Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
wuqitian [AT] mit.edu
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I am currently a postdoctoral fellow of Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, working with Caroline Uhler. Prior to this, I finished the PhD in Computer Science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), supervised by Junchi Yan and worked with David Wipf, Hongyuan Zha and Michael Bronstein. Before that, I achieved the Bachelor (Microelectronics, minor in Mathematics) and Master (Computer Science) degrees from SJTU, and worked as research intern at Tencent WeChat, Amazon Web Service and BioMap AI Lab.
My general research interest revolves around scalable and generalizable machine learning. On the methodology side, I am currently focusing on empowering foundation models with multi-modal reasoning capabilities, scaling up computational backbones (e.g., Transformers) to large-scale data, and enhancing the generalization and reliability of AI systems. On the applidation side, I explore applying these methods to critical challenges in a broad range of real applications, such as scientific discovery and recommender systems.
I am the recipients of Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship, Baidu PhD Fellowship and Rising Star in Artificial Intelligence.
My current research aims at improving and broadening the capabilities of AI models, especially in terms of the scalability and generalizablity, via developing theoretically principled and practically useful methodology that sheds insights on ML algorithmic designs and facilitates problem solving in real applications.
The most recent works can be found on Google Scholar.
DIFFormer: Scalable (Graph) Transformers Induced by Energy Constrained Diffusion
Qitian Wu, Chenxiao Yang, Wentao Zhao, Yixuan He, David Wipf and Junchi Yan
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2023 oral presentation, ranking among top 0.5%
Summary: We propose a geometric diffusion framework with energy constraints and show its solution aligns with widely used attention networks, upon which we propose diffusion-based Transformers.
NodeFormer: A Scalable Graph Structure Learning Transformer for Node Classification
Qitian Wu, Wentao Zhao, Zenan Li, David Wipf and Junchi Yan
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2022 spotlight presentation
Summary: We propose a scalable graph Transformer with efficient all-pair message passing achieved in O(N) complexity. The global attention over 2M nodes only requires 4GB memory.
Handling Distribution Shifts on Graphs: An Invariance Perspective
Qitian Wu, Hengrui Zhang, Junchi Yan and David Wipf
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2022
Summary: We formulate out-of-distribution generalization on graphs and discuss how to leverage (causal) invariance principle for handling graph-based distribution shifts.
Transformers from Diffusion: A Unified Framework for Neural Message Passing
Qitian Wu, David Wipf and Junchi Yan
Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR) 2025 extended from DIFFormer (ICLR 2023)
Supercharging Graph Transformers with Advective Diffusion
Qitian Wu, Chenxiao Yang, Kaipeng Zeng and Michael Bronstein
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2025
DiffPuter: Empowering Diffusion Models for Missing Data Imputation
Hengrui Zhang, Liancheng Fang, Qitian Wu and Philip S Yu
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2025 spotlight presentation
Learning Divergence Fields for Shift-Robust Message Passing
Qitian Wu, Fan Nie, Chenxiao Yang and Junchi Yan
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2024
How Graph Neural Networks Learn: Lessons from Training Dynamics
Chenxiao Yang, Qitian Wu, David Wipf, Ruoyu Sun and Junchi Yan
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2024
Graph Out-of-Distribution Generalization via Causal Intervention
Qitian Wu, Fan Nie, Chenxiao Yang, Tianyi Bao and Junchi Yan
The Web Conference (WWW) 2024 oral presentation
SGFormer: Simplifying and Empowering Transformers for Large-Graph Representations
Qitian Wu, Wentao Zhao, Chenxiao Yang, Hengrui Zhang, Fan Nie, Haitian Jiang, Yatao Bian and Junchi Yan
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2023
DIFFormer: Scalable (Graph) Transformers Induced by Energy Constrained Diffusion
