🏛️ About me

I'm currently an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Artificial Intelligence in Education of The Central China Normal University (CCNU). Previously, I obtained my Ph.D. in Information and Communication Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), supervised by Prof. Bang Wang. After that, I have spent times as a Postdoctoral Researcher at HUST, supervised by Prof. Xiang Bai. My research interests cover the broad area of large-scale language model, natural language processing, knowledge graphs, and recommendation systems, with a current focus on Cognitive Intelligence and Security, Learning Resources Recommendation. I have published nearly 30 papers in the top international conferences and journals such as ACL, COLING, EMNLP, CSUR, Neur.Netw., ESWA, etc.

Prospective students: I am looking for master's students interested in scientific research to work together, as well as self-motivated undergraduate students to study in the research group. If you are interested in working with me, please drop me an email with your resume.

💼 Work Experiences

• 2024.08 - Now, Associate Professor, Faculty of Artificial Intelligence in Education, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China.
• 2024.02 - 2024.07, Postdoc Researcher, School of Software Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
• 2015.07 - 2020.08, Student Counselor, School of Electronic Information and Communications, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.

🎓 Educations

• 2020.09 - 2023.12, Ph.D. in Information and Communication Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
• 2013.09 - 2015.06, M.Mgt. in Administrative Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
• 2007.09 - 2011.06, B.Eng. in Electronic Information Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.

📝 Selected Publications

Conference Papers

• WWW 2026 J. Sun, S. Liu, X. Deng, W. Xiang, M. Luo, Q. Zhang, D. Zheng. Unsupervised Subgraph Anomaly Detection based on Pattern Collaboration, Accepted by The ACM Web Conference (WWW). Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 2026, pp.1-8.

• WWW 2026 X. Fan, J. Sun, X. Deng, Q. Zhang, W. Xiang, S. Liu, L. Yi. Automated Model Selection for Multivariate Time Series Forecasting, Accepted by the ACM web conference (WWW). Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 2026, pp.1-8.

• ACL 2025 W. Xiang, C. Zhan, Q. Zhang and B. Wang. Evaluating Instructively Generated Statement by Large Language Models for directional Event Causality Identification, In Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-Findings). Vienna, Austria, 2025, pp.779–785.

• ICPADS 2025 N. Zhang, S. Chen, S. Liu, X. Deng, Y. He, W. Xiang, M. Li. SecFinder: An IoT Device Identification System Based on Flow-level Traffic in Smart Home, In IEEE 31th International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems (ICPADS). Hefei, China, 2025, pp.1-8. (Outstanding Paper)

• TrustCom 2025 Z. Jin, J. Ma, Y. He, W. Xiang, Q. Zhang, T. Zhang. TLSA: Transfer Learning Enhanced Link Stealing Attacks on Graph Neural Networks, In 2025 IEEE 24th International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom). Guiyang, China, 2025, pp.1182-1189.

• ACL 2024 C. Liu, W. Xiang and B. Wang. Identifying while Learning for Document Event Causality Identification, In Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL). Bangkok, Thailand, 2024, pp.3815–3827.

• ACL 2024 S. Liu, B. Wang, W. Xiang, H. Xu and M. Xu. Encoding Hierarchical Schema via Concept Flow for Multifaceted Ideology Detection, In Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-Findings). Bangkok, Thailand, 2024, pp.2930–2942.

• EMNLP 2024 C. Liang, W. Xiang and B. Wang. In-context Contrastive Learning for Event Causality Identification, In Proceedings of the 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP). Miami, Florida, USA, 2024, pp.868-881.

• EMNLP 2024 C. Zhan^†, W. Xiang^†, C. Liang and B. Wang. What Would Happen Next? Predicting Consequences from An Event Causality Graph, In Proceedings of the 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP-Findings). Miami, Florida, USA, 2024, pp.820–832.

• NLPCC 2024 R. Wang, W. Xiang, Z. Wang and B. Wang. Retrieval-Enhanced Template Generation for Template Extraction, In The 13rd CCF International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Chinese Computing (NLPCC). Hangzhou, China, 2024, pp.379-391.

• NLPCC 2024 Z. Zheng, C. Liang, W. Xiang and B. Wang. Bias-Rectified Multi-way Learning with Data Augmentation for Implicit Discourse Relation Recognition, In The 13rd CCF International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Chinese Computing (NLPCC). Hangzhou, China, 2024, pp.366–378.

• ACL 2023 W. Xiang, C. Liang and B. Wang. TEPrompt: Task Enlightenment Prompt Learning for Implicit Discourse Relation Recognition, In Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-Findings). Toronto, Canada, 2023, pp.12403–12414.

• EMNLP 2023 S. Liu, Z. Luo, M. Xu, L. Wei, Z. Wei, H. Yu, W. Xiang and B. Wang. Ideology Takes Multiple Looks: A High-Quality Dataset for Multifaceted Ideology Detection, In Proceedings of the 2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP). Singapore, 2023, pp.4200-4213.

• COLING 2022 W. Xiang, Z. Wang, L. Dai and B. Wang. ConnPrompt: Connective-Cloze Prompt Learning for Implicit Discourse Relation Recognition, In Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING). Gyeongju, Republic of Korea, 2022, pp.902-911.

