Research

My research work and publications in AI, statistics, and their applications in biology.

• Active-GRPO: Adaptive Imitation and Self-Improving Reasoning for Molecular Optimization

  Preprint (arXiv 2026) · In submission

  with Xuefeng Liu, Qinan Huang, Thomas Brettin, Rick Stevens, Le Cong

  Introduces active reasoning for molecular optimization: the policy adaptively switches between imitating a reference and reinforcing its own discoveries, while continuously upgrading the reference to escape the reference-quality ceiling.

• Monte Carlo Tree Diffusion with Multiple Experts for Protein Design (MCTD-ME)

  Preprint (arXiv 2025) · In submission

  with Xuefeng Liu, Songhao Jiang, Xiao Luo, Xiaotian Duan, Mengdi Wang, Tobin R. Sosnick, Jinbo Xu, Rick L. Stevens

  Reframes reverse diffusion as Monte Carlo Tree Search with multiple proposal experts; pLDDT-guided masking and uncertainty-aware selection improve protein design quality and efficiency.

• From Division to Unity: The Emergence of Computational Social Science (1990–2021)

  WWW '25: Companion Proceedings of the ACM on Web Conference 2025

  with Honglin Bao, Jiawei Zhang, and James A. Evans

  Large-scale bibliometric/embedding analysis of CSS’s growth and integration across disciplines.