Qitian Wu, Chenxiao Yang, Wentao Zhao, Yixuan He, David Wipf and Junchi Yan
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2023 oral presentation, ranking among top 0.5%
Energy-based Out-of-Distribution Detection for Graph Neural Networks
Qitian Wu, Yiting Chen, Chenxiao Yang, and Junchi Yan
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2023
Graph Neural Networks are Inherently Good Generalizers: Insights by Bridging GNNs and Multi-Layer Perceptrons
Chenxiao Yang, Qitian Wu, Jiahua Wang and Junchi Yan
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2023
NodeFormer: A Scalable Graph Structure Learning Transformer for Node Classification
Qitian Wu, Wentao Zhao, Zenan Li, David Wipf and Junchi Yan
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2022 spotlight presentation
Learning Substructure Invariance for Out-of-Distribution Molecular Representations
Nianzu Yang, Kaipeng Zeng, Qitian Wu, Xiaosong Jia and Junchi Yan
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2022 spotlight presentation
Geometric Knowledge Distillation: Topology Compression for Graph Neural Networks
Chenxiao Yang, Qitian Wu and Junchi Yan
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2022
Towards Out-of-Distribution Sequential Event Prediction: A Causal Treatment
Chenxiao Yang, Qitian Wu, Qingsong Wen, Zhiqiang Zhou, Liang Sun and Junchi Yan
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2022
Handling Distribution Shifts on Graphs: An Invariance Perspective
Qitian Wu, Hengrui Zhang, Junchi Yan and David Wipf
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2022
Towards Open-World Recommendation: An Inductive Model-based Collaborative Filtering Approach
Qitian Wu, Hengrui Zhang, Xiaofeng Gao, Junchi Yan and Hongyuan Zha
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2021 spotlight presentation
Towards Open-World Feature Extrapolation: An Inductive Graph Learning Approach
Qitian Wu, Chenxiao Yang and Junchi Yan
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2021
From Canonical Correlation Analysis to Self-supervised Graph Neural Networks
Hengrui Zhang, Qitian Wu, Junchi Yan, David Wipf and Philip S. Yu
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2021
Bridging Explicit and Implicit Deep Generative Models via Neural Stein Estimators
Qitian Wu, Han Gao and Hongyuan Zha
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2021
Dual Graph Attention Networks for Deep Latent Representation of Multifaceted Social Effects in Recommender Systems
Qitian Wu, Hengrui Zhang, Xiaofeng Gao, Peng He, Paul Weng, Han Gao and Guihai Chen
The Web Conference (WWW) 2019 long oral representation
Transformers from Diffusion: A Unified Framework for Neural Message Passing
Qitian Wu, David Wipf and Junchi Yan
Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR) 2025 extended from DIFFormer (ICLR 2023)
Supercharging Graph Transformers with Advective Diffusion
Qitian Wu, Chenxiao Yang, Kaipeng Zeng and Michael Bronstein
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2025
Generative Modeling Reinvents Supervised Learning: Label Repurposing with Predictive Consistency Learning
Yang Li, Jiale Ma, Yebin Yang, Qitian Wu, Hongyuan Zha and Junchi Yan
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2025
TabNAT: A Continuous-Discrete Joint Generative Framework for Tabular Data
Hengrui Zhang, Liancheng Fang, Qitian Wu and Philip S Yu
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2025
DiffPuter: Empowering Diffusion Models for Missing Data Imputation
Hengrui Zhang, Liancheng Fang, Qitian Wu and Philip S Yu
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2025 spotlight presentation
SLMRec: Distilling Large Language Models into Small for Sequential Recommendation
Wujiang Xu, Qitian Wu, Zujie Liang, Jiaojiao Han, Xuying Ning, Yunxiao Shi, Wenfang Lin and Yongfeng Zhang
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2025
Regularizing Energy among Training Samples for Out-of-Distribution Generalization
Yiting Chen, Qitian Wu and Junchi Yan
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2025
Learning Divergence Fields for Shift-Robust Message Passing
Qitian Wu, Fan Nie, Chenxiao Yang and Junchi Yan
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2024
How Graph Neural Networks Learn: Lessons from Training Dynamics
Chenxiao Yang, Qitian Wu, David Wipf, Ruoyu Sun and Junchi Yan
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2024
