Yang Deng (邓扬)

Assistant Professor
School of Computing and Information Systems
Singapore Management University


[Email] [Google Scholar]


NEWS I am actively looking for highly motivated PhD students (2025 Fall). I have several student RA positions avaiable (standard monthly stipend of 2700 SGD). My group also welcomes visiting scholars (e.g., CSC Project). Feel free to reach out to me as [Openings].

Yang Deng, 2023

I am currently a tenure-track Assistant Professor in School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University. Before that, I was a postdoctoral research fellow in NExT++, School of Computing, National University of Singapore, working with Prof. Tat-Seng Chua and Prof. See-Kiong Ng. I received my Ph.D degree at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, supervised by Prof. Wai Lam.

My research mainly lies in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Information Retrieval (IR) – with special focus on

Publications

Please see my Google Scholar profiles for the full list. (* Equal Contribution, ^ Mentorship)

2024

  • Don't Just Say "I Don't Know"! Self-aligning Large Language Models for Responding to Unknown Questions with Explanations
    Yang Deng*, Yong Zhao*^, Moxin Li, See-Kiong Ng, Tat-Seng Chua
    EMNLP 2024
    [arxiv] [repo]

  • Consecutive Batch Model Editing with HooK Layers
    Shuaiyi Li^, Yang Deng, Deng Cai, Hongyuan Lu, Liang Chen, Wai Lam
    EMNLP 2024

  • Unlocking Markets: A Multilingual Benchmark to Cross-Market Question Answering
    Yifei Yuan, Yang Deng, Anders Søgaard, Mohammad Aliannejadi
    EMNLP 2024

  • Strength Lies in Differences! Improving Strategy Planning for Non-collaborative Dialogues via Diversified User Simulation
    Tong Zhang^, Chen Huang^, Yang Deng, Hongru Liang, Jia Liu, Zujie Wen, Wenqiang Lei, Tat-Seng Chua
    EMNLP 2024

  • Thoughts to Target: Enhance Planning for Target-driven Conversation
    Zhonghua Zheng, Lizi Liao, Yang Deng, Ee-Peng Lim, Minlie Huang, Liqiang Nie
    EMNLP 2024

  • Ask-before-Plan: Proactive Language Agents for Real-World Planning
    Xuan Zhang^, Yang Deng, Zifeng Ren, See-Kiong Ng, Tat-Seng Chua
    EMNLP 2024 (Findings)

  • Experience as Source for Anticipation and Planning: Experiential Policy Learning for Target-driven Recommendation Dialogues
    Huy Quang Dao, Yang Deng, Khanh-Huyen Bui, Dung D. Le, Lizi Liao
    EMNLP 2024 (Findings)

  • Selective Annotation via Data Allocation: These Data Should Be Triaged to Experts for Annotation Rather Than the Model
    Chen Huang^, Yang Deng, Wenqiang Lei, Jiancheng Lv, Ido Dagan
    EMNLP 2024 (Findings)

  • Beyond Persuasion: Towards Conversational Recommender System with Credible Explanations
    Peixin Qin^, Chen Huang^, Yang Deng, Wenqiang Lei, Tat-Seng Chua
    EMNLP 2024 (Findings)

  • On the Multi-turn Instruction Following for Conversational Web Agents
    Yang Deng*, Xuan Zhang*^, Wenxuan Zhang, Yifei Yuan, See-Kiong Ng, Tat-Seng Chua
    ACL 2024
    [arxiv] [repo]

  • Chain-of-Exemplar: Enhancing Distractor Generation for Multimodal Educational Question Generation
    Haohao Luo^, Yang Deng, Ying Shen, See-Kiong Ng, Tat-Seng Chua
    ACL 2024

  • CLAMBER: A Benchmark of Identifying and Clarifying Ambiguous Information Needs in Large Language Models
    Tong Zhang^, Peixin Qin^, Yang Deng, Chen Huang, Wenqiang Lei, Junhong Liu, Dingnan Jin, Hongru Liang, Tat-Seng Chua
    ACL 2024

  • WatME: Towards Lossless Watermarking Through Lexical Redundancy
    Liang Chen^, Yatao Bian, Yang Deng, Deng Cai, Shuaiyi Li, Peilin Zhao, Kam-Fai Wong
    ACL 2024

