Get to know me

I am an Assistant Professor with the school of Computer Science and Engineering at Nanyang Technological University. Prior to joining NTU, I worked with Noah Smith and Hanna Hajishirzi as a Postdoc in Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. I completed my PhD under the supervision of Sinno Jialin Pan at Nanyang Technological University.

My main research interest lies in Natural Language Processing with extension to Multimodal Learning, particularly investigating and utilising the mystery of generative models in the following dimensions:

  • Model Reasoning: Studying and enhancing the structured reasoning capability of generative models, including but not limited to symbolic reasoning, logic reasoning and causal reasoning, with the aim to build more robust models to solve complex tasks beyond semantic understanding.
  • Interpretability and Trustworthiness: Interpreting LLM behaviors for better control and performance. Developing effective models for misinformation/hallucination detection and mitigation.
  • Efficient Learning: Developing small-scale models and optimizing long contexts.

I am now actively looking for motivated PhD Students and Research Assistants with an interest in natural language processing or multimodal reasoning.

Scholarship

Potential PhD scholarship opportunities

Publications

Learning Query-Aware Budget-Tier Routing for Runtime Agent Memory
Haozhen Zhang, Haodong Yue, Tao Feng, Quanyu Long, Jianzhu Bao, Bowen Jin, Weizhi Zhang, Xiao Li, Jiaxuan You, Chengwei Qin, Wenya Wang.
The Forty-third International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2026.

Light Forcing: Accelerating Autoregressive Video Diffusion via Sparse Attention
Chengtao Lv, Yumeng Shi, Yushi Huang, Ruihao Gong, Shen Ren, Wenya Wang.
The Forty-third International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2026.

Train Once, Reuse Everywhere: Generalizable Implicit ICL by Routing Attention
Jiaqian Li, Yanshu Li, Ligong Han, Ruixiang Tang, Wenya Wang.
The Forty-third International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2026.

Coordinating Search-Informed Reasoning and Reasoning-Guided Search in Claim Verification
Qisheng Hu, Quanyu Long, Wenya Wang.
The 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-main), 2026.

Learning More from Less: Exploiting Counterfactuals for Data-Efficient Chart Understanding
Jianzhu Bao, Haozhen Zhang, Kuicai Dong, Bozhi Wu, Sarthak Ketanbhai Modi, Zi Pong Lim, Yon Shin Teo, Wenya Wang.
The 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-main), 2026.

Programming over Thinking: Efficient and Robust Multi-Constraint Planning
Derrick Goh Xin Deik, Quanyu Long, Zhengyuan Liu, Nancy F. Chen, Wenya Wang.
The 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-main), 2026.

Task-Aware LLM Routing with Multi-Level Task-Profile-Guided Data Synthesis for Cold-Start Scenarios
Hui Liu, Bin Zou, Kecheng Chen, Jie Liu, Wenya Wang, Haoliang Li.
The 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-main), 2026.

Personalizing LLMs with Binary Feedback: A Preference-Calibrated Optimization Framework
Xilai Ma, Liye Zhao, Weijun Yao, Haibing Di, Wenya Wang, Jing Li.
The 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-main), 2026.

Vocabulary Hijacking in LVLMs: Unveiling Critical Attention Heads by Excluding Inert Tokens to Mitigate Hallucination
Yangneng Chen, Junlin Li, Weijun Yao, Xilai Ma, Guodong Du, Wenya Wang, Jing Li.
The 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-main), 2026.

From Competition to Synergy: Unlocking Reinforcement Learning for Subject-Driven Image Generation
Ziwei Huang, Ying Shu, Fanghao, Quanyu Long, Wenya Wang, Qiushi Guo, Tiezheng Ge, Leilei Gan.
The 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-main), 2026.

Policy-Guided Step-wise Action Planning for Controllable Reasoning
Jianpeng Zhou, Qisheng Hu, Jiahai Wang, Wenya Wang.
Findings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-Findings), 2026.

From What Is Said to Why It Is Framed: Intent-Aware News Video Understanding
Xiangzheng Kong, Minnan Luo, Wenya Wang, Jiaying Wu, Zhi Zeng, Guang Dai.
Findings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-Findings), 2026.