Graph Out-of-Distribution Detection Goes Neighborhood Shaping
Tianyi Bao, Qitian Wu, Zetian Jiang, Yiting Chen, Jiawei Sun and Junchi Yan
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2024
Graph Out-of-Distribution Generalization via Causal Intervention
Qitian Wu, Fan Nie, Chenxiao Yang, Tianyi Bao and Junchi Yan
The Web Conference (WWW) 2024 oral presentation
Rethinking Cross-Domain Sequential Recommendation Under Open-World Assumptions
Wujiang Xu, Qitian Wu, Runzhong Wang, Mingming Ha, Qiongxu Ma, Linxun Chen, Bing Han and Junchi Yan
The Web Conference (WWW) 2024
SGFormer: Simplifying and Empowering Transformers for Large-Graph Representations
Qitian Wu, Wentao Zhao, Chenxiao Yang, Hengrui Zhang, Fan Nie, Haitian Jiang, Yatao Bian and Junchi Yan
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2023
Unleashing the Power of Graph Data Augmentation on Covariate Distribution Shift
Yongduo Sui, Qitian Wu, Jiancan Wu, Qing Cui, Longfei Li, Jun Zhou, Xiang Wang, Xiangnan He
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2023
GraphGlow: Universal and Genralizable Structure Learning for Graph Neural Networks
Wentao Zhao, Qitian Wu, Chenxiao Yang and Junchi Yan
ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) 2023
MoleRec: Combinatorial Drug Recommendation with SubstructureAware Molecular Representation Learning
Nianzu Yang, Kaipeng Zeng, Qitian Wu, Junchi Yan
The Web Conference (WWW) 2023
DIFFormer: Scalable (Graph) Transformers Induced by Energy Constrained Diffusion
Qitian Wu, Chenxiao Yang, Wentao Zhao, Yixuan He, David Wipf and Junchi Yan
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2023 oral presentation, ranking among top 0.5%
Energy-based Out-of-Distribution Detection for Graph Neural Networks
Qitian Wu, Yiting Chen, Chenxiao Yang, and Junchi Yan
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2023
Graph Neural Networks are Inherently Good Generalizers: Insights by Bridging GNNs and Multi-Layer Perceptrons
Chenxiao Yang, Qitian Wu, Jiahua Wang and Junchi Yan
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2023
NodeFormer: A Scalable Graph Structure Learning Transformer for Node Classification
Qitian Wu, Wentao Zhao, Zenan Li, David Wipf and Junchi Yan
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2022 spotlight presentation
Learning Substructure Invariance for Out-of-Distribution Molecular Representations
Nianzu Yang, Kaipeng Zeng, Qitian Wu, Xiaosong Jia and Junchi Yan
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2022 spotlight presentation
Geometric Knowledge Distillation: Topology Compression for Graph Neural Networks
Chenxiao Yang, Qitian Wu and Junchi Yan
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2022
Towards Out-of-Distribution Sequential Event Prediction: A Causal Treatment
Chenxiao Yang, Qitian Wu, Qingsong Wen, Zhiqiang Zhou, Liang Sun and Junchi Yan
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2022
GraphDE: A Generative Framework for Debiased Learning and Out-of-Distribution Detection on Graphs
Zenan Li, Qitian Wu, Fan Nie and Junchi Yan
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2022
Variational Inference for Training Graph Neural Networks in Low-Data Regime through Joint Structure-Label Estimation
Danning Lao, Xinyu Yang, Qitian Wu, Junchi Yan
ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD) 2022
DICE: Domain-attack Invariant Causal Learning for Improved Data Privacy Protection and Adversarial Robustness
Qibing Ren, Yiting Chen, Yichuan Mo, Qitian Wu, Junchi Yan
ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD) 2022
Handling Distribution Shifts on Graphs: An Invariance Perspective
Qitian Wu, Hengrui Zhang, Junchi Yan and David Wipf
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2022
Trading Hard Negatives and True Negatives: A Debiased Contrastive Collaborative Filtering Approach
Chenxiao Yang, Qitian Wu, Jipeng Jin, Junwei Pan, Xiaofeng Gao, and Guihai Chen
International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) 2022
ScaleGCN: Efficient and Effective Graph Convolution via Channel-Wise Scale Transformation
Tianqi Zhang, Qitian Wu, Junchi Yan, Yunan Zhao and Bing Han
IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (TNNLS) 2022
Towards Open-World Recommendation: An Inductive Model-based Collaborative Filtering Approach
Qitian Wu, Hengrui Zhang, Xiaofeng Gao, Junchi Yan and Hongyuan Zha