• ACL 2022 W. Xiang, B. Wang, L. Dai and Y. Mo. Encoding and Fusing Semantic Connection and Linguistic Evidence for Implicit Discourse Relation Recognition, In Proceedings of the 60th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-Findings). Dublin, Ireland, 2022, pp.3247-3257.

• EMNLP 2022 L. Dai, B. Wang, W. Xiang and Y. Mo. Bi-Directional Iterative Prompt-Tuning for Event Argument Extraction, In Proceedings of the 2022 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP). Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 2022, pp.6251-6263.

• PAKDD 2022 L. Dai, B. Wang, W. Xiang, M. Xu and H. Xu. A Hybrid Semantic-Topic Co-encoding Network for Social Emotion Classification, In The 26th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD). Chengdu, China, 2022, pp.587–598.

• NLPCC 2021 L. Dai, B. Wang, W. Xiang and Y. Mo. Event Argument Extraction via a Distance-Sensitive Graph Convolutional Network, In The 10th CCF International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Chinese Computing (NLPCC). Qingdao, China, 2021, pp.59–72.

• SIGIR 2019 C. Wang, B. Wang, W. Xiang and M. Xu. Encoding Syntactic Dependency and Topical Information for Social Emotion Classification, In The 42nd International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR). Paris, France, 2019, pp.881-884.

Journal Papers

• Neu.Net. 2026 C. Liang, B. Wang, C. Zhan, W. Xiang^†. Multiplex Graph Prompt Learning and Attentive Fusion for Event Graph Completion, Neural Networks (Elsevier), 2026, vol.199, pp.108730.

• TASLP 2025 C. Zhan, W. Xiang, C. Liang and B. Wang. Unified Semantic and Structural Modeling via Focal Attention for Causality Graph Event Prediction, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, 2025, vol.33, pp.4538-4551.

• Neu.Net. 2025 W. Xiang, C. Liu and B. Wang. Modeling Document Causal Structure with a Hypergraph for Event Causality Identification, Neural Networks (Elsevier), 2025, vol.184, pp.107080.

• TASLP 2025 B. Wang, Z. Wang, W. Xiang and Y. Mo. Adaptive Prompt Learning with Distilled Connective Knowledge for Implicit Discourse Relation Recognition, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, 2025, vol.33, pp.586-597.

• NCAA 2025 W. Xiang, C. Zhan, Q. Zhang and B. Wang. DAPrompt: Deterministic Assumption Prompt Learning for Event Causality Identification, Neural Computing and Applications (Springer), 2025, vol.37, pp.21743-21759.

• CSL 2025 W. Xiang, C. Liu and B. Wang. Modeling correlated causal-effect structure with a hypergraph for document-level event causality identification, Computer Speech and Language (Elsevier), 2025, vol.90, pp.101752.

• NCAA 2024 W. Xiang, S. Liu and B. Wang. Parsing and Encoding Interactive Phrase Structure for Implicit Discourse Relation Recognition, Neural Computing and Applications (Springer), 2024, vol.36, pp.13783-13797.

• CSUR 2023 W. Xiang and B. Wang. A Survey of Implicit Discourse Relation Recognition, ACM Computing Surveys, 2023, vol.55(12), pp.1-34.

• ESWA 2023 B. Wang, X. Cai, M. Xu and W. Xiang^†. A graph-enhanced attention model for community detection in multiplex networks, Expert Systems With Applications (Elsevier), 2023, vol.230(15), pp.120552.

• NPL 2023 L. Dai, B. Wang, W. Xiang and Y. Mo. Modeling Character-Word Interaction via a Novel Mesh Transformer for Chinese Event Detection, Neural Processing Letters (Springer), 2023, vol.55, pp.11429-114488.

• Appl.Int. 2022 L. Dai, B. Wang, W. Xiang and Y. Mo. A Syntactic Distance Sensitive Neural Network for Event Argument Extraction, Applied Intelligence (Springer), 2022, vol.53, pp.6554-6568.

• ACCESS 2020 W. Xiang and B. Wang. A Survey of Event Extraction from Text, IEEE ACCESS, 2019, vol.7, pp.173111-173137.

🎖️ Awards and Service

Area Chair & Program Committee:

• ACL ARR (2026, 2025), IEEE ICPADS (2025), IEEE AIAHPC (2025), IEEE TrustCom (2025), IEEE HPCC (2024, 2022).

Conference Reviewer:

• ACL (‘25, ‘24, ‘23, ‘22), AAAI (‘25), NAACL (‘25, ‘24, ‘23), EMNLP (‘24, ‘23), ECAI (‘23)， NLPCC （‘25, ‘24).

Journal Reviewer:

• IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (TNNLS), IEEE Transactions on Big Data (TBD), Expert Systems with Applications (ESWA), Neural Networks, Neurocomputing, Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence (EAAI), Multimedia Systems, Data Science and Engineering (DSEJ), etc.

Awards:

• Hubei Provincial Science and Technology Progress Award, Second Prize, Department of Science and Technology of Hubei Province, 2025.
• National Scholarship for Doctoral Students, Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, 2023.
• Huawei Scholarship, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., 2022.