Hi there! I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at PolyU NLP Group. I obtained my PhD degree from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University,
supervised by Prof. Maggie Wenjie Li.
During the spring and summer of 2024, I visited the SLED Lab at University of Michigan,
where I was so honored to work with Prof. Joyce Chai.
Prior to that, I received my MSc and BEng degrees from the School of Computer Science and Engineering,
South China University of Technology.
During my graduate studies, I was fortunate to be co-advised by Prof. Min Yang at SIAT, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
News
[May. 2025] 🔥 Got three papers accepted by ACL 2025! Welcome to have a chat in Vienna.
[Feb. 2025] 🔥 Thrilled to be awarded the PolyU Postdoc Matching Fund.
[Oct. 2024]   Will be working as a Postdoc at PolyU NLP Group.
[Sep. 2024]   Defended my PhD thesis. Huge thanks to my supervisor and committee members!
[May 2024]   Got one paper accepted by ACL 2024! Welcome to have a chat in Bangkok.
[Dec. 2023]   Will be visiting the SLED Lab at University of Michigan, starting from Feb. 2024. Very excited!
[Oct. 2023]   Got two papers accepted by EMNLP 2023! Will be heading to Singpore in December.
[Jul. 2023]   Will be heading to Toronto for ACL 2023. The first time to attend an in-person academic conference during my PhD and to visit abroad during my life!
Research
My recent research interests mainly involve the following directions:
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Large Language Models (LLMs): multi-turn interaction (ACL'24), test-time scaling (arXiv'25), safety alignment (ACL'25), etc.
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Embodied Intelligence: embodied dialogue agents (ACL-Findings'25), agentic task planning (ACL-Findings'25), embodied social reasoning, etc.
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Conversational AI: goal-driven proactivity (ACL-Findings'23, TNNLS'23, TOIS'24), role-playing personalization (EMNLP'23), role consistentcy (ACL'24), emotional support (AAAI'24), etc.
👉 I am actively seeking highly motivated PhD/master/undergraduate students for collaborative research, including but not limited to the above topics. Please feel free to reach out to me if you are interested.
Selected Publications
(see full list in Google Scholar) (*: Equal contribution; †: Corresponding author)
Preprints
SPA-RL: Reinforcing LLM Agents via Stepwise Progress Attribution
Hanlin Wang, Chak Tou Leong, Jiashuo Wang, Jian Wang†, and Wenjie Li
arXiv:2505.20732, 2025
arXiv |
Github
Reasoning Beyond Language: A Comprehensive Survey on Latent Chain-of-Thought Reasoning
Xinghao Chen, Anhao Zhao, Heming Xia, Xuan Lu, Hanlin Wang, Yanjun Chen, Wei Zhang, Jian Wang†, Wenjie Li, and Xiaoyu Shen†
arXiv:2505.16782, 2025
arXiv |
Github
Scaling over Scaling: Exploring Test-Time Scaling Plateau in Large Reasoning Models
Jian Wang, Boyan Zhu, Chak Tou Leong, Yongqi Li†, and Wenjie Li.
arXiv:2505.20522, 2025
arXiv
2025
Training Turn-by-Turn Verifiers for Dialogue Tutoring Agents: The Curious Case of LLMs as Your Coding Tutors
Jian Wang, Yinpei Dai, Yichi Zhang, Ziqiao Ma, Wenjie Li, and Joyce Chai.
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL (ACL-Findings), 2025
arXiv |
Github
STeCa: Step-level Trajectory Calibration for LLM Agent Learning
Hanlin Wang, Jian Wang†, Chak Tou Leong, and Wenjie Li.
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL (ACL-Findings), 2025
arXiv |
Github
Why Safeguarded Ships Run Aground? Aligned Large Language Models' Safety Mechanisms Tend to Be Anchored in The Template Region
Chak Tou Leong, Qingyu Yin, Jian Wang†, and Wenjie Li.
The 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2025.
arXiv |
Github
2021 - 2024 (PhD period)
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E2CL: Exploration-based Error Correction Learning for Embodied Agents
Hanlin Wang*, Chak Tou Leong*, Jian Wang, and Wenjie Li.
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP (EMNLP-Findings), 2024
arXiv |
Paper
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SCREEN: A Benchmark for Situated Conversational Recommendation
Dongding Lin*, Jian Wang*, Chak Tou Leong, and Wenjie Li.
The 32nd ACM International Conference on Multimedia (ACM MM), 2024.
