Hi, thank you for visiting. I am a researcher and an associate professor in Osaka University. My research interests include web mining, social computing, data mining, machine learning, and latent variable models. Particularly, I am currently working on 1) user intent disentanglement in e-commerce platforms, a branch of recommendation system research, 2) political information modeling in social media data.

I obtained my PhD in computer science from the University of Adelaide in 2016, supervised by Dr. Claudia Szabo and Prof. Michael Sheng. Before joining Osaka University, I worked as a postdoc in Nanyang Technological University and Kyoto University. I publish my research in prestigious journals and conferences, such as ACM TKDD, ACM TIST, ACM TWEB, IEEE TCSS, KAIS, KBS, Information Systems, WWWJ, ACM SIGIR, ECIR, PAKDD, ASONAM, and WISE. I won the best paper award in KSEM 2021. I have served as program committee member in conferences such as CIKM and ICDM.

I recently received an interview from Global Outlook, The University of Osaka, about my research vision and living in Osaka. You can check the article.

Short Biography

2024 - Now: Associate Professor in Osaka University, Japan
2021 - 2024: Specially Appointed Lecturer in Osaka University, Japan
2019 - 2021: Specially Appointed Researcher in Osaka University, Japan
2017 - 2019: Specially Appointed Researcher in Kyoto University, Japan
2016 - 2017: Research fellow in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
2013 - 2016: Ph.D. student in Computer Science, the University of Adelaide, Australia
2011 - 2012: Master student in Computer Science, the University of Adelaide, Australia
2003 - 2010: Bachelor student in Computer Science, University of New South Wales, Australia

Publications

[Full Publication List] [My DBLP Page] [My Google Scholar Page]

Codes and data for some papers are available.

