Faculty Profile

HomePage: https://lixzou.github.io/

Lixin Zou (邹立新, Google Scholar ) is an Associate Professor at the School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Wuhan University. Before that, he was a Staff Algorithm Engineer at Baidu Search Science team from Jul. 2020 to Nov. 2022. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science & Technology from Tsinghua University in 2020. Currently, he focuses on retrieval augmented generation~(RAG), unbiased learning & pre-training for web search and reinforcement learning.

Note: I am looking for self-motivated students to do long-term research with me!  If you are interested in working with me, please drop me an email. 

Professional Services

    - Editorial Board Member

            Frontiers in Big Data

    - PC Member & Reviewer:

            2023: KDD, SIGIR, IJCAI, AAAI, WWW, ECIR, TKDE, JASIST, TALLIP, TOIS

            2022: WSDM, IJCAI, KDD, SIGIR, NeurIPS

            2021: SIGIR, IJCAI, AAAI, CIKM

            2020: SIGIR, IJCAI, SIGKDD

    - Session Chair:

            SIGIR'22 - Session on Bias, Conversational IR, NLP and Semantics

Publications

- User Retention-oriented Recommendation with Decision Transformer. 

    Kesen Zhao, Lixin Zou*, Xiangyu Zhao*, Maolin Wang, Dawei Yin. 

    * Corresponding Author. To appear on WWW 2023.[PDF]

- Whole Page Unbiased Learning to Rank. 

    Haitao Mao, Lixin Zou, Yujia Zheng, Jiliang Tang, Xiaokai Chu, Jiashu Zhao, Dawei Yin. 

    Preprint on arXiv.[PDF]

- A Large Scale Search Dataset for Unbiased Learning to Rank. 

    Lixin Zou, Haitao Mao, Xiaokai Chu, Jiliang Tang, Wenwen Ye, Shuaiqiang Wang, Dawei Yin. 

    NeurIPS 2022, CCF-A.[PDF] [CODE]

- Pre-trained Language Model based Retrieval and Ranking for Web Search. 

    Lixin Zou*, Weixue Lu*, Yiding Liu*, Hengyi Cai*, Xiaokai Chu, Dehong Ma, Dating Shi, Zhicong Cheng, Simiu Gu, Shuaiqiang Wang, Dawei Yin. 

    * Equal Contribution. ACM Transactions on the Web, CCF-B.

- Model-based Unbiased Learning to Rank. 

    Dan Luo, Lixin Zou, Qingyao Ai, Zhiyu Chen, Dawei Yin, Brian D Davison. 

    WSDM 2023, CCF-B, Tsinghua-A. [PDF]

- Approximated Doubly Robust Search Relevance Estimation. 

    Lixin Zou, Changying Hao, Hengyi Cai, Suqi Cheng, Shuaiqiang Wang, Wenwen Ye, Zhicong Cheng, Simu Gu, Dawei Yin. 

    CIKM 2022, CCF-B. [PDF]

- A Hierarchical Multi-Granularity Pre-Trained Language Model for Web Search. 

    Xiaokai Chu, Jiashu Zhao, Lixin Zou, Dawei Yin. 

    SIGIR 2022, CCF-A. [PDF]

- Contrastive Disentangled Graph Convolutional Network for Weakly-supervised Node Classification. 

    Xiaokai Chu, Jiashu Zhao, Xinxin Fan, Di Yao, Zhihua Zhu, Dawei Yin, Lixin Zou, Jingping Bi. 

    DASFAA 2022, CCF-B. [PDF]

- Generative Session-based Recommendation. 

    Zhidan Wang, Wenwen Ye, Xu Chen, Wenqiang Zhang, Zhenlei Wang, Lixin Zou and Weidong Liu. 

    WWW 2022, CCF-A. [PDF]

- Fast Semantic Matching via Flexible Contextualized Interaction. 

    Wenwen Ye, Yiding Liu, Lixin Zou, Hengyi Cai, Suqi Cheng, Shuaiqiang Wang, Dawei Yin. 

    WSDM 2022, CCF-B, Tsinghua-A. [PDF]

- Pre-trained Language Model based Ranking in Baidu Search. 

    Lixin Zou, Shengqiang Zhang, Hengyi Cai, Dehong Ma, Suqi Cheng, Daiting Shi, Shuaiqiang Wang, Zhichong Cheng, Dawei Yin. 

    KDD 2021, CCF-A. [PDF]

- Enhanced Doubly Robust Learning for Debiasing Post-Click Conversion Rate Estimation. 

    Siyuan Guo, Lixin Zou*, Yiding Liu, Wenwen Ye, Suqi Cheng, Shuaiqiang Wang, Hechang Chen, Dawei Yin and Yi Chang. 

     * Corresponding author, SIGIR 2021, CCF-A. [PDF]

- Data-Efficient Reinforcement Learning for Malaria Control. 