  • Self-chats from Large Language Models Make Small ChatPal Better
    Zhonghua Zheng, Lizi Liao, Yang Deng, Libo Qin, Liqiang Nie
    ACL 2024

  • Style: Improving Domain Transferability of Asking Clarification Questions in Large Language Model Powered Conversational Agents
    Yue Chen^, Chen Huang^, Yang Deng, Wenqiang Lei, Dingnan Jin, Jia Liu, Tat-Seng Chua
    ACL 2024 (Findings)

  • Tutorial Large Language Model Powered Agents for Information Retrieval
    An Zhang, Yang Deng, Yankai Lin, Xu Chen, Ji-Rong Wen, Tat-Seng Chua
    SIGIR 2024 (Tutorial)
    [website]

  • Towards Human-centered Proactive Conversational Agents
    Yang Deng, Lizi Liao, Zhonghua Zheng, Grace Hui Yang, Tat-Seng Chua
    SIGIR 2024 (Perspectives Paper)

  • Broadening the View: Demonstration-augmented Prompt Learning for Conversational Recommendation
    Hui Dao, Yang Deng, Dung Le, Lizi Liao
    SIGIR 2024

  • Tutorial Large Language Model Powered Agents in the Web
    Yang Deng, An Zhang, Yankai Lin, Xu Chen, Ji-Rong Wen, Tat-Seng Chua
    WWW 2024 (Tutorial)
    [website]

  • Plug-and-Play Policy Planner for Large Language Model Powered Dialogue Agents
    Yang Deng, Wenxuan Zhang, Wai Lam, See-Kiong Ng, Tat-Seng Chua
    ICLR 2024
    [paper] [repo]

  • Survey A Comprehensive Survey on Relation Extraction: Recent Advances and New Frontiers
    Xiaoyan Zhao^, Yang Deng, Min Yang, Lingzhi Wang, Rui Zhang, Hong Cheng, Wei Lam, Ying Shen, Ruifeng Xu
    ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)

2023

  • Prompting and Evaluating Large Language Models for Proactive Dialogues: Clarification, Target-guided, and Non-collaboration
    Yang Deng, Lizi Liao, Liang Chen, Hongru Wang, Wenqiang Lei, Tat-Seng Chua
    EMNLP 2023 (Findings)
    [paper] [repo]

  • Beyond Factuality: A Comprehensive Evaluation of Large Language Models as Knowledge Generators
    Liang Chen^, Yang Deng, Yatao Bian, Zeyu Qin, Bingzhe Wu, Tat-Seng Chua, Kam-Fai Wong
    EMNLP 2023

  • DepWiGNN: A Depth-wise Graph Neural Network for Multi-hop Spatial Reasoning in Text
    Shuaiyi Li^, Yang Deng, Wai Lam
    EMNLP 2023 (Findings)

  • Large Language Models as Source Planner for Personalized Knowledge-grounded Dialogues
    Hongru Wang^, Minda Hu, Yang Deng, Rui Wang, Fei Mi, Weichao Wang, Yasheng Wang, Wai Chung Kwan, Irwin King, Kam-Fai Wong
    EMNLP 2023 (Findings)

  • Unifying Text, Tables, and Images for Multimodal Question Answering
    Haohao Luo^, Ying Shen, Yang Deng
    EMNLP 2023 (Findings)

  • Cue-CoT: Chain-of-thought Prompting for Responding to In-depth Dialogue Questions with LLMs
    Hongru Wang^, Rui Wang, Fei Mi, Yang Deng, Zezhong Wang, Bin Liang, Ruifeng Xu, Kam-Fai Wong
    EMNLP 2023 (Findings)

  • Attack Prompt Generation for Red Teaming and Defending Large Language Models
    Boyi Deng, Wenjie Wang, Fuli Feng, Yang Deng, Qifan Wang, Xiangnan He
    EMNLP 2023 (Findings)

  • Tutorial Rethinking Conversational Agents in the Era of LLMs: Proactivity, Non-collaborativity, and Beyond
    Yang Deng, Wenqiang Lei, Minlie Huang, Tat-Seng Chua
    SIGIR-AP 2023 (Tutorial)
    [abstract][slides]

