papers

Publications (37)

eess.SP2026

PG-LRF: Physiology-Guided Latent Rectified Flow for Electro-Hemodynamic PPG-to-ECG Generation

Xiaoda Wang, Minxiao Wang, Kaiqiao Han +10

Electrocardiography (ECG) is the clinical standard for cardiac assessment but requires dedicated hardware that does not scale to daily-life monitoring. Photoplethysmography (PPG) i…

cs.LG2023

Estimating Treatment Effects from Irregular Time Series Observations with Hidden Confounders

Defu Cao, James Enouen, Yujing Wang +4

Causal analysis for time series data, in particular estimating individualized treatment effect (ITE), is a key task in many real-world applications, such as finance, retail, health…

cs.CL2024

Interpretable Detection of Out-of-Context Misinformation with Neural-Symbolic-Enhanced Large Multimodal Model

Yizhou Zhang, Loc Trinh, Defu Cao +2

Recent years have witnessed the sustained evolution of misinformation that aims at manipulating public opinions. Unlike traditional rumors or fake news editors who mainly rely on g…

cs.LG2024

Active Sequential Posterior Estimation for Sample-Efficient Simulation-Based Inference

Sam Griesemer, Defu Cao, Zijun Cui +2

Computer simulations have long presented the exciting possibility of scientific insight into complex real-world processes. Despite the power of modern computing, however, it remain…

q-fin.ST2022

DSLOB: A Synthetic Limit Order Book Dataset for Benchmarking Forecasting Algorithms under Distributional Shift

Defu Cao, Yousef El-Laham, Loc Trinh +2

In electronic trading markets, limit order books (LOBs) provide information about pending buy/sell orders at various price levels for a given security. Recently, there has been a g…

cs.CR2026

"Someone Hid It": Query-Agnostic Black-Box Attacks on LLM-Based Retrieval

Jiate Li, Defu Cao, Li Li +8

Large language models (LLMs) have been serving as effective backbones for retrieval systems, including Retrieval-Augmentation-Generation (RAG), Dense Information Retriever (IR), an…

cs.LG2025

When LLM Meets Time Series: Can LLMs Perform Multi-Step Time Series Reasoning and Inference

Wen Ye, Jinbo Liu, Defu Cao +2

The rapid advancement of Large Language Models (LLMs) has sparked growing interest in their application to time series analysis tasks. However, their ability to perform complex rea…

cs.AI2026

Adaptive Collaboration with Humans: Metacognitive Policy Optimization for Multi-Agent LLMs with Continual Learning

Wei Yang, Defu Cao, Jiacheng Pang +2

While scaling individual Large Language Models (LLMs) has delivered remarkable progress, the next frontier lies in scaling collaboration through multi-agent systems (MAS). However,…

cs.AI2026

A Survey of Reasoning and Agentic Systems in Time Series with Large Language Models

Ching Chang, Yidan Shi, Defu Cao +8

Time series reasoning treats time as a first-class axis and incorporates intermediate evidence directly into the answer. This survey defines the problem and organizes the literatur…

cs.LG2026

M3OOD: Automatic Selection of Multimodal OOD Detectors

Yuehan Qin, Li Li, Defu Cao +3

Out-of-distribution (OOD) robustness is a critical challenge for modern machine learning systems, particularly as they increasingly operate in multimodal settings involving inputs…

cs.LG2024

TEMPO: Prompt-based Generative Pre-trained Transformer for Time Series Forecasting

Defu Cao, Furong Jia, Sercan O Arik +4

The past decade has witnessed significant advances in time series modeling with deep learning. While achieving state-of-the-art results, the best-performing architectures vary high…

cs.LG2020

Multivariate Time-series Anomaly Detection via Graph Attention Network

Hang Zhao, Yujing Wang, Juanyong Duan +7

Anomaly detection on multivariate time-series is of great importance in both data mining research and industrial applications. Recent approaches have achieved significant progress…

cs.LG2022

When Physics Meets Machine Learning: A Survey of Physics-Informed Machine Learning

