Publications & Awards

My work spans AI agents, information retrieval, language models, recommendation, and graph learning. The most current citation record is on Google Scholar.

Surveys and tutorials listed separately · † Equal contribution · * Corresponding author

Research papers

First-authored

  1. KDD 2026

    VideoRAG: Retrieval-Augmented Generation with Extreme Long-Context Videos

    X. Ren†, L. Xu†, L. Xia, S. Wang, D. Yin, C. Huang*

    Full paper · Applied Data Science track

    Paper Digest Top-22 Most Influential arXiv IR Paper of 2025

    PaperCode

  2. EMNLP 2025

    EasyRec: Simple yet Effective Language Models for Recommendation

    X. Ren, C. Huang*

    PaperCodeModels

  3. WWW 2024

    RLMRec: Representation Learning with Large Language Models for Recommendation

    X. Ren, W. Wei, L. Xia, L. Su, S. Cheng, J. Wang, D. Yin, C. Huang*

    Full paper

    Paper Digest Top-1 Most Influential WWW 2024 Paper (1/405)Top-1 Most-Cited WWW 2024 Paper (1/405)WAIC 2025 Youth Outstanding Paper Nomination

    PaperCode

  4. WSDM 2024

    SSLRec: A Self-Supervised Learning Framework for Recommendation

    X. Ren, L. Xia, Y. Yang, W. Wei, T. Wang, X. Cai, C. Huang*

    Full paper · Oral

    Top-13 Most-Cited WSDM 2024 Paper (13/112)

    PaperCode

  5. SIGIR 2023

    DCCF: Disentangled Contrastive Collaborative Filtering

    X. Ren, L. Xia, J. Zhao, D. Yin, C. Huang*

    Full paper

    Paper Digest Top-7 Most Influential SIGIR 2023 Paper (7/165)Top-6 Most-Cited SIGIR 2023 Paper (6/165)

    PaperCode

Co-authored

  1. ACL 2026

    MiniRAG: A Lightweight RAG System with Small Language Models

    T. Fan, J. Wang, X. Ren, C. Huang*

    Long paper

    PaperarXivCode

  2. EMNLP 2025

    RecGPT: A Foundation Model for Sequential Recommendation

    Y. Jiang, X. Ren, L. Xia, D. Luo, K. Lin, C. Huang*

    Main conference

    Paper

  3. EMNLP 2024

    XRec: Large Language Models for Explainable Recommendation

    Q. Ma, X. Ren, C. Huang*

    Findings

    Paper

  4. WSDM 2024

    LLMRec: Large Language Models with Graph Augmentation for Recommendation

    W. Wei, X. Ren, J. Tang, Q. Wang, L. Su, S. Chen, J. Wang, D. Yin, C. Huang*

    Full paper · Oral

    Top-1 Most-Cited WSDM 2024 Paper (1/112)

    Paper

  5. CIKM 2023

    How Expressive are Graph Neural Networks in Recommendation?

    X. Cai, L. Xia, X. Ren, C. Huang*

    Long paper

    Paper

  6. SIGIR 2023

    Graph Transformer for Recommendation

    C. Li, L. Xia, X. Ren, Y. Ye, Y. Xu, C. Huang*

    Full paper

    Paper

  7. ICLR 2023

    LightGCL: Simple Yet Effective Graph Contrastive Learning for Recommendation

    X. Cai, C. Huang*, L. Xia, X. Ren

    Spotlight

    Top 5% Most-Cited ICLR 2023 Paper

    Paper

  8. ACM TOIS 2023

    Multi-Auxiliary Augmented Collaborative Variational Auto-Encoder for Tag Recommendation

    J. Yi, X. Ren, Z. Chen*

    ACM

Surveys and tutorials

  1. ACM CSUR 2026

    A Comprehensive Survey on Self-Supervised Learning for Recommendation

    X. Ren, W. Wei, L. Xia, C. Huang

    Survey · Published online in 2025

    170+ papers synthesized · 3,000+ ACM downloads

    PaperACMResources

  2. KDD 2024

    A Survey of Large Language Models for Graphs

    X. Ren, J. Tang, D. Yin, N. Chawla, C. Huang

    Lecture-style tutorial survey paper

    200+ citations · 3,400+ ACM downloads

    PaperACMResources

  3. WWW 2024

    Large Language Models for Graphs: Progresses and Directions

    C. Huang, X. Ren, J. Tang, D. Yin, N. Chawla

    Tutorial

    ACM

Awards

  1. AI25 AI Innovation Pioneer Under 25

    Selected for the 2025 cohort, jointly initiated by Sequoia China and MIT Technology Review China.

  2. BAAI InnoVibe Most Notable Academic Rising Star

    One of 18 recipients at the BAAI Conference 2026.

  3. Ant InTech Scholarship — Future

    One of 20 recipients worldwide.

  4. WAIC Youth Outstanding Paper Nomination Award

    One of 20 recipients worldwide.

  5. CAAI Rising Scientist

    One of five recipients worldwide.

  6. Hong Kong PhD Fellowship

  7. HKU Presidential PhD Scholarship

  8. National Scholarship

    Received four times; top 0.2% nationwide in China.

  9. CCF Elite Collegiate Award

    One of 102 students nationwide.

  10. Finalist, Mathematical Contest in Modeling

    Top 2% worldwide.

  11. Pacemaker to Merit Student, Wuhan University