  • Tutorial Goal Awareness for Conversational AI: Proactivity, Non-collaborativity, and Beyond
    Yang Deng, Wenqiang Lei, Minlie Huang, Tat-Seng Chua
    ACL 2023 (Tutorial)
    [abstract][slides]

  • Knowledge-enhanced Mixed-initiative Dialogue System for Emotional Support Conversations
    Yang Deng, Wenxuan Zhang, Yifei Yuan, Wai Lam
    ACL 2023
    [paper] [repo]

  • Survey Product Question Answering in E-Commerce: A Survey
    Yang Deng, Wenxuan Zhang, Qian Yu, Wai Lam
    ACL 2023
    [paper]

  • PeerDA: Data Augmentation via Modeling Peer Relation for Span Identification Tasks
    Weiwen Xu, Xin Li, Yang Deng, Lidong Bing, Wai Lam
    ACL 2023

  • Towards Robust Personalized Dialogue Generation via Order-Insensitive Representation Regularization
    Liang Chen^, Hongru Wang^, Yang Deng, Wai-Chung Kwan, Zezhong Wang, Kam-Fai Wong
    ACL 2023 (Findings)

  • Survey A Survey on Proactive Dialogue Systems: Problems, Methods, and Prospects
    Yang Deng, Wenqiang Lei, Wai Lam, Tat-Seng Chua
    IJCAI 2023 (Survey)
    [paper] [repo]

  • Learning to Ask Clarification Questions with Spatial Reasoning
    Yang Deng, Shuaiyi Li, Wai Lam
    SIGIR 2023 (Short)
    [paper] [repo]

  • A Unified Framework for Contextual and Factoid Question Generation
    Chenhe Dong^, Ying Shen, Shiyang Lin, Zhenzhou Lin, Yang Deng
    IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng. (TKDE)

2022

  • A Unified Multi-task Learning Framework for Multi-goal Conversational Recommender Systems
    Yang Deng, Wenxuan Zhang, Weiwen Xu, Wenqiang Lei, Tat-Seng Chua, Wai Lam
    ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. (TOIS)
    [paper] [repo]

  • User Satisfaction Estimation with Sequential Dialogue Act Modeling in Goal-oriented Conversational Systems
    Yang Deng, Wenxuan Zhang, Wai Lam, Hong Cheng, Helen Meng
    WWW 2022
    [paper] [repo]

  • PACIFIC: Towards Proactive Conversational Question Answering over Tabular and Textual Data in Finance
    Yang Deng, Wenqiang Lei, Wenxuan Zhang, Wai Lam, Tat-Seng Chua
    EMNLP 2022
    [paper] [repo]

  • ConReader: Exploring Implicit Relations in Contracts for Contract Clause Extraction
    Weiwen Xu, Yang Deng, Wenqiang Lei, Wenlong Zhao, Tat-Seng Chua, Wai Lam
    EMNLP 2022

  • Leveraging Long Short-Term User Preference in Conversational Recommendation Via Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
    Yang Deng, Yaliang Li, Bolin Ding, Wai Lam
    IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng. (TKDE)

  • Survey A Survey on Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis: Tasks, Methods, and Challenges
    Wenxuan Zhang, Xin Li, Yang Deng, Lidong Bing, Wai Lam
    IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng. (TKDE)

2021

  • Unified Conversational Recommendation Policy Learning via Graph-enhanced Reinforcement Learning
    Yang Deng, Yaliang Li, Fei Sun, Bolin Ding, Wai Lam
    SIGIR 2021
    [paper] [repo]

  • Towards Personalized Answer Generation in E-Commerce via Multi-Perspective Preference Modeling
    Yang Deng, Yaliang Li, Wenxuan Zhang, Bolin Ding, Wai Lam
    ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. (TOIS)
    [paper] [repo]

  • Contextualized Knowledge-aware Attentive Neural Network: Enhancing Answer Selection with Knowledge
    Yang Deng, Yuexiang Xie, Yaliang Li, Min Yang, Wai Lam, Ying Shen
    ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. (TOIS)

  • Towards Generative Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis
    Wenxuan Zhang, Xin Li, Yang Deng, Lidong Bing, Wai Lam
    ACL 2021 (Short)

  • Aspect Sentiment Quad Prediction as Paraphrase Generation
    Wenxuan Zhang, Yang Deng, Xin Li, Yifei Yuan, Lidong Bing, Wai Lam
    EMNLP 2021