Selected Recent Publications

• Yihong Zhang, Takahiro Hara, and Lina Yao, 2025: Disentangling Political Bias in Social Media Data through Multi-task Embedding Learning. IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems. IEEE. (accepted)
• Shengzhe Jiao, Yihong Zhang, and Takahiro Hara, 2025: Multi-task Multi-modal Graph Neural Network for Recommender System. Knowledge and Information Systems. Springer. Volume 67(9), pp. 8059–8084.
• Yihong Zhang and Takahiro Hara, 2025: Multi-role Social Behavior Modeling in Content-free News Recommendation. World Wide Web. Springer. Volume 28(3), pp. 33:1-20.
• Yihong Zhang and Takahiro Hara, 2025: Modeling Social Behavior in Collaborative Filtering. Proceedings of the 48th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval SIGIR 2025, Padua, Italy, pp.1954-1963.
• Yihong Zhang and Takahiro Hara, 2025: Extracting Political Interest Model from Interaction Data Based on Novel Word-level Bias Assignment. ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology. Voume 16(1), pp. 18:1-21.
• Yihong Zhang, Masumi Shirakawa, and Takahiro Hara, 2024: Word-Level Political Sentiments Inferred from Social Media and Application in Recommendation Diversification. ACM Transactions on the Web. Volume 19(1), pp. 4:1-26.
• Xiu Susie Fang, Haiyan Zhuo, Quan Z. Sheng, Yihong Zhang, Tiancheng Zhu, Xinyang Du, and Guohao Sun, 2024: Truth Discovery in Social Sensing Based on Propagation Pattern and Multi-Modal Semantic Consistency Analysis. Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Advanced Data Mining and Applications ADMA 2024, Sydney, Australia, pp. 63-78.
• Yihong Zhang and Takahiro Hara, 2024: Event Embedding Learning from Social Media Using Graph Topic Model Autoencoder. Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining ASONAM 2024, Calabria, Italy, pp. 54-64 [code and data]
• Zhi Li, Daichi Amagata, Yihong Zhang, Takahiro Hara, Shuichiro Haruta, Kei Yonekawa and Mori Kurokawa, 2024: Mutual Information-based Preference Disentangling and Transferring for Non-overlapped Multi-target Cross-domain Recommendations. Proceedings of the 47th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval SIGIR 2024, Washington D.C., USA, pp. 2124-2133
• Yihong Zhang and Takahiro Hara, 2024: Joint Knowledge Graph Approach for Event Participant Prediction with Social Media Retweeting. Knowledge and Information Systems. Springer. Volume 66(3), pp. 2115-2133.
• Panote Siriaraya, Yihong Zhang, Péter Jeszenszky, Yukiko Kawai, and Adam Jatowt, 2023: A City-Wide Examination of Fine-Grained Human Emotions through Social Media Analysis. PlOS ONE. PLOS. Volume 18(2), pp. e0279749.
• Yihong Zhang, Xiu Susie Fang, and Takahiro Hara, 2023: Evolving Social Media Background Representation with Frequency Weights and Co-occurrence Graphs. ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data. ACM. Volume 17(7), pp. 95:1-95:17.
• Yihong Zhang and Takahiro Hara, 2023: Explainable Integration of Social Media Background in a Dynamic Neural Recommender. ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data. ACM. Volume 17(3), pp. 40:1-40:14.
• Yue Zhao, Yihong Zhang, Daichi Amagata, and Takahiro Hara, 2023: POI Recommendation by Learning Short-, Long- and Mid-Term Preferences through GNN. Proceedings of the 24th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Data Management MDM’23, Singapore, pp. 1-10.
• Zhi Li, Daichi Amagata, Yihong Zhang, Takuya Maekawa, Takahiro Hara, Kei Yonekawa, and Mori Kurokawa, 2022: HML4Rec: Hierarchical Meta-Learning for Cold-Start Recommendation in Flash Sale E-commerce. Knowledge-Based Systems. Elsevier. Volume 255, pp. 109674.
• Yihong Zhang, Masumi Shirakawa, and Takahiro Hara, 2021: An Automatic Method for Understanding Political Polarization through Social Media. Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Knowledge Science, Engineering and Management KSEM 2021, Virtual Conference, pp. 52-63. (best paper winner)
• Panote Siriaraya, Yuanyuan Wang, Yihong Zhang, Shoko Wakamiya, Péter Jeszenszky, Yukiko Kawai, Adam Jatowt, 2020: Beyond the Shortest Route: A Survey on Quality-Aware Route Navigation for Pedestrians. IEEE Access. IEEE. Volume 8, pp. 135569-135590.
• Yihong Zhang, Panote Siriaraya, Yukiko Kawai, and Adam Jatowt, 2020: Predicting Time and Location of Future Crimes with Recommendation Methods. Knowledge-Based Systems. Elsevier. Volume 210, pp. 106503.
• Yihong Zhang, Panote Siriaraya, Yukiko Kawai, and Adam Jatowt, 2020: Automatic Latent Street Type Discovery from Web Open Data. Information Systems. Elsevier. Volume 92, pp. 101536. [pdf] [code and data]
• Yihong Zhang, Panote Siriaraya, Yukiko Kawai, and Adam Jatowt, 2020: Analysis of Street Crime Predictors in Web Open Data. Journal of Intelligent Information Systems. Springer. Volume 55(3), pp. 535-559.
• Yihong Zhang and Adam Jatowt, 2019: Image Tweet Popularity Prediction with Convolutional Neural Network. Proceedings of the 41st European Conference on Information Retrieval ECIR'19, Cologne, Germany, pp. 803-809.
• Yihong Zhang, Claudia Szabo, Quan Z. Sheng, and Xiu Susie Fang, 2018: SNAF: An Effective Location Inference and Event Monitoring System for Twitter. World Wide Web. Springer. Volume 21(2), 311-343.
• Yihong Zhang, Claudia Szabo, Quan Z. Sheng, Wei Emma Zhang and Yongrui Qin, 2017: Identifying Domains and Concepts in Short Texts via Partial Taxonomy and Unlabeled Data. Proceedings of The 29th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering CAiSE'17, Essen, Germany, pp. 127-143.
• Yihong Zhang, Claudia Szabo, and Quan Z. Sheng, 2016: Improved Object and Event Monitoring on Twitter Through Lexical Analysis and User Profiling. Proceedings of The 17th International Conference on Web Information Systems Engineering WISE'16 Part II, Shanghai, China, pp.19-34. (best paper candidate)
• Cheng Chang, Yihong Zhang, Claudia Szabo and Quan Z. Sheng, 2016: Extreme User and Political Rumor Detection on Twitter. Proceedings of The 12th International Conference on Advanced Data Mining and Applications ADMA'16, Gold Coast, Australia, pp. 751-763.
• Yihong Zhang, Claudia Szabo, and Quan Z. Sheng, 2015: Sense and Focus: Towards Effective Location Inference and Event Detection on Twitter. Proceedings of The 16th International Conference on Web Information Systems Engineering WISE'15 Part I, Miami, USA, pp. 463-477.
• Yihong Zhang, Claudia Szabo, and Quan Z. Sheng, 2014: Cleaning Environmental Sensing Data Streams based on Individual Sensor Reliability. Proceedings of The 15th International Conference on Web Information Systems Engineering WISE'14, Part II, Thessaloniki, Greece, pp. 405-414.

Professional Services

[Full List of Professional Services]

Conference Organization

• 2026 The 48th European Conference on Information Retrieval, PC member
• 2025 The 25th IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, PC member
• 2025 The 34th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, PC member
• 2025 The 2025 IEEE International Conference on Big Data, PC member
• 2025 The 19th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems, PC member
• 2024 The 16th International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, PC member
• 2024 The 2024 IEEE International Conference on Big Data, PC member
• 2024 The 33rd ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, PC member

Journal Reviewer

• IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (IEEE)
• ACM Transactions on Information Systems (ACM)
• Knowledge-Based Systems (Elsevier)
• Knowledge and Information Systems (Springer)
• World Wide Web (Springer)

Grants

2024-2025 Osaka University Graduate School of Information Science and Technology Start-up Program Grant JPY 500K for project Social Behavior Modeling and Governance in Online Shopping Platforms

2022-2023 Osaka University Graduate School of Information Science and Technology Start-up Program Grant JPY 500K for project Analyzing Social Media for Modeling Human Partition in Emerging Events

Personal

Hobbies: reading novel (especially modern Japanese novels), hiking, playing guitar and ukulele