Research

Conference Proceedings

1. Who Gets Credit or Blame? Attributing Accountability in Modern AI Systems
   Shichang Zhang, Hongzhe Du, Jiaqi W. Ma, Himabindu Lakkaraju
   ICML 2026 [PDF]
   

2. Explainability Research Must Prioritize Foundations over Ad-hoc Methods
   Michal Moshkovitz, Suraj Srinivas, Lesia Semenova, Nave Frost, Cyrus Rashtchian, Valentyn Boreiko, Shichang Zhang, Himabindu Lakkaraju, Cynthia Rudin, Jennifer Wortman Vaughan
   ICML 2026 [PDF]
   

3. How Post-Training Reshapes LLMs: A Mechanistic View on Knowledge, Truthfulness, Refusal, and Confidence
   Hongzhe Du*, Weikai Li*, Min Cai, Karim Saraipour, Zimin Zhang, Himabindu Lakkaraju, Yizhou Sun, Shichang Zhang (*equal contribution)
   COLM 2025 (NENLP Outstanding Paper) [PDF] [Code] [slides]
   

4. Automated Molecular Concept Generation and Labeling with Large Language Models
   Zimin Zhang*, Qianli Wu*, Botao Xia*, Fang Sun, Ziniu Hu, Yizhou Sun, Shichang Zhang (*equal contribution)
   COLING 2025 [PDF] [Code]
   

5. Weak Models Can be Good Teachers: A Case Study on Link Prediction with MLPs
   Zongyue Qin, Shichang Zhang, Mingxuan Ju, Tong Zhao, Neil Shah, Yizhou Sun
   LoG 2025 [PDF]
   

6. FUSE: Measure-Theoretic Compact Fuzzy Set Representation for Taxonomy Expansion
   Fred Xu, Song Jiang, Zijie Huang, Xiao Luo, Shichang Zhang, Yuanzhou Chen, Yizhou Sun
   ACL Findings 2024 [PDF] [Code]
   

7. Predicting and Interpreting Energy Barriers of Metallic Glasses with Graph Neural Networks
   Haoyu Li*, Shichang Zhang*, Longwen Tang, Mathieu Bauchy, Yizhou Sun (*equal contribution)
   ICML 2024 [PDF] [Code]
   

8. SciBench: Evaluating College-Level Scientific Problem-Solving Abilities of Large Language Models
   Xiaoxuan Wang*, Ziniu Hu*, Pan Lu*, Yanqiao Zhu*, Jieyu Zhang, Satyen Subramaniam, Arjun R Loomba, Shichang Zhang, Yizhou Sun, Wei Wang (*equal contribution)
   ICML 2024 [PDF] [Code]
   

9. Laplacian Score Benefit Adaptive Filter Selection for Graph Neural Networks
   Yewen Wang, Shichang Zhang, Junghoo Cho, Yizhou Sun
   SDM 2024 [PDF]
   

10. Linkless Link Prediction via Relational Distillation
    Zhichun Guo, William Shiao, Shichang Zhang, Yozen Liu, Nitesh Chawla, Neil Shah, Tong Zhao
    ICML 2023 [PDF] [Code]
    

11. PaGE-Link: Graph Neural Network Explanation for Heterogeneous Link Prediction
    Shichang Zhang, Jiani Zhang, Xiang Song, Soji Adeshina, Da Zheng, Christos Faloutsos, Yizhou Sun
    WWW 2023 [PDF] [Code]
    

12. GStarX: Explaining Graph Neural Networks with Structure-Aware Cooperative Games
    Shichang Zhang, Neil Shah, Yozen Liu, Yizhou Sun
    NeurIPS 2022 [PDF] [Code]
    

13. Graph-less Neural Networks: Teaching Old MLPs New Tricks via Distillation
    Shichang Zhang, Yozen Liu, Yizhou Sun, Neil Shah
    ICLR 2022 [PDF] [Code]
    

14. Graph Condensation for Graph Neural Networks
    Wei Jin, Lingxiao Zhao, Shichang Zhang, Yozen Liu, Jiliang Tang, Neil Shah
    ICLR 2022 [PDF] [Code]
    

Journal Articles

1. Efficient Ensembles Improve Training Data Attribution
   Junwei Deng*, Ting-Wei Li*, Shichang Zhang, Jiaqi Ma (*equal contribution)
   TMLR 2026 [PDF] [Code]
   

2. A Survey on Graph Neural Network Acceleration: Algorithms, Systems, and Customized Hardware
   Shichang Zhang, Atefeh Sohrabizadeh, Cheng Wan, Zijie Huang, Ziniu Hu, Yewen Wang, Yingyan (Celine) Lin, Jason Cong, Yizhou Sun
   CSUR 2026 [PDF]
   

3. An Explainable AI Approach using Graph Learning to Predict ICU Length of Stay
   Tianjian Guo, Indranil Bardhan, Ying Ding, Shichang Zhang
   ISR Oct. 2024 [PDF]
   

4. Motif-driven Contrastive Learning of Graph Representations
   Shichang Zhang*, Ziniu Hu*, Arjun Subramonian, Yizhou Sun (*equal contribution)
   TKDE Feb. 2024 [PDF]
   

Workshop Papers and Preprints

1. User Persona Subspaces Modulate Refusal Behavior in Language Models
   Yan Zhou, Shichang Zhang, Zidi Xiong, Himabindu Lakkaraju
   MechInterp@ICML 2026 [PDF]
   

2. How Faithful Is Trajectory-Based Data Attribution? Error Sources, Remedies, and Practical Guidelines
   Junwei Deng, Pingbang Hu, Suliang Jin, Hao Lu, Jiachen T. Wang, Shichang Zhang, Jiaqi W. Ma
   Preprint [PDF]
   

3. Towards Unified Attribution in Explainable AI, Data-Centric AI, and Mechanistic Interpretability
   Shichang Zhang, Tessa Han, Usha Bhalla, Himabindu Lakkaraju
   Preprint [PDF]
   

4. Generalized Group Data Attribution
   Dan Ley, Shichang Zhang, Suraj Srinivas, Gili Rusak, Himabindu Lakkaraju
   Preprint [PDF]
   

5. Computational Copyright: Towards A Royalty Model for Music Generative AI
   Junwei Deng, Xirui Jiang, Shiyuan Zhang, Shichang Zhang, Himabindu Lakkaraju, Ruijiang Gao, Chris Donahue, Jiaqi W. Ma
   Preprint [PDF]
   

6. From Indirect Object Identification to Syllogisms: Exploring Binary Mechanisms in Transformer Circuits
   Karim Saraipour, Shichang Zhang
   MechInterp@NeurIPS, 2025 [PDF]
   

7. Hierarchical Compression of Text-Rich Graphs via Large Language Models
   Shichang Zhang, Da Zheng, Jiani Zhang, Qi Zhu, Xiang Song, Soji Adeshina, Christos Faloutsos, George Karypis, Yizhou Sun
   Preprint [PDF]
   

8. Self-Control of LLM Behaviors by Compressing Suffix Gradient into Prefix Controller
   Min Cai, Yuchen Zhang, Shichang Zhang, Fan Yin, Difan Zou, Yisong Yue, Ziniu Hu
   MechInterp@ICML 2024 [PDF] [Code] [website]
   

9. Parameter-Efficient Tuning Large Language Models for Graph Representation Learning
   Qi Zhu, Da Zheng, Xiang Song, Shichang Zhang, Bowen Jin, Yizhou Sun, George Karypis
   Preprint [PDF]