Visual-RAG: Benchmarking Text-to-Image Retrieval Augmented Generation for Visual Knowledge Intensive Queries
Yin Wu, Quanyu Long, Jing Li, Jianfei Yu, Wenya Wang.
The 49th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, 2026.

Beyond Heuristic Prompting: A Concept-Guided Bayesian Framework for Zero-Shot Image Recognition
Hui Liu, Kecheng Chen, Jialiang Wang, Xianming Liu, Wenya Wang, Haoliang Li.
The IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2026.

CLUE: Conflict-guided Localization for LLM Unlearning Framework
Hang Chen, Jiaying Zhu, Xinyu Yang, Wenya Wang.
The Fourteenth International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2026.

Knowledge Fusion of Large Language Models via Modular SkillPacks
Guodong DU, Zhuo Li, Xuanning Zhou, Junlin Li, Zesheng Shi, Wanyu Lin, Ho-Kin Tang, Xiucheng Li, Fangming Liu, Wenya Wang, Min Zhang, Jing Li.
The Fourteenth International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2026.

Multi-objective Large Language Model Alignment with Hierarchical Experts
Zhuo Li, Guodong DU, Weiyang Guo, Yigeng Zhou, Xiucheng Li, Wenya Wang, Fangming Liu, Yequan Wang, Deheng Ye, Min Zhang, Jing Li.
The Fourteenth International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2026.

Large Language Model-Enhanced Symbolic Reasoning for Knowledge Base Completion.
Qiyuan He, Jianfei Yu, Wenya Wang.
IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing (IEEE/ACM TASLP 2026).

Mitigating Context-Memory Conflicts in LLMs through Dynamic Cognitive Reconciliation Decoding.
Yigeng Zhou, Wu Li, Yifan Lu, Yequan Wang, Xuebo Liu, Wenya Wang, Jun Yu, Min Zhang, Jing Li.
IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing (IEEE/ACM TASLP 2026).

Causality Matters: How Temporal Information Emerges in Video Language Models?
Yumeng Shi, Quanyu Long, Yin Wu, Wenya Wang.
The Fortieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2026.

LLMC+: Benchmarking Vision-Language Model Compression with a plug-and-play Toolkit
Chengtao Lv, Bilang Zhang, Yang Yong, Ruihao Gong, Yushi Huang, Shiqiao Gu, Jiajun Wu, Yumeng Shi, Jinyang Guo, Wenya Wang.
The Fortieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2026.

Skill Path: Unveiling Language Skills from Circuit Graphs
Hang Chen, Xinyu Yang, Jiaying Zhu, Wenya Wang.
The Fortieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2026.

Rethinking Circuit Completeness in Language Models: AND, OR, and ADDER Gates
Hang Chen, Jiaying Zhu, Xinyu Yang, Wenya Wang.
The Thirty-Ninth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2025.

Static or Dynamic: Towards Query-Adaptive Token Selection for Video Question Answering
Yumeng Shi, Quanyu Long, Wenya Wang.
The 2025 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP-main), 2025.

STARE at the Structure: Steering ICL Exemplar Selection with Structural Alignment
Jiaqian Li, Qisheng Hu, Jing Li, Wenya Wang.
The 2025 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP-main), 2025.

Exploring Quality and Diversity in Synthetic Data Generation for Argument Mining
Jianzhu Bao, Yuqi Huang, Yang Sun, Wenya Wang, Yice Zhang, Bojun Jin, Ruifeng Xu.
The 2025 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP-main), 2025.

Backdoor Attacks on Dense Passage Retrievers for Disseminating Misinformation
Quanyu Long, Yue Deng, Leilei Gan, Wenya Wang, Sinno Jialin Pan.
The 2nd Conference on Language Modeling (COLM-25), 2025.

Why is a bird’s caption a good demonstration? Towards effective multimodal in-context learning without dedicated data
Junlin Fang, Wenya Wang, Lingli Zhang, Fengmao Lv.
ACM International Conference on Multimedia (ACM MM), 2025.

Quantifying Semantic Emergence in Language Models
Hang Chen, Xinyu Yang, Jiaying Zhu, Wenya Wang.
The 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-main), 2025.