  • Exploiting Reasoning Chains for Multi-hop Science Question Answering
    Weiwen Xu, Yang Deng, Huihui Zhang, Deng Cai, Wai Lam
    EMNLP 2021 (Findings)

  • Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis in Question Answering Forums
    Wenxuan Zhang, Yang Deng, Xin Li, Lidong Bing, Wai Lam
    EMNLP 2021 (Findings)

  • Factual Consistency Evaluation for Text Summarization via Counterfactual Estimation
    Yuexiang Xie, Fei Sun, Yang Deng, Yaliang Li, Bolin Ding
    EMNLP 2021 (Findings)

2020

  • Multi-hop Inference for Question-driven Summarization
    Yang Deng, Wenxuan Zhang, Wai Lam
    EMNLP 2020
    [paper] [repo]

  • AnswerFact: Fact Checking in Product Question Answering
    Wenxuan Zhang, Yang Deng, Wai Lam
    EMNLP 2020

  • Opinion-aware Answer Generation for Review-driven Question Answering in E-Commerce
    Yang Deng, Wenxuan Zhang, Wai Lam
    EMNLP 2020
    [paper] [repo]

  • Joint Learning of Answer Selection and Answer Summary Generation in Community Question Answering
    Yang Deng, Wai Lam, Yuexiang Xie, Daoyuan Chen Yaliang Li, Min Yang, Ying Shen
    AAAI 2020
    [paper] [repo]

  • Bridging Hierarchical and Sequential Context Modeling for Question-driven Extractive Answer Summarization
    Yang Deng, Wenxuan Zhang, Yaliang Li, Min Yang, Wai Lam and Ying Shen
    SIGIR 2020 (Short)
    [paper] [repo]

  • Answer Ranking for Product-Related Questions via Multiple Semantic Relations Modeling
    Wenxuan Zhang, Yang Deng, Wai Lam
    SIGIR 2020

  • Review-guided Helpful Answer Identification in E-commerce
    Wenxuan Zhang, Wai Lam, Yang Deng, Jing Ma
    WWW 2020 (Short)

- 2019

  • Multi-Task Learning with Multi-View Attention for Answer Selection and Knowledge Base Question Answering
    Yang Deng, Yuexiang Xie, Yaliang Li, Nan Du, Min Yang, Wei Fan, Kai Lei, Ying Shen
    AAAI 2019

  • MedTruth: A Semi-supervised Approach to Discovering Knowledge Condition Information from Multi-Source Medical Data
    Yang Deng, Yaliang Li, Ying Shen, Nan Du, Wei Fan, Min Yang, Kai Lei
    CIKM 2019

  • Knowledge as A Bridge: Improving Cross-domain Answer Selection with External Knowledge
    Yang Deng, Ying Shen, Min Yang, Yaliang Li, Nan Du, Wei Fan, Kai Lei
    COLING 2018

  • Knowledge-aware Attention based Neural Network for Ranking Question Answering Pairs
    Ying Shen, Yang Deng, Min Yang, Yaliang Li, Nan Du, Wei Fan, Kai Lei
    SIGIR 2018 (Short)

Qualifications

Education

    • Aug. 2019 - Mar. 2023, Ph.D., The Chinese University of Hong Kong
    • Sept. 2016 - Jun. 2019, M.S., Peking University
    • Sept. 2012 - Jun. 2016, B.E., Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications

Experiences

    • Apr. 2023 - June. 2024, Research Fellow, NExT++ Lab, National University of Singapore
    • Feb. 2022 - Aug. 2022, Visiting Research Scholar, NExT++ Lab, National University of Singapore
    • Aug. 2020 - Feb. 2022, Research Intern, DAMO Academy, Alibaba Group
    • Mar. 2018 - Jun. 2018, Research Intern, Tencent Medical AI Lab

Professional Activities

    • Area Chair: ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, COLING
    • Regular Reviewer (or PC Member): WWW, SIGIR, NeurIPS, WSDM, CIKM, AAAI, IJCAI, KDD, TOIS, TKDE, TASLP, TNNLS, TWEB, TALLIP, Neurocomputing, Knowledge-Based Systems, Computer Science Review
    • Guest Editor: Language Models for Conversational Information Processing and Retrieval (Electronics)
    • Organizing Committee: SSNLP 2023