    Lixin Zou, Long Xia, Linfang Hou, Xiangyu Zhao, Dawei Yin. 

    IJCAI 2021, CCF-A. [PDF][CODE]

- Whole-Chain Recommendations. 

    Xiangyu Zhao, Long Xia, Lixin Zou, Hui Liu, Dawei Yin, Jiliang Tang. 

    CIKM 2020, CCF-B. [PDF]

- Deep Multifaceted Transformers for Multi-objective Ranking in Large-Scale E-commerce Recommender Systems. 

    Yulong Gu, Zhuoye Ding, Shuaiqiang Wang, Lixin Zou, Yiding Liu, Dawei Yin. 

    CIKM 2020, CCF-B. [PDF]

- Meta-Learning for Neural Relation Classification with Distant Supervision. 

    Zhenzhen Li, Jian-Yun Nie, Benyou Wang, Pan Du, Yuhan Zhang, Lixin Zou, Dongsheng Li. 

    CIKM 2020, CCF-B. [PDF]

- Task-based Focal Loss for Adversarially Robust Meta-Learning. 

    Yufang Hou, Lixin Zou, Weidong Liu. 

    ICPR 2020, Tsinghua-B. [PDF]

- Neural Interactive Collaborativei Filtering. 

    Lixin Zou, Long Xia, Yulong Gu, Xiangyu Zhao, Weidong Liu, Jimmy Xiangji Huang, Dawei Yin. 

    SIGIR 2020, CCF-A. [PDF]

- Pseudo Dyna-Q: A reinforcement learning framework for interactive recommendation. 

    Lixin Zou, Long Xia, Pan Du, Zhuo Zhang, Ting Bai, Weidong Liu, Jian-Yun Nie, Dawei Yin. 

    WSDM 2020, CCF-B, Tsinghua-A. [PDF]

- UserSim: User Simulation via Supervised Generative Adversarial Network. 

    Xiangyu Zhao, Long Xia, Lixin Zou, Dawei Yin, Jiliang Tang. 

    WWW 2021, CCF-A. [PDF]

- Reinforcement learning to optimize long-term user engagement in recommender systems. 

    Lixin Zou, Long Xia, Zhuoye Ding, Jiaxing Song, Weidong Liu, Dawei Yin. 

    KDD 2019, CCF-A. [PDF]

- Ctrec: A long-short demands evolution model for continuous-time recommendation. 

    Ting Bai, Lixin Zou*, Wayne Xin Zhao, Pan Du, Weidong Liu, Jian-Yun Nie, Ji-Rong Wen. 

    * Co-first author, SIGIR 2019, CCF-A. [PDF]

- Reinforcement Learning to Diversify Top-N Recommendation. 

    Lixin Zou, Long Xia, Zhuoye Ding, Dawei Yin, Jiaxing Song, Weidong Liu. 

    DASFAA 2019, CCF-B. [PDF]

- HLGPS: a home location global positioning system in location-based social networks. 

    Yulong Gu, Jiaxing Song, Weidong Liu, Lixin Zou. 

    ICDM 2016, CCF-B. [PDF]

Educations & Academic Experience

   - School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Wuhan University. [2022.12 ~ Now]

        Associate Professor.

        Collaborator: Chenliang Li.

   - Baidu Inc., Beijing, China. [2020.07 ~ 2022.11]

        Staff Algorithm Engineer.

        Mentor: Dawei Yin.

   - Tsinghua University. Beijing, China. [2015.09 ~ 2020.06]

        Ph.D. in Computer Science & Technology (Outstanding Graduate).

        Advisor: Weidong Liu.

   - Université de Montréal. Montreal, Canada. [2018.09 ~ 2019.03]

        Exchange Student at the Laboratoire RALI of Université de Montréal.

        Advisor: Jian-Yun Nie.

   - JD.COM Data Science Lab. Beijing, China. [2017.09 ~ 2020.06]

        Research Intern.

        Mentor: Dawei Yin, Long Xia.

   - Northwestern Polytechnical University. Xi'an, Shaanxi, China. [2011.09 ~ 2015.07]

        BEng. in Microelectronics (Outstanding Graduate).

Selected Awards

    - 2021  Outstanding Staff of MEG, Baidu Inc..

    - 2020 Outstanding Graduate of Department of Computer Science, Tsinghua University.

    - 2019  Tsinghua Yiqi Mei Scholarship.

    - 2019  The Runner Up Award of KDD Cup.

    - 2017  The Scholarship of People.cn..

    - 2016   The Frist Prize in CCF National Big Data Innovation Contest, 1/all.

    - 2014   Yajun Wu Second Scholarship for Undergraduate Student, 1/all.

    - 2013   National Scholarship for Undergraduate Student, 1/all.

    - 2012  National Scholarship for Undergraduate Student, 1/all.

    - 2014   The Honorable Mention in the US Mathematical Contest in Modeling.

    - 2012  The First Prize in National Advanced Mathematics Competition.