Chuizheng Meng, Sungyong Seo, Defu Cao +2

Physics-informed machine learning (PIML), referring to the combination of prior knowledge of physics, which is the high level abstraction of natural phenomenons and human behaviour…

cs.LG2022

Counterfactual Neural Temporal Point Process for Estimating Causal Influence of Misinformation on Social Media

Yizhou Zhang, Defu Cao, Yan Liu

Recent years have witnessed the rise of misinformation campaigns that spread specific narratives on social media to manipulate public opinions on different areas, such as politics…

cs.LG2025

TimeDiT: General-purpose Diffusion Transformers for Time Series Foundation Model

Defu Cao, Wen Ye, Yizhou Zhang +1

Foundation models, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), have revolutionized text and video processing, yet time series data presents distinct challenges for such approaches d…

cs.LG2026

Trustworthy Protein-Ligand Binding Affinity Prediction via Reliability-Aware Multi-Engine Fusion

Yongchan Hong, Defu Cao, Wenjin Liu +6

Accurate protein-ligand binding affinity prediction is central to computational drug discovery, yet modern docking engines frequently disagree without indicating which prediction t…

cs.CY2024

Creating a Cooperative AI Policymaking Platform through Open Source Collaboration

Aiden Lewington, Alekhya Vittalam, Anshumaan Singh +48

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) present significant risks and opportunities, requiring improved governance to mitigate societal harms and promote equitable benefits. Curre…

cs.LG2026

TS-Reasoner: Domain-Oriented Time Series Inference Agents for Reasoning and Automated Analysis

Wen Ye, Wei Yang, Defu Cao +4

Time series analysis is crucial in real-world applications, yet traditional methods focus on isolated tasks only, and recent studies on time series reasoning remain limited to eith…

cs.AI2026

TemporalBench: A Benchmark for Evaluating LLM-Based Agents on Contextual and Event-Informed Time Series Tasks

Muyan Weng, Defu Cao, Wei Yang +2

It is unclear whether strong forecasting performance reflects genuine temporal understanding or the ability to reason under contextual and event-driven conditions. We introduce Tem…

cs.LG2025

Foundation Models for Demand Forecasting via Dual-Strategy Ensembling

Wei Yang, Defu Cao, Yan Liu

Accurate demand forecasting is critical for supply chain optimization, yet remains difficult in practice due to hierarchical complexity, domain shifts, and evolving external factor…

cs.LG2024

MuGSI: Distilling GNNs with Multi-Granularity Structural Information for Graph Classification

Tianjun Yao, Jiaqi Sun, Defu Cao +2

Recent works have introduced GNN-to-MLP knowledge distillation (KD) frameworks to combine both GNN's superior performance and MLP's fast inference speed. However, existing KD frame…

cs.CV2021

Spectral Temporal Graph Neural Network for Trajectory Prediction

Defu Cao, Jiachen Li, Hengbo Ma +1

An effective understanding of the contextual environment and accurate motion forecasting of surrounding agents is crucial for the development of autonomous vehicles and social mobi…

cs.LG2026

EnECG: Efficient Ensemble Learning for Electrocardiogram Multi-task Foundation Model

Yuhao Xu, Xiaoda Wang, Jiaying Lu +6

Electrocardiogram (ECG) analysis plays a vital role in the early detection, monitoring, and management of various cardiovascular conditions. While existing models have achieved not…

cs.AI2025

Neuron-based Multifractal Analysis of Neuron Interaction Dynamics in Large Models

Xiongye Xiao, Heng Ping, Chenyu Zhou +6

In recent years, there has been increasing attention on the capabilities of large models, particularly in handling complex tasks that small-scale models are unable to perform. Nota…

cs.LG2024

An Empirical Examination of Balancing Strategy for Counterfactual Estimation on Time Series