Unraveling the Mechanics of Learning-Based Demonstration Selection for In-Context Learning
Hui Liu, Wenya Wang, Hao Sun, Chris XING TIAN, Chenqi Kong, Xin Dong, Haoliang Li.
The 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-main), 2025.

Multi-Modality Expansion and Retention for LLMs through Parameter Merging and Decoupling
Junlin Li, Guodong DU, Jing Li, Sim Kuan Goh, Wenya Wang, Yequan Wang, Fangming Liu, Ho-Kin Tang, Saleh Alharbi, Daojing He, Min Zhang.
The 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-main), 2025.

Reinforcing Compositional Retrieval: Retrieving Step-by-Step for Composing Informative Contexts
Quanyu Long, Jianda Chen, Zhengyuan Liu, Nancy F. Chen, Wenya Wang, Sinno Jialin Pan.
Findings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-Finding), 2025.

MTSA: Multi-turn Safety Alignment for LLMs through Multi-round Red-teaming
WeiYang Guo, Jing Li , Yu Li, Wenya Wang, Daojing He, Jun Yu, Min Zhang.
The 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-main), 2025.

Adaptive Detoxification: Safeguarding General Capabilities of LLMs through Toxicity-Aware Knowledge Editing
Yifan Lu, Jing Li , Yigeng Zhou, Yihui Zhang, Wenya Wang, Xiucheng Li, Meishan Zhang, Fangming Liu, Jun Yu, Min Zhang.
Findings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-Finding), 2025.

Enhancing Multimodal Object-Entity Relation Extraction via Multi-Aspect Contrastive Learning in Large Multimodal Models.
Yaming Zhang, Jianfei Yu, Wenya Wang, Li Yang, Jia Yang, and Rui Xia.
IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing (IEEE/ACM TASLP 2025).

Decomposition Dilemmas: Does Claim Decomposition Boost or Burden Fact-Checking Performance?
Qisheng Hu, Quanyu Long, Wenya Wang.
The 2025 Annual Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (NAACL-main), 2025.

Damage analysis via bidirectional multi-task cascaded multimodal fusion.
Tao Liang, Siying Wu, Junfeng Fang, Guowu Yang, Wenya Wang, Fengmao Lv.
The Web Conference (WWW-25), 2025.

Re2LLM: Reflective Reinforcement Large Language Model for Session-based Recommendation.
Ziyan Wang, Yingpeng Du, Zhu Sun, Haoyan Chua, Kaidong Feng, Wenya Wang, Jie Zhang.
The 39th Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-25), 2025.

Language Models over Large-Scale Knowledge Base: on Capacity, Flexibility and Reasoning for New Facts.
Qiyuan He, Yizhong Wang, Jianfei Yu, Wenya Wang.
The 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING-25), 2025.

Does In-Context Learning Really Learn? Rethinking How Large Language Models Respond and Solve Tasks via In-Context Learning.
Quanyu Long, Yin Wu, Wenya Wang, Sinno Jialin Pan.
The 1st Conference on Language Modeling (COLM-24), 2024.

Progressive multimodal pivot learning: towards semantic discordance understanding as humans.
Junlin Fang, Wenya Wang, Tianze Luo, Yanyong Huang, Fengmao Lv.
ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM-24), 2024

Generative Multimodal Data Augmentation for Low-Resource Multimodal Named Entity Recognition.
Ziyan Li, Jianfei Yu, Jia Yang, Wenya Wang, Li Yang, Rui Xia.
ACM International Conference on Multimedia (ACM MM), 2024.

Sentiment-oriented sarcasm integration for video sentiment analysis enhancement with sarcasm assistance.
Junlin Fang, Wenya Wang, Guosheng Lin, Fengmao Lv.
ACM International Conference on Multimedia (ACM MM), 2024.

Training Language Models to Generate Text with Citations via Fine-grained Rewards.
Chengyu Huang, Zeqiu Wu, Yushi Hu, Wenya Wang.
The 62th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-24, main), 2024.

TELLER: A Trustworthy Framework for Explainable, Generalizable and Controllable Fake News Detection.
Hui Liu, Wenya Wang, Haoru Li, Haoliang Li.
The 62th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-24), 2024.

Are Machines Better at Complex Reasoning? Unveiling Human-Machine Inference Gaps in Entailment Verification.
Soumya Sanyal, Tianyi Xiao, Jiacheng Liu, Wenya Wang Xiang Ren.
Findings of the 62th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-24), 2024.

