Yihong Tang
Logo Ph.D. Student

I'm an interdisciplinary researcher interested in applying data-driven, statistical, and AI methods to build more connected, autonomous, intelligent, and user-centered urban and transportation systems for broad social good.

I will be joining McGill University as a doctoral student under the supervision of Prof. Lijun Sun. Prior to this, I obtained my Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) in Urban Analytics and Smart Cities from HKU, supported by the HKU Postgraduate Scholarship and advised by Zhan Zhao. Before joining HKU, I worked as a full-time research assistant at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University under the supervision of Wei Ma. I received my Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.) degree in Computer Science and Technology from BUPT.

I've just completed my summer research internship at MIT, working with Dingyi Zhuang under the supervision of Jinhua Zhao, Shenhao Wang, and Haris N. Koutsopoulos. Prior to that, I worked with Dajiang Suo as a part-time research assistant at ASU.

I am looking for collaborators and interns interested in AI/ML, MLLMs, and their applications in urban computing and intelligent transportation systems, with the goal of conducting impactful research and publishing in top AI conferences and leading urban and transportation journals. If you are interested in collaborating, please feel free to reach out via email or WeChat. Before contacting me, kindly review this.


Education
  • McGill University
    McGill University
    Ph.D. in Transportation Engineering
    Jan. 2025 - present
  • The University of Hong Kong
    The University of Hong Kong
    M.Phil. in Urban Analytics and Smart Cities
    Sep. 2022 - Jul. 2024
  • Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications
    Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications
    B.Eng. in Computer Science and Technology
    Sep. 2018 - Jul. 2022
Experience
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Summer Research Intern
    Apr. 2024 - Oct. 2024
  • Arizona State University
    Arizona State University
    Research Assistant
    Jul. 2024 - Sep. 2024
  • TuTu. AI, Startup
    TuTu. AI, Startup
    Co-founder & Research Scientist & CIO
    May. 2023 - Feb. 2024
  • The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
    The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
    Research Assistant
    Apr. 2021 - Aug. 2022
  • Xiaomi Corporation
    Xiaomi Corporation
    Recommendation Algorithm Intern
    Jul. 2020 - Sept. 2020
Honors & Awards
  • Best Paper Award, 13th International Workshop on Urban Computing
    Aug., 2024
  • Best Zero to One Award, Alibaba Create@AI Entrepreneur Hackathon Final
    Jan., 2024
  • National Science Foundation Award, CIKM 2022
    Oct., 2022
News
2024
A paper on activity-aware human mobility modeling has been accepted to IEEE TITS.
Dec 19
Our paper, ItiNera, has been accepted to the EMNLP 2024 Industry Track.
Oct 02
Our paper on LLM-driven urban itinerary planning won the Best Paper Award at KDD UrbComp 2024.
Aug 26
Selected Publications (view all )
Activity-aware human mobility prediction with hierarchical graph attention recurrent network
Activity-aware human mobility prediction with hierarchical graph attention recurrent network

Yihong Tang*, Junlin He*, Zhan Zhao# (* equal contribution, # corresponding author)

IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems 2024

Activity-aware human mobility prediction with hierarchical graph attention recurrent network

Yihong Tang*, Junlin He*, Zhan Zhao# (* equal contribution, # corresponding author)

IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems 2024

Sparkle: Mastering Basic Spatial Capabilities in Vision Language Models Elicits Generalization to Composite Spatial Reasoning
Sparkle: Mastering Basic Spatial Capabilities in Vision Language Models Elicits Generalization to Composite Spatial Reasoning

Yihong Tang*, Ao Qu*#, Zhaokai Wang*, Dingyi Zhuang*, Zhaofeng Wu, Wei Ma, Shenhao Wang, Yunhan Zheng, Zhan Zhao, Jinhua Zhao (* equal contribution, # corresponding author)

Under review. 2024

Sparkle: Mastering Basic Spatial Capabilities in Vision Language Models Elicits Generalization to Composite Spatial Reasoning

Yihong Tang*, Ao Qu*#, Zhaokai Wang*, Dingyi Zhuang*, Zhaofeng Wu, Wei Ma, Shenhao Wang, Yunhan Zheng, Zhan Zhao, Jinhua Zhao (* equal contribution, # corresponding author)

Under review. 2024

ItiNera: Integrating Spatial Optimization with Large Language Models for Open-domain Urban Itinerary Planning
ItiNera: Integrating Spatial Optimization with Large Language Models for Open-domain Urban Itinerary Planning

Yihong Tang*, Zhaokai Wang*, Ao Qu*, Yihao Yan*, Zhaofeng Wu, Dingyi Zhuang, Jushi Kai, Kebing Hou, Xiaotong Guo, Jinhua Zhao#, Zhan Zhao#, Wei Ma# (* equal contribution, # corresponding author)

Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) 2024 Industry Track & KDD UrbComp 2024 Best Paper Award

ItiNera: Integrating Spatial Optimization with Large Language Models for Open-domain Urban Itinerary Planning

Yihong Tang*, Zhaokai Wang*, Ao Qu*, Yihao Yan*, Zhaofeng Wu, Dingyi Zhuang, Jushi Kai, Kebing Hou, Xiaotong Guo, Jinhua Zhao#, Zhan Zhao#, Wei Ma# (* equal contribution, # corresponding author)

Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) 2024 Industry Track & KDD UrbComp 2024 Best Paper Award

High and Low Resolution Tradeoffs in Roadside Multimodal Sensing
High and Low Resolution Tradeoffs in Roadside Multimodal Sensing

Shaozu Ding*, Yihong Tang*, Marco De Vincenzi, Dajiang Suo# (* equal contribution, # corresponding author)

Under review. 2024

High and Low Resolution Tradeoffs in Roadside Multimodal Sensing

Shaozu Ding*, Yihong Tang*, Marco De Vincenzi, Dajiang Suo# (* equal contribution, # corresponding author)

Under review. 2024

Domain adversarial spatial-temporal network: A transferable framework for short-term traffic forecasting across cities
Domain adversarial spatial-temporal network: A transferable framework for short-term traffic forecasting across cities

Yihong Tang*, Ao Qu*, Andy HF Chow, William HK Lam, S.C. Wong, Wei Ma*# (* equal contribution, # corresponding author)

Proceedings of the 31st ACM International Conference on Information & Knowledge Management (CIKM) 2022 Oral Presentation

Domain adversarial spatial-temporal network: A transferable framework for short-term traffic forecasting across cities

Yihong Tang*, Ao Qu*, Andy HF Chow, William HK Lam, S.C. Wong, Wei Ma*# (* equal contribution, # corresponding author)

Proceedings of the 31st ACM International Conference on Information & Knowledge Management (CIKM) 2022 Oral Presentation

All publications
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