Zhongkai Xue
Zhongkai Xue
θ–›δΈ­ε‡―
Shenzhen, China | email | scholar | github | twitter | blog
Carve on every tree the fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she...

Introduction

πŸ‘‹ Nice to meet you! I am a final-year undergraduate student at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CUHK-SZ), where I work with Prof. Tianshu Yu and Xinjian Zhao. Currently, I also intern at ByteDance. Looking ahead, I will be joining the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CASIA) as a PhD student supervised by Prof. Liang Wang.

πŸ’¬ Happy to discuss research ideas and potential collaborations!

Education

πŸŽ“ PhD Student in Computer Science @ Institue of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Sep 2026 –                 
πŸŽ“ Exchange Student in Math & Statistics @ University of Oxford, St Hilda's College
Oct 2024 – Mar 2025
πŸŽ“ Bachelor in Financial Engineering @ The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen
Sep 2022 –  Present  

Selected Publications

Political-LLM
πŸ“„ When Vision Meets Graphs: A Survey on Graph Reasoning and Learning
TechRxiv ’25 β€” Xinjian Zhao, Wei Pang, Zhixuan Yu, Xiangru Jian, Xiaozhuang Song, Yaoyao Xu, Zhongkai Xue , Dingshuo Chen, Shu Wu, Philip Torr, Tianshu Yu.
Abstract: We survey recent advances at the intersection of vision and graph learning, highlighting how visual representations can complement symbolic graph reasoning. Based on existing work into three major threads (vision for graph reasoning, vision for graph learning, and scientific graphs), we delve into a unified taxonomy and outline future directions toward more effective graph understanding.
[techrxiv]
VIS-GNN
πŸ“„ The Underappreciated Power of Vision Models for Graph Structural Understanding
NeurIPS '25 β€” Xinjian Zhao*, Wei Pang*, Zhongkai Xue*, Xiangru Jian, Lei Zhang, Yaoyao Xu, Xiaozhuang Song, Shu Wu, Tianshu Yu.
Abstract: We conduct a systematic analysis that uncovers how visual perception and message‑passing offer complementary strengths in graph understanding, and introduce a novel benchmark to showcase these insights. Our findings reveal that vision models can significantly enhance graph structural understanding, outperforming traditional GNNs in various tasks.
[arxiv] [code]
MJ-VIDEO
πŸ“„ MJ-VIDEO: Fine-Grained Benchmarking and Rewarding Video Preferences in Video Generation
NeurIPS Spotlight '25 β€” Haibo Tong, Zhaoyang Wang, Zhaorun Chen, Haonian Ji, Shi Qiu, Siwei Han, Kexin Geng, Zhongkai Xue , Yiyang Zhou, Peng Xia, Mingyu Ding, Rafael Rafailov, Chelsea Finn, Huaxiu Yao.
Abstract: We present MJ-VIDEO, a Mixture-of-Experts reward model for fine-grained video preference evaluation, which is built upon MJ-BENCH-VIDEO, a large-scale benchmark covering alignment, safety, coherence, and bias. Our model achieves significant improvements in preference judgment and enhances alignment in video generation.
[arxiv] [code] [site]
Political-LLM
πŸ“„ Political-LLM: Large Language Models in Political Science
TMLR ’25 β€” Lincan Li, Jiaqi Li, Catherine Chen, Fred Gui, Hongjia Yang, Chenxiao Yu, Zhengguang Wang, Jianing Cai, Junlong Aaron Zhou, Bolin Shen, Alex Qian, Zhongkai Xue ... Yue Zhao, Yushun Dong et al.
Abstract: We propose Political-LLM, a framework that bridges large language models with political science. It provides a dual-perspective taxonomy, political tasks and computational methods, while outlining key challenges and future directions, aiming to guide ethical and effective AI use in political research.
[arxiv] [code] [site]

* indicates equal contribution.

Research Experience

πŸ”¬ Visiting Research Assistant @ Graph and Geometric Learning Lab, Yale University
Apr 2025 – Aug 2025
Jan 2025 –  Present  

Industry Experience

πŸ’Ό AIGC Research Intern @ ByteDance Shenzhen Office
Nov 2025 –  Present  
πŸ’Ό Quantitative Research Intern @ Jupiter Investment
Jun 2024 – Oct 2024

Miscellaneous

🧐 Service: I served as a reviewer for ACL Rolling Review (ARR) '25.
πŸ‘¨β€πŸ« Teaching: I served as a TA for Financial Management, Intro to AI Programming and Intro to C++ at CUHK-SZ.