Qiang Huang, Chuizheng Meng, Defu Cao +3

Counterfactual estimation from observations represents a critical endeavor in numerous application fields, such as healthcare and finance, with the primary challenge being the miti…

cs.LG2024

Neuro-Inspired Hierarchical Multimodal Learning

Xiongye Xiao, Gengshuo Liu, Gaurav Gupta +6

Integrating and processing information from various sources or modalities are critical for obtaining a comprehensive and accurate perception of the real world. Drawing inspiration…

cs.LG2023

Estimating Treatment Effects in Continuous Time with Hidden Confounders

Defu Cao, James Enouen, Yan Liu

Estimating treatment effects plays a crucial role in causal inference, having many real-world applications like policy analysis and decision making. Nevertheless, estimating treatm…

cs.AI2025

Conversational Time Series Foundation Models: Towards Explainable and Effective Forecasting

Defu Cao, Michael Gee, Jinbo Liu +4

The proliferation of time series foundation models has created a landscape where no single method achieves consistent superiority, framing the central challenge not as finding the…

cs.CR2026

Topology Matters: Measuring Memory Leakage in Multi-Agent LLMs

Jinbo Liu, Defu Cao, Yifei Wei +6

Graph topology is a fundamental determinant of memory leakage in multi-agent LLM systems, yet its effects remain poorly quantified. We introduce MAMA (Multi-Agent Memory Attack), a…

cs.LG2025

Coupled Multiwavelet Neural Operator Learning for Coupled Partial Differential Equations

Xiongye Xiao, Defu Cao, Ruochen Yang +5

Coupled partial differential equations (PDEs) are key tasks in modeling the complex dynamics of many physical processes. Recently, neural operators have shown the ability to solve…

cs.LG2024

Neuro-Inspired Information-Theoretic Hierarchical Perception for Multimodal Learning

Xiongye Xiao, Gengshuo Liu, Gaurav Gupta +6

Integrating and processing information from various sources or modalities are critical for obtaining a comprehensive and accurate perception of the real world in autonomous systems…

cs.LG2025

ClimateLLM: Efficient Weather Forecasting via Frequency-Aware Large Language Models

Shixuan Li, Wei Yang, Peiyu Zhang +6

Weather forecasting is crucial for public safety, disaster prevention and mitigation, agricultural production, and energy management, with global relevance. Although deep learning…

stat.ML2025

Structured Difference-of-Q via Orthogonal Learning

Defu Cao, Angela Zhou

Offline reinforcement learning is important in many settings with available observational data but the inability to deploy new policies online due to safety, cost, and other concer…

cs.LG2021

Spectral Temporal Graph Neural Network for Multivariate Time-series Forecasting

Defu Cao, Yujing Wang, Juanyong Duan +8

Multivariate time-series forecasting plays a crucial role in many real-world applications. It is a challenging problem as one needs to consider both intra-series temporal correlati…

cs.LG2025

An Electrocardiogram Multi-task Benchmark with Comprehensive Evaluations and Insightful Findings

Yuhao Xu, Jiaying Lu, Sirui Ding +3

In the process of patient diagnosis, non-invasive measurements are widely used due to their low risks and quick results. Electrocardiogram (ECG), as a non-invasive method to collec…

cs.AI2024

An Examination on the Effectiveness of Divide-and-Conquer Prompting in Large Language Models

Yizhou Zhang, Lun Du, Defu Cao +2

Foundation models, such as Large language Models (LLMs), have attracted significant amount of interest due to their large number of applications. However, when handling tasks invol…

cs.CL2026

Speaking Numbers to LLMs: Multi-Wavelet Number Embeddings for Time Series Forecasting

Defu Cao, Zijie Lei, Muyan Weng +2

Large language models (LLMs) are attractive for context-aware time series forecasting because they can integrate heterogeneous textual signals, yet their discrete, language-oriente…