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2021 spotlight presentation
Towards Open-World Feature Extrapolation: An Inductive Graph Learning Approach
Qitian Wu, Chenxiao Yang and Junchi Yan
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2021
From Canonical Correlation Analysis to Self-supervised Graph Neural Networks
Hengrui Zhang, Qitian Wu, Junchi Yan, David Wipf and Philip S. Yu
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2021
Bridging Explicit and Implicit Deep Generative Models via Neural Stein Estimators
Qitian Wu, Han Gao and Hongyuan Zha
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2021
Seq2Bubbles: Region-Based Embedding Learning for User Behaviors in Sequential Recommenders
Qitian Wu, Chenxiao Yang, Shuodian Yu, Xiaofeng Gao and Guihai Chen
ACM International Conference on Information & Knowledge Management (CIKM) 2021 spotlight presentation
Learning High-Order Graph Convolutional Networks via Adaptive Layerwise Aggregation Combination
Tianqi Zhang, Qitian Wu and Junchi Yan
IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (TNNLS) 2021
Sentimem: Attentive memory networks for sentiment classification in user review
Xiaosong Jia, Qitian Wu, Xiaofeng Gao and Guihai Chen
International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications (DASFAA) 2020
Learning Latent Process from High-Dimensional Event Sequences via Efficient Sampling
Qitian Wu, Zixuan Zhang, Xiaofeng Gao, Junchi Yan and Guihai Chen
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2019
Feature Evolution Based Multi-Task Learning for Collaborative Filtering with Social Trust
Qitian Wu, Lei Jiang, Xiaofeng Gao, Xiaochun Yang and Guihai Chen
International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) 2019
Dual Sequential Prediction Models Linking Sequential Recommendation and Information Dissemination
Qitian Wu, Yirui Gao, Xiaofeng Gao, Paul Weng and Guihai Chen
ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) 2019
Dual Graph Attention Networks for Deep Latent Representation of Multifaceted Social Effects in Recommender Systems
Qitian Wu, Hengrui Zhang, Xiaofeng Gao, Peng He, Paul Weng, Han Gao and Guihai Chen
The Web Conference (WWW) 2019 long oral representation
EPAB: Early pattern aware bayesian model for social content popularity prediction
Qitian Wu, Chaoqi Yang, Xiaofeng Gao, Peng He and Guihai Chen
IEEE international conference on data mining (ICDM) 2018
Adversarial training model unifying feature driven and point process perspectives for event popularity prediction
Qitian Wu, Chaoqi Yang, Hengrui Zhang, Xiaofeng Gao, Paul Weng and Guihai Chen
ACM International Conference on Information & Knowledge Management (CIKM) 2018
EPOC: A survival perspective early pattern detection model for outbreak cascades
Chaoqi Yang, Qitian Wu, Xiaofeng Gao and Guihai Chen
International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications (DEXA) 2018
Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2024
SJTU Scholar Star (the highest academic award for PhD students in university level), 2023
National Scholarship (only 0.2% for PhD students in national level), 2022, 2023
Baidu PhD Fellowship (only 10 recipients worldwide), 2021
Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship (only 11 recipients in Asia), 2021
Global Top 100 Rising Star in Artificial Intelligence, 2021
Yuanqing Yang Scholarship (only 3 master students in the department), 2019
Outstanding Graduate in Shanghai (only 5%), 2018
Outstanding Thesis of Undergraduates, 2018
Outstanding Winner, INFORMS Awards, Mathematical Contest in Modeling, Data Insights Problem (top 3 out of 4748 teams in the worldwide, the INFORMS Awards selects only one team), 2018
Lixin Tang Scholarship (only 60 students across all academic levels in the university), 2017, 2018
National Scholarship (only 1% for undergraduate students), 2016, 2017
The 1st-Class Academic Excellence Scholarship (top 1 in the department), 2016, 2017
National Second Award, China Undergraduate Mathematical Contest in Modeling, 2016
First Award, Physics Contest of Chinese College Students, 2015
Area Chair/Reviewer for Conferences
ICML (2021-2025), NeurIPS (2021-2025), ICLR (2022-2025), SIGKDD (2023), WWW (2023),
AAAI (2021-2023), IJCAI (2021-2023), CVPR (2021-2023), ICCV (2021)
Reviewer for Journals
Nature BioMed. Eng., TPAMI, TKDE, TNNLS