collaborators

6 papers

cs.IR2026

Mult-DPO: Multinomial Direct Preference Optimization for Recommender Systems

Yaochen Zhu, Harald Steck, James McInerney +4

Direct preference optimization (DPO) is a simple and effective alignment strategy for large language models (LLMs) based on pairwise preferences. In recommender systems, however, u…

cs.CL2026

Beyond Continuity: Challenges of Context Switching in Multi-Turn Dialogue with LLMs

Aditya Sinha, Harald Steck, Vito Ostuni +1

Users interacting with Large Language Models (LLMs) in a multi-turn conversation routinely refine their requests or pivot to new topics. LLMs, however, often miss these topic shift…

cs.IR2026

Rank-GRPO: Training LLM-based Conversational Recommender Systems with Reinforcement Learning

Yaochen Zhu, Harald Steck, Dawen Liang +4

Large language models (LLMs) are reshaping the recommender system paradigm by enabling users to express preferences and receive recommendations through conversations. Yet, aligning…

cs.IR2025

Does Weighting Improve Matrix Factorization for Recommender Systems?

Alex Ayoub, Samuel Robertson, Dawen Liang +2

Matrix factorization is a widely used approach for top-N recommendation and collaborative filtering. When implemented on implicit feedback data (such as clicks), a common heuristic…

cs.IR2025

From Reviews to Dialogues: Active Synthesis for Zero-Shot LLM-based Conversational Recommender System

Rohan Surana, Junda Wu, Zhouhang Xie +5

Conversational recommender systems (CRS) typically require extensive domain-specific conversational datasets, yet high costs, privacy concerns, and data-collection challenges sever…

cs.IR2025

Collaborative Retrieval for Large Language Model-based Conversational Recommender Systems

Yaochen Zhu, Chao Wan, Harald Steck +4

Conversational recommender systems (CRS) aim to provide personalized recommendations via interactive dialogues with users. While large language models (LLMs) enhance CRS with their…