Adapt in Contexts: Effective Domain Adaptation via In-Context Learning.
Quanyu Long, Wenya Wang, Sinno Jialin Pan.
The 2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP-main), 2023

Vera: A General-Purpose Plausibility Estimation Model for Commonsense Statements.
Jiacheng Liu, Wenya Wang, Dianzhuo Wang, Noah A. Smith, Yejin Choi, Hanna Hajishirzi.
The 2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP-main), 2023

Robust Domain Misinformation Detection via Multi-modal Feature Alignment
Hui Liu, Wenya Wang, Hao Sun, Anderson Rocha, and Haoliang Li.
IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 2023.

Elaboration-Generating Commonsense Question Answering at Scale.
Wenya Wang, Vivek Srikumar, Hanna Hajishirzi, Noah A. Smith.
The 61th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-main), 2023

Interpretable Multimodal Misinformation Detection with Logic Reasoning.
Hui Liu, Wenya Wang, Haoliang Li.
Findings of the 61th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-main), 2023.

Towards Multi-Modal Sarcasm Detection via Hierarchical Congruity Modeling with Knowledge Enhancement.
Hui Liu, Wenya Wang, Haoliang Li.
The 2022 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP-main), 2022

Progressive Multigranularity Information Propagation for Coupled Aspect-Opinion Extraction.
Fengmao Lv, Tao Liang, Zhihui Fei, Wenya Wang.
IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems. (TNNLS 2022)

Domain Confused Contrastive Learning for Unsupervised Domain Adaptation.
Quanyu Long, Tianze Luo, Wenya Wang, Sinno Jialin Pan.
The 2022 Annual Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (NAACL-main), 2022.

Deep Inductive Logic Reasoning for Multi-Hop Reading Comprehension.
Wenya Wang and Sinno Jialin Pan.
The 60th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-main), 2022.

Variational Deep Logic Network for Joint Inference of Entities and Relations.
Wenya Wang and Sinno Jialin Pan.
Computational Linguistics. Volume 47 (4), pages 775–812. (CL 2021)

Weakly Supervised Domain Adaptation for Aspect Extraction via Multilevel Interaction Transfer.
Tao Liang, Wenya Wang, Fengmao Lv.
IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems. Pages 1-12. (TNNLS 2021)

Deep Weighted MaxSAT for Aspect-based Opinion Extraction.
Meixi Wu, Wenya Wang, Sinno Jialin Pan.
The 2020 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP-20). (Long paper)

Integrating Deep Learning with Logic Fusion for Information Extraction.
Wenya Wang and Sinno Jialin Pan.
The 34th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2020

Syntactically-Meaningful and Transferable Recursive Neural Networks for Aspect and Opinion Extraction.
Wenya Wang and Sinno Jialin Pan.
Computational Linguistics (CL), 2019.

MetaQuant: Learning to Quantize by Learning to Penetrate Non-differentiable Quantization.
Shangyu Chen, Wenya Wang, Sinno Jialin Pan.
The 33rd Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems 2019 (NeurIPS), 2019. (Full paper)

Cooperative Pruning in Cross-Domain Deep Neural Network Compression.
Shangyu Chen, Wenya Wang, Sinno Jialin Pan.
The 28th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), 2019.

Deep Neural Network Quantization via Layer-Wise Optimization using Limited Training Data.
Shangyu Chen, Wenya Wang, Sinno Jialin Pan.
The 33rd AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2019.

Transferable Interactive Memory Network for Domain Adaptation in Fine-grained Opinion Extraction.
Wenya Wang and Sinno Jialin Pan.
The 33rd AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2019

Memory Networks for Fine-grained Opinion Mining.
Wenya Wang, Sinno Jialin Pan, Daniel Dahlmeier.
Artificial Intelligence (AIJ). Volume 265, Pages 1-17, 2018.

Recursive Neural Structural Correspondence Network for Cross-domain Aspect and Opinion Co-extraction.
Wenya Wang and Sinno Jialin Pan.
The 56th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-main), 2018.

