Shaobo Cui

Welcome to my homepage! I am Shaobo Cui, founder and PI of the DeepDelta Lab at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and an Assistant Professor in School of Artificial Intelligence.

I founded DeepDelta Lab (Δ Lab) — Make Change (Δ) Happen! — where we develop reliable and science-driven AI across four directions:

• LLMs for Science (medicine & biology)
• Visual and multimodal intelligence
• LLM alignment and safety
• Causal intelligence

Previously, I was a postdoctoral researcher working on the Safe Alignment of LLMs at EPFL, working with Prof. Robert West. I got my PhD degree in Computer and Communication Sciences from EPFL, being supervised by Prof. Boi Faltings, with co-supervision from Prof. Antoine Bosselut, and mentorship by Prof. Michael C. Gastpar.

Note: I no longer update this personal homepage frequently. I now focus more on building my research group, DeepDelta Lab, at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and supporting my students. Please check our lab page for the most recent news and updates: https://deepdeltalab.github.io

PI 介绍 (DeepDelta Lab @ SJTU): 崔少波，上海交通大学人工智能学院长聘教轨道助理教授，博士生导师，国家高层次青年人才。毕业于 EPFL，获计算机与通信科学专业 博士学位，师从国际人工智能与多智能体领域知名学者 Boi Faltings 教授（AAAI Fellow、EuRAI Fellow）。 崔少波博士的研究聚焦于：因果智能、世界模型、大语言模型、AI 在医疗方向的前沿应用等。 代表性荣誉与成果包括：G-Research PhD Prize、德国 DAAD AINet Fellow (AI4Science Track)、阿里巴巴明日之星、NAACL 杰出论文奖、北京市优秀毕业生、清华大学优秀学位论文等。相关技术成果已在冬奥会、阿里云等大规模场景中落地应用。作为第一开发人构建的因果工具累计下载量 超 17 万次。

Selected Publications

* means the student interns I supervise. ⁼ means equal contribution.

Conditional Dichotomy Quantification via Geometric Embedding
Shaobo Cui, Wenqing Liu, Yiyang Feng, Jiawei Zhou, and Boi Faltings
Proceedings of ACL 2025, long paper, oral paper (~2.5% of all papers)
[code], [data], [software: opposite-score]

Uncertainty in Causality: A New Frontier
Shaobo Cui, Luca Mouchel, and Boi Faltings
Proceedings of ACL 2025, long paper
[paper], [code]

Nuance Matters: Probing Epistemic Consistency in Causal Reasoning
Shaobo Cui, Junyou Li, Luca Mouchel, Yiyang Feng, and Boi Faltings
Proceedings of AAAI 2025, long paper
[paper], [code], [data]

The Odyssey of Commonsense Causality: From Foundational Benchmarks to Cutting-Edge Reasoning
Shaobo Cui, Zhijing Jin, Bernhard Schölkopf, and Boi Faltings
Proceedings of EMNLP 2024, long paper
[paper], [code], [data]

Exploring Defeasibility in Causal Reasoning
Shaobo Cui, Lazar Milikic, Yiyang Feng, Mete Ismayilzada, Debjit Paul, Antoine Bosselut, and Boi Faltings
Findings of ACL 2024, long paper
[paper], [code], [data], [software: causal-strength]

Unveiling the Art of Heading Design: A Harmonious Blend of Summarization, Neology, and Algorithm
Shaobo Cui⁼, Yiyang Feng⁼, Yisong Mao, Yifan Hou, and Boi Faltings
Findings of ACL 2024, long paper
[paper], [code], [data], [software: fancy-title]

Context-to-Session Matching: Utilizing Whole Session for Response Selection in Information-Seeking Dialogue Systems
Zhenxin Fu*, Shaobo Cui, Mingyue Shang, Feng Ji, Dongyan Zhao, Haiqing Chen, and Rui Yan
Proceedings of KDD 2020 (Research Track), long paper
[paper], [code], [data]

Query-to-Session Matching: Do NOT Forget History and Future during Response Selection for Multi-Turn Dialogue Systems
Zhenxin Fu*, Shaobo Cui, Feng Ji, Ji Zhang, Haiqing Chen, Dongyan Zhao, and Rui Yan
Proceedings of the 29th ACM International Conference on Information & Knowledge Management (CIKM), 2020
[paper], [code], [data]

Predict-then-Decide: A Predictive Approach for Wait-or-Answer Task in Dialogue Systems
Zehao Lin*, Shaobo Cui, Guodun Li, Xiaoming Kang, Feng Ji, Fenglin Li, Zhongzhou Zhao, Haiqing Chen, and Yin Zhang
IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, 2021
[paper]

Selected Patents 📑

I have contributed to patents in generative AI and HCI systems. Highlights include:

• Shaobo Cui, Rongzhong Lian, Di Jiang, Jingzhou He. 2018. “Training method and device as well as computer equipment and readable storage medium.” CN108846124B, filed on June 29, 2018, and granted on May 17, 2022.
• Shaobo Cui, Feng Ji, Dahuai Tang, Xiaoming Kang. 2020. “Dialogue system testing method and device and statement rewriting method.” CN113742461B, filed on May 28, 2020, and granted on January 10, 2025.
• Xiaoming Kang, Shaobo Cui, Feng Ji. 2020. “A man-machine interaction dialogue method and device.” CN113901181A, filed on July 6, 2020. Patent Pending.
• Zhenxin Fu, Shaobo Cui, Feng Ji, Rui Yan, Ji Zhang, Haiqing Chen. 2020. “Dialogue method and system.” CN114036267A, filed on July 21, 2020. Patent Pending.
• Shaobo Cui, Feng Ji, Zehao Lin, Zhongzhou Zhao, Haiqing Chen, Yin Zhang. 2020. “Dialogue model training method, dialogue method and dialogue device.” CN114254086A, filed on September 25, 2020, and granted on November 28, 2025.
• Shaobo Cui, Xinxing Zu, Xintong Bao, Zhongzhou Zhao, Ji Zhang, Haiqing Chen. 2021. “A question-answer pair generation method, device, electronic device, and computer storage medium” CN115114416A, filed on March 23, 2021. Patent Pending.
• Shaobo Cui, Zhenxin Fu, Feng Ji, Rui Yan, Zhongzhou Zhao, Haiqing Chen. 2021. “Data processing method, device, electronic equipment and computer storage medium” CN115129831A, filed on March 29, 2021. Patent Pending.
• Shaobo Cui, Dahuai Tang, Zhongzhou Zhao, Ji Zhang, Haiqing Chen. 2021. “Inquiry statement rewriting method and device.” CN113673256B, filed on July 21, 2021 and granted on August 27, 2024.

Selected Softwares 📑

Please feel free to let me know if you find any bugs. There will be some vouchers for these bug-reporting efforts.

• fancy-title: Python package for evaluating and optimizing titles in academia, SEO, and more.
• causal-strength: Python package for measuring and visualizing causal strength.
• opposite-score: Python package for measuring “opposite-ness” between text pairs via geometric embeddings.

For Prospective Students

I have reserved time slots to supervise master students for thesis and semester projects. Undergraduate and master’s students interested in research projects are encouraged to read this page for more information. Feel free to drop me an email via myfirstname.mylastname[at]epfl.ch