YaokunLiu (刘尧锟)

News

Education

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Ph.D. in Information Sciences · 2024 – Present

School of Information Sciences · Advisor: Prof. Dong Wang

Tianjin University

M.Eng. in Computer Science · 2021 – 2024

College of Intelligence and Computing · Advisor: Prof. Xiaowang Zhang

University of Science and Technology Beijing

B.S. in Intelligence Science and Technology · 2017 – 2021

School of Automation and Electrical Engineering

Publications

* equal contribution.

• PropUQ-MAS: Propagation-Aware Uncertainty Quantification for LLM Multi-Agent Systems
  Yaokun Liu*, Yifan Liu*, Daniel Yue Zhang, Ruichen Yao, Zelin Li, Dong Wang
  EMNLP 2026 Main
  LLMAgentUncertainty quantificationHallucination detection
• Topology-Aware Tokenization for Generative Recommendation
  Yaokun Liu, Yifan Liu, Zhenrui Yue, Gyuseok Lee, Zelin Li, Ruichen Yao, Dong Wang
  RecSys 2026
  LLMPersonalizationGenerative recommendation
• Learning Decomposed Contextual Token Representations from Pretrained and Collaborative Signals for Generative Recommendation
  Yifan Liu*, Yaokun Liu*, Zelin Li, Zhenrui Yue, Gyuseok Lee, Ruichen Yao, Yang Zhang, Dong Wang
  SIGIR 2026
  LLMPersonalizationGenerative recommendation
• SPRINT: Scalable and Predictive Intent Refinement for LLM-Enhanced Session-based Recommendation
  Gyuseok Lee, Wonbin Kweon, Zhenrui Yue, Yaokun Liu, Yifan Liu, Susik Yoon, Dong Wang, SeongKu Kang
  SIGIR 2026
• One Size Does Not Fit All: Adaptive Interest Representation Learning for Multi-interest Recommendation
  Yaokun Liu, Yifan Liu, Ruichen Yao, Zelin Li, Dong Wang
  ACM ToRS 2026
  User modelingPersonalization
• Mind the Ambiguity: Aleatoric Uncertainty Quantification in LLMs for Safe Medical Question Answering
  Yaokun Liu, Yifan Liu, Phoebe Mbuvi, Zelin Li, Ruichen Yao, Gawon Lim, Dong Wang
  The Web Conference (WWW) 2026
  LLMUncertainty quantificationHallucination detection
• Red-Teaming Privacy-Protective Perturbations: Blind Face Restoration as an Attack Strategy
  Zelin Li, Yifan Liu, Huimin Zeng, Yaokun Liu, Ruichen Yao, Yang Zhang, Dong Wang
  The Web Conference (WWW) 2026
• Beyond Truth Discovery: A Two-Stage Framework to Assess the Severity of False Claim during Disasters
  Ruichen Yao, Tejna Dasari, Gulshat Baispay, Aizhan Zaurbek, Yifan Liu, Yaokun Liu, Zelin Li, Dong Wang
  HCOMP 2026
• MASH: A Multiplatform and Multimodal Annotated Dataset for Societal Impact of Hurricane
  Ruichen Yao, Aslanbek Murzakhmetov, Raaghav Pillai, Aliya Maussymbayeva, Zelin Li, Yifan Liu, Yaokun Liu, Lanyu Shang, Yang Zhang, Na Wei, et al.
  ICWSM 2026 · Best Dataset Paper Award 🏆
• DisImpact: Quantifying the Physi-Social Impact of Natural Disasters Through Social Media
  Ruichen Yao, Tejna Dasari, Xuanyu Meng, Elliot Cao, Zelin Li, Yifan Liu, Yaokun Liu, Lanyu Shang, Dong Wang
  ICWSM 2026
• Anti-Tamper Protection for Unauthorized Individual Image Generation
  Zelin Li, Ruohan Zong, Yifan Liu, Ruichen Yao, Yaokun Liu, Yang Zhang, Dong Wang
  ICCV 2025
• Component-Based Fairness in Face Attribute Classification with Bayesian Network-informed Meta Learning
  Yifan Liu, Ruichen Yao, Yaokun Liu, Ruohan Zong, Zelin Li, Yang Zhang, Dong Wang
  FAccT 2025
• Modality Interactive Mixture-of-Experts for Fake News Detection
  Yifan Liu, Yaokun Liu, Zelin Li, Ruichen Yao, Yang Zhang, Dong Wang
  The Web Conference (WWW) 2025
• Attribute Simulation for Item Embedding Enhancement in Multi-Interest Recommendation
  Yaokun Liu, Xiaowang Zhang, Minghui Zou, Zhiyong Feng
  WSDM 2024
  User modelingPersonalization
• Co-Occurrence Embedding Enhancement for Long-Tail Problem in Multi-Interest Recommendation
  Yaokun Liu, Xiaowang Zhang, Minghui Zou, Zhiyong Feng
  RecSys 2023
  User modelingPersonalization

Experience

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Research Assistant · 2024–2025

Research on multi-agent systems, uncertainty quantification, and generative recommendation.

Teaching Assistant · 2025–2026

• Fall 2026Data Mining
• Spring 2026Methods of Data Science
• Fall 2025Intro to Database Concepts & Applications

Awards & Honors

1. 2026

   Best Dataset Paper Award

   ICWSM 2026

2. 2025

   Illinois Distinguished Fellowship

   University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · 2025–2028

Gallery

Beyond Research