveness of task trails in three search applications: determining user satisfaction, predicting user search interests, and query suggestion. Experiments are conducted on large scale datasets from a commercial search engine. Experimental results show that: (1) Sessions and queries are not as precise as tasks in determining user satisfaction. (2) Task trails provide higher web page utilities to users than other sources. (3) Tasks represent atomic user information needs, and therefore can preserve topic similarity between query pairs. (4) Task-based query suggestion can provide complementary results to other models. The findings in this paper verify the need to extract task trails from web search logs and suggest potential applications in search and recommendation systems. Zhen Liao, Yang Song 0008, Li-wei He, Yalou Huang |
WWW | 1 |
| 2011 | Multidimensional mining of large-scale search logs: a topic-concept cube approachabstractIn addition to search queries and the corresponding clickthrough information, search engine logs record multidimensional information about user search activities, such as search time, location, vertical, and search device. Multidimensional mining of search logs can provide novel insights and useful knowledge for both search engine users and developers. In this paper, we describe our topic-concept cube project, which addresses the business need of supporting multidimensional mining of search logs effectively and efficiently. We answer two challenges. First, search queries and click-through data are well recognized sparse, and thus have to be aggregated properly for effective analysis. Second, there is often a gap between the topic hierarchies in multidimensional aggregate analysis and queries in search logs. To address those challenges, we develop a novel topic-concept model that learns a hierarchy of concepts and topics automatically from search logs. Enabled by the topicconcept model, we construct a topic-concept cube that supports online multidimensional mining of search log data. A distinct feature of our approach is that, in addition to the standard dimensions such as time and location, our topic-concept cube has a dimension of topics and concepts, which substantially facilitates the analysis of log data. To handle a huge amount of log data, we develop distributed algorithms for learning model parameters efficiently. We also devise approaches to computing a topic-concept cube. We report an empirical study verifying the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach on a real data set of 1.96 billion queries and 2.73 billion clicks. Dongyeop Kang, Daxin Jiang, Jian Pei 0001, Zhen Liao, Ho-Jin Choi |
WSDM | 4 |
| 2011 | Mining Concept Sequences from Large-Scale Search Logs for Context-Aware Query SuggestionabstractQuery suggestion plays an important role in improving usability of search engines. Although some recently proposed methods provide query suggestions by mining query patterns from search logs, none of them models the immediately preceding queries as context systematically, and uses context information effectively in query suggestions. Context-aware query suggestion is challenging in both modeling context and scaling up query suggestion using context. In this article, we propose a novel context-aware query suggestion approach. To tackle the challenges, our approach consists of two stages. In the first, offline model-learning stage , to address data sparseness, queries are summarized into concepts by clustering a click-through bipartite. A concept sequence suffix tree is then constructed from session data as a context-aware query suggestion model. In the second, online query suggestion stage , a user’s search context is captured by mapping the query sequence submitted by the user to a sequence of concepts. By looking up the context in the concept sequence suffix tree, we suggest to the user context-aware queries. We test our approach on large-scale search logs of a commercial search engine containing 4.0 billion Web queries, 5.9 billion clicks, and 1.87 billion search sessions. The experimental results clearly show that our approach outperforms three baseline methods in both coverage and quality of suggestions. Zhen Liao, Daxin Jiang, Enhong Chen, Jian Pei 0001, Huanhuan Cao, Hang Li 0001 |
ACM Trans. Intell. Syst. Technol. | 1 |
| 2009 | Web Query Recommendation via Sequential Query PredictionabstractWeb query recommendation has long been considered a key feature of search engines. Building a good Web query recommendation system, however, is very difficult due to the fundamental challenge of predicting users' search intent, especially given the limited user context information. In this paper, we propose a novel "sequential query prediction" approach that tries to grasp a user's search intent based on his/her past query sequence and its resemblance to historical query sequence models mined from massive search engine logs. Different query sequence models were examined, including the naive variable length N-gram model, variable memory Markov (VMM) model, and our proposed mixture variable memory Markov (MVMM) model. Extensive experiments were conducted to benchmark our sequence prediction algorithms against two conventional pairwise approaches on large-scale search logs extracted from a commercial search engine. Results show that the sequence-wise approaches significantly outperform the conventional pair-wise ones in terms of prediction accuracy. In particular, our MVMM approach, consistently leads the pack, making it an effective and practical approach towards Web query recommendation. Qi He 0002, Daxin Jiang, Zhen Liao, Steven C. H. Hoi, Kuiyu Chang, Ee-Peng Lim, Hang Li 0001 |
ICDE | 3 |
| 2008 | Context-aware query suggestion by mining click-through and session dataabstractQuery suggestion plays an important role in improving the usability of search engines. Although some recently proposed methods can make meaningful query suggestions by mining query patterns from search logs, none of them are context-aware - they do not take into account the immediately preceding queries as context in query suggestion. In this paper, we propose a novel context-aware query suggestion approach which is in two steps. In the offine model-learning step, to address data sparseness, queries are summarized into concepts by clustering a click-through bipartite. Then, from session data a concept sequence suffix tree is constructed as the query suggestion model. In the online query suggestion step, a user's search context is captured by mapping the query sequence submitted by the user to a sequence of concepts. By looking up the context in the concept sequence sufix tree, our approach suggests queries to the user in a context-aware manner. We test our approach on a large-scale search log of a commercial search engine containing 1:8 billion search queries, 2:6 billion clicks, and 840 million query sessions. The experimental results clearly show that our approach outperforms two baseline methods in both coverage and quality of suggestions. Huanhuan Cao, Daxin Jiang, Jian Pei 0001, Qi He 0002, Zhen Liao, Enhong Chen, Hang Li 0001 |
KDD | 5 |