Paper |
Github
Instruct Once, Chat Consistently in Multiple Rounds: An Efficient Tuning Framework for Dialogue
Jian Wang, Chak Tou Leong, Jiashuo Wang, Dongding Lin, Wenjie Li, and Xiao-Yong Wei.
The 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2024.
arXiv |
Paper |
Github
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Target-constrained Bidirectional Planning for Generation of Target-oriented Proactive Dialogue
Jian Wang, Dongding Lin, and Wenjie Li.
ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), 2024.
arXiv |
Paper |
Github
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COOPER: Coordinating Specialized Agents towards a Complex Dialogue Goal
Yi Cheng, Wenge Liu, Jian Wang, Chak Tou Leong, Yi Ouyang, Wenjie Li, Xian Wu, and Yefeng Zheng.
AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2024.
arXiv |
Paper |
Github
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Target-oriented Proactive Dialogue Systems with Personalization: Problem Formulation and Dataset Curation
Jian Wang, Yi Cheng, Dongding Lin, Chak Tou Leong, and Wenjie Li.
The 2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP), 2023.
arXiv |
Paper |
Github
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Self-Detoxifying Language Models via Toxification Reversal
Chak Tou Leong, Yi Cheng, Jiashuo Wang, Jian Wang, and Wenjie Li.
The 2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP), 2023.
arXiv |
Paper |
Github
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Dialogue Planning via Brownian Bridge Stochastic Process for Goal-directed Proactive Dialogue
Jian Wang*, Dongding Lin*, and Wenjie Li.
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL (ACL-Findings), 2023.
arXiv |
Paper |
Github
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Medical Dialogue Generation via Dual Flow Modeling
Kaishuai Xu, Wenjun Hou, Yi Cheng, Jian Wang, and Wenjie Li.
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL (ACL-Findings), 2023.
arXiv |
Paper |
Github
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A Target-driven Planning Approach for Goal-directed Dialog Systems
Jian Wang, Dongding Lin, and Wenjie Li.
IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (TNNLS), 2023.
Paper |
PDF |
Github
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COLA: Improving Conversational Recommender Systems by Collaborative Augmentation
Dongding Lin*, Jian Wang*, and Wenjie Li.
AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2023.
arXiv |
Paper
2018 - 2021 (Before PhD)
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Template-guided Clarifying Question Generation for Web Search Clarification
Jian Wang and Wenjie Li.
ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), 2021.
Paper |
Slides |
Github
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Dual Dynamic Memory Network for End-to-End Multi-turn Task-oriented Dialog Systems
Jian Wang, Junhao Liu, Wei Bi, Xiaojiang Liu, Kejing He, Ruifeng Xu, and Min Yang.
International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING), 2020.
Paper |
Github
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Improving Knowledge-aware Dialogue Generation via Knowledge Base Question Answering
Jian Wang, Junhao Liu, Wei Bi, Xiaojiang Liu, Kejing He, Ruifeng Xu, and Min Yang.
AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2020.
arXiv |
Paper |
Github
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Topic Discovery by Spectral Decomposition and Clustering with Coordinated Global and Local Contexts
Jian Wang, Kejing He, and Min Yang.
International Journal of Machine Learning and Cybernetics (JMLC), 2020.
Paper |
PDF
Experiences
Honors and Awards
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Postdoc Matching Fund (Awarded by PolyU)
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Research Postgraduate Student Innovation Award (Awarded by HKU)
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Third Prize of 2021 Language and Intelligence Challenge (Awarded by CCF and CIPS)
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AAAI 2020 Student Scholarship
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First Class of SCUT Graduate Scholarship
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National Scholarship of China
Professional Activities
Academic Services
- Reviewer for ACL Rolling Review (ARR)
- Program Committee Member: NeurIPS (2025 - ), ACL (2023 - ), EMNLP (2022 - ), COLING (2020, 2022)
- Journal Reviewer: IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (TNNLS), IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE), IEEE Transactions on Multimedia (TMM)
Teaching Assistant
- COMP 6709: Advanced Natural Language Processing, Spring 2023 | 2022, PolyU
- COMP 2021: Object-Oriented Programming, Fall 2022 | 2021, PolyU
- Design and Analysis of Algorithms, Spring 2018, SCUT
- Advanced Programming Language (C++), Fall 2017, SCUT
Open-Source Projects
Useful Resources
Misc.
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I enjoy many ball games such as basketball, table tennis, billiards, and badminton. I also spend my leisure time on variety shows, literature books, and movies.
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I dream of traveling around China and many places of interest around the world someday.