I am a professor at the Shenzhen Loop Area Institute. I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science at City University of Hong Kong. I have conducted research and held academic or research positions at Rutgers Business School, the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University, the Department of Linguistics and Translation at City University of Hong Kong, the Institute for Infocomm Research at ASTAR* (Singapore), and the School of Computer Science and Engineering at Sun Yat-sen University.

My research focuses on Natural Lnguage Processing (NLP), large language models (LLMs), and model compression and lightweight architectures. I have published over 100 papers in leading international journals and conferences, including IEEE TPAMI, ACL, ICML, NeurIPS, and ICLR, and have led multiple national- and provincial-level research projects. My team pioneered research on heterogeneous model fusion and developed the FuseLLM and FuseChat series, which have attracted broad attention from academia and industry. I welcome research collaborations and applications from students interested in NLP and LLMs.

Shenzhen Loop Area Institute is recruiting Professors, APs, RAPs, Postdocs, and PhD students in areas such as LLMs and Speech LMs. Drop me an email if you’re interested.

Latest News

• 04/05/26 - One papers accepted to ACL 2026.
• 02/01/26 - One papers accepted to ICLR 2026.
• 01/01/26 - Research project funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (General Program) approved.
• 12/15/25 - Invited to serve as Area Chair for ICLR 2026.
• 10/06/25 - Three papers accepted to EMNLP 2025.
• 05/16/25 - Three papers accepted to ACL 2025.
• 05/15/25 - One paper accepted to ICML 2025.
• 05/01/25 - Research project funded by Meituan approved.
• 04/01/25 - Research project funded by WeChat approved.
• 02/01/25 - Research project funded by China Mobile Internet Company approved.
• 01/22/25 - Three papers accepted to ICLR 2025 (including one Spotlight).

🌟 Research Highlights

To date, I have published over 100 papers in leading international journals and conferences, including ICLR, ICML, NeurIPS, ACL, EMNLP, WWW, SIGIR, AAAI, IJCAI, and IEEE TPAMI. This body of work has received broad attention from both academia and industry.

Pioneering Work: Model Fusion

Our team pioneered research on Heterogeneous Model Fusion to leverage the strengths of multiple open-source LLMs.

• Key Projects: Developed the FuseLLM, FuseChat (1.0/2.0/3.0), and FuseRL series.
• Impact: These open-source projects have collectively received over 100,000 downloads on Hugging Face and GitHub.
• Collaborations: We maintain active collaborations with leading technology companies, including Meta, Alibaba, Tencent, WeChat, and Meituan.

View FuseLLM on GitHub Google Scholar

🎓 Experience

• Professor, Shenzhen Loop Area Institute (Present)
• Professor, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University (2017.07 – Previous)
• Scientist, Institute for Infocomm Research (I²R), A*STAR, Singapore (2014.01 – 2017.05)
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Dept. of Linguistics & Translation, City University of Hong Kong (2012.09 – 2013.12)
• Visiting Scholar, Dept. of Computer Science, Purdue University (2011.07 – 2011.12)
• Visiting Scholar, Rutgers Business School, Rutgers University (2010.06 – 2010.08)

📢 Openings

I am actively looking for self-motivated Master’s and Ph.D. students.

• Requirements: Strong background in computer science, mathematics, or related fields; passion for NLP and LLM research; good programming skills (Python/PyTorch).
• What we offer:
  • Guidance on cutting-edge research topics (LLM fusion, alignment, lightweight architectures, etc.).
  • Opportunities to collaborate with top industry labs (Alibaba DAMO Academy, Tencent AI Lab, etc.).
  • Competitive allowance and scholarships.
• Contact: Please send your CV and transcripts to xiaojunquan@gmail.com.

💰 Selected Grants (Principal Investigator)

• National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC): Research on Large Model Compression Technology Based on Heterogeneous Model Fusion (2026–2029).
• National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC): Research on Emotion Recognition in Conversation Combined with Automatic Personality Detection (2022–2025).
• Guangdong Pearl River Recruitment Program of Talents: Innovative R&D Team on Mobile Converged Computing (Key Leading Member, 2018–2023).
• Industry Grants: Funded by WeChat, Meituan, China Mobile, Alibaba, Tencent, Vipshop, etc.

🏆 Honors & Awards

• Third Prize for Scientific and Technological Achievement, Guangdong Communication Society (2024)
• First Prize for Outstanding Paper, Guangdong Computer Society (2021)
• Outstanding Reviewer, ACL 2021
• Outstanding Member, China Computer Federation (CCF)