Transition-based Adversarial Network for Cross-lingual Aspect Extraction.
Wenya Wang and Sinno Jialin Pan.
The 27th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), 2018

Coupled Multi-layer Attentions for Co-extraction of Aspect and Opinion Terms.
Wenya Wang, Sinno Jialin Pan, Daniel Dahlmeier, Xiaokui Xiao.
The 31st AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2017.

Recursive Neural Conditional Random Fields for Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis.
Wenya Wang, Sinno Jialin Pan, Daniel Dahlmeier, Xiaokui Xiao.
The 2016 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP-main), 2016.

Team

Welcome to the Generative Language INTelligence (GLINT)✨ Lab! The GLINT Lab focuses on advancing the foundations and frontiers of language-centered AI. Our research aims to build interpretable, efficient and generalizable systems that can understand, reason, and generate with language at scale. We study large language models through the lenses of reasoning, memory, and multimodal grounding, while developing principled methods to improve their capability, transparency, and scalability.

Current PhD Students

  • Ching-Chieh Tsao (Jan 2026 - present)
  • Hongxu Liu (Jan 2026 - present)
  • Zhengyuan Liu (Jan 2026 - present)
  • Chengtao Lyu (Aug 2025 - present)
  • Haozhen Zhang (Aug 2025 - present)
  • Derrick Xin Deik Goh (Jan 2025 - present)
  • Qisheng Hu (Aug 2024 - present)
  • Yumeng Shi (Aug 2024 - present)
  • Yin Wu (transferred since Aug 2023 - present)
  • Qiyuan He (transferred since Oct 2023 - present)

Current Master Students

  • Yichen Guo (Aug 2025 - present)

Current Research Fellows

  • Jianzhu Bao (Sep 2025 - present)
  • Quanyu Long (Sep 2025 - present)

Visiting Scholars

  • Zichen Zhu - Shanghai Jiaotong University, SJTU-NTU Joint PhD Scholarship (Jan 2026 - present)
  • Zihan Ma - Xi'an Jiaotong University (Nov 2025 - present)
  • Xiangyu Wu - Nanjing University of Science and Technology (Aug 2025 - present)

Alumni

  • Jianpeng Zhou, Visiting PhD Scholar - Sun Yat-sen University (Dec 2024 - Dec 2025)
  • Hui Liu, Visiting PhD Scholar - City University of Hong Kong (Dec 2023 - Dec 2024)

Talk

  • Invited Keynote: "From Context to Parameters: Generalization and Transfer in Modalities and Domains". Continual Learning Meets Multimodal Foundation Models: Fundamentals and Advances at ACMMM. Dublin, Ireland, October 28, 2025. [website]
  • Invited Keynote: "Can LLMs function as, enhance and benefit from Knowledge Bases?" Generative AI and Knowledge Graphs Workshop at COLING. Abu Dhabi, UAE, January 19, 2025. [website]
  • Invited Talk: "Tailoring and Controlling LLM Outputs via Scalable Training". The 6th Academic - Industrial Forum, Huawei, Singapore. October 2024.
  • Invited Talk: "Can Generative AI Build Trust and Reliability in Scientific Discoveries?" AI Methods for Science Workshop by National Research Foundation, Singapore. June 2024. [website]
  • Invited Talk: "Enhancing LLMs’ Reliability via Generation and Verification". The NUS IDS NLP-SIG Workshop for TheWebConf, Singapore. May 2024. [website]
  • Invited Talk: "Towards Trustworthy AI for Effective Misinformation Detection". The 6th Huawei Forum on Trust and Privacy for the Future Digital World, Singapore. 2023. [website]
  • Invited Talk: "Do LLMs Excel in Every Aspect? Overcoming Limitations through Scalable Learning". NLP SIG Research Seminar, NUS IDS. November 2023. [website]
  • Invited Talk: "Enhance Model Reasoning and Interpretability". StatNLP Group, SUTD. 2023.
  • Tutorial: "Fine-grained Opinion Mining: Current Trend and Cutting-Edge Dimensions". The 28th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-19), Macao, China. Aug. 2019. [website]

Award

  • Asian Young Scientist Fellowship [website] (2025)
  • International Postdoctoral Fellowship, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington. (Jan 2022 - Jul 2023)
  • Lee Kuan Yew Postdoctoral Fellowship, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University (NTU). (Jul 2019 - Jan 2022)