Short Bio

Zixuan Yuan​ is currently an Assistant Professor at the FinTech Thrust, HKUST (Guangzhou). His research integrates advanced AI methodologies​ with critical financial challenges, focusing on developing scalable and impactful solutions for AI-driven wealth management, quantitative trading, and regulatory technology (RegTech). His primary research interests include Financial Text Analytics, LLM Reasoning, Agentic Orchestration, Cost-effective Vertical RAG, and Model Interpretability. Dr. Yuan has published 20+ papers in premier venues, including IEEE TKDE, IEEE IOTJ, ACM SIGKDD, SIGIR, WWW, AAAI, and IJCAI. His work bridges theoretical innovation and practical deployment through industrial collaborations with leading tech/financial institutions, such as Baidu Research, IBM Research, RavenPack, HSBC, CITIC Group, and China Merchants Fund Management. Dr. Yuan has also co-founded Guangzhou Lingyue Technology, an AI-powered wealth management startup that translates cutting-edge AI research into commercial applications for institutional and individual investors.

Multiple positions are available for self-motivated Ph.D. students and RAs. Visiting students are also welcome. Please check here for more information. Thanks!

Research Interest:

• Financial Text Analytics
• LLM Reasoning
• Agentic Orchestration
• Cost-effective Vertical RAG
• Model Interpretability

Education

• Ph.D. in Data Mining and Business Analytics
University: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Years: 2018-2023
Advisor: Prof. Hui Xiong

• M.S. in Information Technology
University: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Years: 2015-2017
Advisor: Prof. Hui Xiong

• B.S. in Economics
University: Tongji University
Years: 2011-2015

Teaching

Past Courses

• Sole Instructor, FinTech Thrust, HKUST(GZ)
  Postgraduate course: FTEC 5050, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Fall 2023(4.92/5.0), Fall 2024 (4.81/5.0), Fall 2025 (4.89/5.0)
  
• Sole Instructor, University Level, HKUST(GZ)
  Undergraduate course: UFUG 1102, Calculus I, Fall 2024 (4.47/5.0), Fall 2025 (4.61/5.0)
  
• Sole Instructor, Rutgers Business School, Rutgers University
  Undergraduate course: 29:623:311, Production and Operations Management, Summer 2022
  
Undergraduate course: 29:623:335, Data Warehousing & Data Mining, Spring 2023

Conference PC Member & Reviewer

• ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD), 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026
• The AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026
• International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), 2025, 2026
• International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2024, 2025, 2026
• ACL Rolling Review (ARR), 2026
• ACM International Conference on AI in Finance (ICAIF), 2024, 2025
• The International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), 2024
• The IEEE ICDM NeuRec-Workshop, 2023

Journal Reviewer

• IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE), 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025
• Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data (TKDD), 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025
• ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology (TIST), 2024, 2025
• Frontiers of Computer Science, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025
• Computer Communications, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025
• World Wide Web, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025

News

• [Dec. 2025] One paper got accepted to KDD’26.
• [Nov. 2025] One paper got accepted to EMNLP 2025
• [May. 2025] One paper on datasets and benchmarks track got accepted to KDD’25.
• [Sep. 2024] One papers got accepted to WINE’24.
• [May. 2024] Two papers got accepted to KDD’24.
• [May. 2024] One papers got accepted to IJCAI'24.
• [Dec. 2023] One paper on multi-label classification got accepted to AAAI’24.
• [Nov. 2023] One paper on stock trading got accepted to IEEE TKDE.
• [Oct. 2023] One paper on earnings call analysis got accepted to ACM ICAIF’23.
• [Aug. 2023] Invited as a PC member for AAAI’24.
• [Nov. 2023] Joined HKUST as an assistant professor in FinTech Thrust.
• [Aug. 2022] Invited as a PC member for AAAI’23.
• [Aug. 2022] One paper on product representation learning got accepted to IEEE TKDE.
• [Apr. 2022] Served as a session chair at INFORMS’22.
• Show more
[Dec. 2021] One paper on KG reasoning got accepted to AAAI’22 (15% acceptance rate).
[May. 2021] Two papers got accepted to KDD’21.
[Mar. 2021] Passed my dissertation proposal defense, pleased to be Ph.D. candidate now!
[Jun. 2021] Joined IBM Watson Research Lab as a research intern.
[Jan. 2021] One paper accepted to WWW’21.
[Dec. 2020] Joined RavenPack as a data scientist intern.
[Dec. 2020] One paper accepted to AAAI’21.
[Apr. 2020] One paper accepted to SIGIR’21.

Publications [Google Scholar][ResearchGate]

* means equal contribution.
† means corresponding authors.

Prospective Students

• Regular Ph.D. Admission
  Eligible Candidates: Undergraduate or Master students
  Enrollment: 2026 Academic Year
  Funding: HKUST Ph.D. Scholarship or Assistantship (around 15K RMB per month)
  Advisorship: Advised by Dr. Zixuan Yuan or co-advised by Dr. Zixuan Yuan and Dr. Hui Xiong
  
• Research Assistant or Intern
  For HKUST students: feel free to drop me an email or stop by my office.
  For other students: please attach your CV to your email, and demonstrate clearly your research interests & how you can collaborate with me.
  
• Ph.D. Student Requirements
  1. With a bachelor’s or master’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Finance, or other related disciplines.
  2. Have a strong passion for academic research, a thirst for knowledge, curiosity, and enjoyment of the investigative process.
  3. Hard working and a high sense of responsibility.
  4. Excellent communication skills and proficiency in English.
  

Contact

Address: HKUST (GZ)
Office Location: E3（C9）L5 502
Email: zixuanyuan@hkust-gz.edu.cn