Yang Deng (邓扬)

Assistant Professor
Lee Kong Chian Fellow
CHAT NLP Group
School of Computing and Information Systems
Singapore Management University

[Email] [Google Scholar]

HIRING I am actively looking for highly motivated PhD students in 2027 Fall. Multiple SMU-funded visiting student positions are avaiable (standard monthly stipend of 2700 SGD). Self-funded visiting scholars (e.g., CSC Project) and remote collaborations are also welcomed. Feel free to reach out to me as [Openings].

I am currently a tenure-track Assistant Professor in School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University (SMU). Prior to that, I was a postdoctoral research fellow in NExT++, 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.

I am leading the CHAT NLP Group (Conversational, Human-centered, Agentic, and Trustworthy), where we conduct research on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Large Language Models (LLMs).

LLM Agents [Tutorial @ WWW'24 & SIGIR'24, Survey of Agentic World Modeling]

Proactive Agents plan ahead of user requests, ask clarification questions, and evolve through interaction with users and environments. [Tutorial @ ACL'23, Survey @ IJCAI'23 & TOIS]
<PPDPP, Ask-before-Plan, WebExperT, Faithful Self-Evolver>
Generative Agent-Based Simulation simulates individual users, social interactions, and collective behaviors to study real-world societal problems. [Survey of Role-playing Agents]
<TRIP, MASim, Situational Personality Steering, LD-Agent>

Trustworthy LLMs

Knowledge Boundary of LLMs enables models to recognize what they know, what they do not know, and when to seek external knowledge. [Tutorial @ SIGIR'25, Survey @ ACL'25]
<LLMs Do NOT Really Know, Do RALMs Know?, Self-Align, EvoWiki>
Safety and Alignment develops methods and benchmarks for making the applications of LLMs more harmless and aligned with human values.
<MHSafeEval, MPO, SaRFT, SafePatching>

Human-centered NLP

Human Understanding models users' intentions, preferences, emotions, personalities, social contexts, and mental states. [Perspectives @ SIGIR'24]
<CoSToM, RecToM, From Personas to Talks>
Human-AI Collaboration supports human decision making, communication, learning, creativity, and skill development. [Survey @ ACL'25]
<Co-Matching>

Short Bio: DENG Yang is an Assistant Professor at Singapore Management University (SMU). His research interests center on natural language processing and large language models. He received the Google Southeast Asia Research Awards in 2024, Lee Kong Chian Fellowship in 2025, and multiple paper awards, including ACL 2026 Best Theme Paper Award and SAC Highlight. He was recognized as the World's Top 2% Scientist (Single Year) in 2025 and the New Faculty Highlights in AAAI 2026. He regularly serves as Area Chairs and Senior Program Committee Members at top conferences, such as ACL, EMNLP, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML, AAAI, NAACL, COLM, SIGIR, etc. He also served as the Program Co-Chair at Singapore Symposium on Natural Language Processing (SSNLP) in 2024 and 2026. He was invited as the keynote speaker for various international workshops, such as EMNLP 2025 PALS and CIKM 2025 ProActLLM workshops. He actively organizes tutorials of advanced topics at top conferences, including ACL, SIGIR, and WWW.

NEWS (Aug 2026) Eight papers accepted by EMNLP 2026 (four main and four findings). Congrats to ZHANG Xuan, Mengfan, Zesheng, and Suhyun!
NEWS (Aug 2026) Invited to serve as Area Chairs of ICLR 2026 and AAAI 2026.
NEWS (July 2026) CoSToM received ACL 2026 Best Themed Paper Award.
NEWS (July 2026) Dr-Arena received ACL 2026 SAC Highlight.
NEWS (July 2026) One paper accepted by COLM 2026. Congrats to ZHANG Xuan!
NEWS (Jun 2026) One journal paper was accepted to TOIS.
NEWS (May 2026) Two papers accepted by ICML 2026 and one by IJCAI 2026. Congrats to Houcheng and Weixiang!
NEWS (Apr 2026) Nine papers accepted by ACL 2026 (four main and five findings). Congrats to Andy, Mengfan, Zesheng, Suhyun, and Weixiang!
NEWS (Mar 2026) Invited to serve as Area Chairs of NeurIPS 2026.
NEWS (Mar 2026) One journal paper was accepted by TALSP.
NEWS (Jan 2026) Three papers accepted by ICLR 2026. Congrats to Zirui and Houcheng!
NEWS (Jan 2026) Served as Program Chairs of SSNLP 2026.
NEWS (Jan 2026) Invited to serve as Area Chairs of COLM 2026 and SPC of SIGIR 2026.
NEWS (Dec 2025) Awarded a grant titled "Culturally-Aware Proactive Conversational AI for Enhancing Social Resilience in Singapore" (S$1,019,408) from AISG as the Co-PI with Prof. ZHANG Wenxuan (Lead PI) and Prof. YOW Wei Quin.
NEWS (Dec 2025) One journal paper was accepted by TKDE. Congrats to Hongzhan!
NEWS (Dec 2025) Invited to serve as Area Chairs of ICML 2026.
NEWS (Nov 2025) Three papers accepted by AAAI 2026. Congrats to Weixiang, Mengfan, and Youchao!
NEWS (Nov 2025) Selected as New Faculty Highlights by AAAI 2026.
NEWS (Oct 2025) Invited to be a keynote speaker at PALS Workshop @ EMNLP 2025.
NEWS (Oct 2025) Recognized among the World's Top 2% Scientist (Single Year, 2025) by Stanford/Elsevier.
NEWS (Sep 2025) Two papers accepted by NeurIPS 2025.
NEWS (Aug 2025) Four papers accepted by EMNLP 2025 (three main and one findings).
NEWS (Aug 2025) Invited to be a keynote speaker at ProActLLM Workshop @ CIKM 2025.
NEWS (Jul 2025) One journal paper was accepted by TOIS.
NEWS (Jun 2025) Awarded with the Lee Kong Chian Fellowship.
NEWS (May 2025) Nine papers accepted by ACL 2025 (seven main and two findings).
NEWS (Apr 2025) Two tutorials accepted by SIGIR 2025.
NEWS (Mar 2025) Invited to serve as Area Chairs of COLM 2025 and NeurIPS 2025.
NEWS (Feb 2025) Invited to serve as Handbook Chairs of AACL 2025.
NEWS (Jan 2025) One paper accepted by ICLR 2025 and two by NAACL 2025 (one main and one findings).
NEWS (Jan 2025) The extended version of the proactive conversational AI survey was accepted by TOIS.
NEWS (Dec 2024) One tutorial proposal accepted by WWW 2025 and two papers by AAAI 2025.
NEWS (Nov 2024) Invited Task: AI Risks and Safety @ IMDA's Technical Sharing Session.
NEWS (Nov 2024) Received EMNLP 2024 Outstanding Area Chair Awards and NeurIPS 2024 Best Reviewer Awards.
NEWS (Nov 2024) Received Google South Asia & Southeast Asia Research Awards 2024.
NEWS (Nov 2024) Served as Program Chairs of SSNLP 2024.
NEWS (Sep 2024) Nine papers accepted by EMNLP 2024 (five main and four findings).
NEWS (Aug 2024) Invited Task: LLM-powered Conversational Agents @ Huawei Software Technology Summit 2024.
NEWS (Jul 2024) Joined SMU SCIS as an Assistant Professor.