DENG Yang
Full-time Faculty
Assistant Professor of Computer Science; Lee Kong Chian Fellow
School of Computing and Information Systems
SCIS
Qualification
- PhD, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2023
Teaching Topics
- Interaction Design & Prototyping
Research Advisor/Co-Research Advisor to
Research Areas and Areas of Expertise
Strategic Priorities
HighlightsDeng Yang is an award-winning researcher and Assistant Professor at SMU, internationally recognized for his pioneering work in proactive conversational AI, large language models, and trustworthy information access.
Combines methodological innovation in proactive and trustworthy conversational AI with applied impact in multilingual, multimodal, and human-centered systems; emphasizes explainability, safety, and real-world deployment; recipient of Google Research Awards and AAAI New Faculty Highlights; recognized for leadership in international NLP conferences.
Focused research areas include Advancements in proactive conversational agents, LLM-powered dialogue and information retrieval, multilingual and multimodal reasoning, explainable AI, integrity and safety alignment in conversational systems, and human-centered AI for real-world planning.
Combines methodological innovation in proactive and trustworthy conversational AI with applied impact in multilingual, multimodal, and human-centered systems; emphasizes explainability, safety, and real-world deployment; recipient of Google Research Awards and AAAI New Faculty Highlights; recognized for leadership in international NLP conferences.
Focused research areas include Advancements in proactive conversational agents, LLM-powered dialogue and information retrieval, multilingual and multimodal reasoning, explainable AI, integrity and safety alignment in conversational systems, and human-centered AI for real-world planning.
Areas of Expertise
Natural Language ProcessingLarge Language ModelsInformation RetrievalDialogue SystemsQA
Past Awarded Grant
- Proactive Conversational Agents for Real-world Planning, SMU Internal Grant, Ministry of Education (MOE) Tier 1 , PI (Project Level): DENG Yang, 2024, S$119,980
- Robust and Efficient Alignment for Integrity in Conversational Agents, SMU Internal Grant, Ministry of Education (MOE) Tier 1, PI (Project Level): DENG Yang, 2024, S$241,000
- Culturally-Aware Proactive Conversational AI for Enhancing Social Resilience in Singapore, AI RESEARCH - GOVERNANCE JOINT GRANT, AISG ZHANG Wenxuan, Co-PI (Project Level): DENG Yang, YOW Wei Quin, 2025, SGD1,019,408
Latest Publications
Showing up to 6 latest publications from the past 5 years.
- D Wang, X Zhang, K Xu, Q Zhu, W Che, Y DengICLR 2026, 2026
- H Jiang, Z Zhao, J Fang, H Ma, R Wang, Y Deng, X Wang, X HeICLR 2026, 2026
- J Li, Y Yuan, W Li, M Aliannejadi, D Hershcovich, A Søgaard, I Vulić, ...ICLR 2026, 2026
- C Li, Y Deng, H Hu, SK Ng, MY Kan, H LiECIR 2026, 2026
- Y DengProceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 40 (47), 39815 …, 2026
- W Zhao, Y Hu, X Sui, Z Li, Y Deng, Y Zhao, B Qin, W CheFrontiers of Computer Science 20 (2), 2002319, 2026
This highlights are AI-generated content using the faculty's CV.
Qualification
- PhD, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2023
Teaching Topics
- Interaction Design & Prototyping