Distinguished achievements at the 40th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-26)
Distinguished achievements at the 40th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-26)
SUTD participated in the 40th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI‑26) held at Singapore Expo from 20 – 27 January 2026, with a booth showcasing cutting-edge AI technologies developed at the university. Faculty from ISTD were present to share their research with conference attendees, and Head of Pillar (ISTD) Professor Li Xiaoli, was also a keynote speaker for the Graphs and more Complex Structures for Learning and Reasoning (GCLR) workshop during the conference.
We’d like to express our gratitude to the following ISTD faculty for their efforts and time from their busy schedules to support the booth:
- Associate Professor Cheung Ngai-Man
- Assistant Professor Kenny Choo
- Assistant Professor Roy Lee Ka-Wei
- Associate Professor Park Jihong
- Assistant Professor Sun Zhu
- Assistant Professor Wang Bo
- Assistant Professor Zhao Na
In addition, three faculty members and one PhD student received the Best Paper Awards in recognition of their outstanding research achievements.
Distinguished keynote speaker at GCLR workshop: Prof Li Xiaoli (Head of Pillar, ISTD)
Head of Pillar (ISTD) Prof Li Xiaoli was honoured to deliver a keynote talk at the Graphs and more Complex Structures for Learning and Reasoning (GCLR) workshop during the AAAI-26 conference.
In his keynote talk, “Graph Analysis: From Molecules to Time Series,” he spoke of how network analysis provides a unifying framework for modelling complex systems—from heterogeneous biological networks to dynamic graphs underlying multivariate time series. The talk highlights how graph-structured thinking drives both scientific discovery and practical applications, including drug discovery, equipment condition monitoring, and predictive maintenance.
Prof Li also conveyed his thanks to the GCLR organisers for the kind invitation and for fostering a forum that brings together researchers across machine learning, graph learning, network science, and complex systems.
Best Paper Award at ML4Wireless workshop on Language Models for Underserved Communities (LM4UC): Assistant Professor Roy Lee Ka-Wei
Asst Prof Roy Lee Ka-Wei and his co-authors from GovTech Singapore won the Best Paper Award at AAAI 2026 Machine Learning for Wireless Communication and Networks (ML4Wireless) workshop for their paper titled “Safe at the Margins: A General Approach to Safety Alignment in Low-Resource English Languages – A Singlish Case Study”
Summary of the paper
Safety alignment for LLMs is often English-centric, leaving low-resource languages and regional creoles vulnerable to misalignment. In this work, we use Singlish as a case study to develop a scalable framework for safer AI deployment in diverse linguistic contexts. This research bridges the gap between academic safety research and practical industry adoption, providing a scalable path for AI safety practitioners and policy regulators to ensure cultural adaptability in LLMs.
This recognition affirms ISTD Pillar’s close engagement and collaboration with the industry.
Best Student Paper Award at ML4Wireless workshop: Associate Professor Chen Binbin, Faculty Fellow Marie Siew, and PhD Student Nan Li
Assoc Prof Chen Binbin, SUTD Faculty Fellow Marie Siew, second-year PhD student at ISTD Nan Li, and their co-authors also won the Best Student Paper Award at the ML4Wireless workshop for their paper, “Hierarchical Collaborative Fine-Tuning for Personalized Edge-End Hybrid Inference of Stable Diffusion Models”
Summary of the paper
This paper presents an edge-based collaborative fine-tuning framework that combines federated learning and Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) to enable efficient, privacy-preserving personalization of diffusion models. By leveraging hierarchical client clustering and hybrid inference, the framework addresses communication efficiency, scalability, and data privacy challenges, achieving accelerated convergence and scalable multi-user personalisation for edge-constrained AIGC applications.
About the AAAI Conference
The AAAI Conference series promotes research in AI and fosters scientific exchange between researchers, practitioners, scientists, students, and engineers across the entirety of AI and its affiliated disciplines.
It was previously announced that Prof Li Xiaoli was one of the Exhibit Chairs, and Asst Prof Sun Zhu was Co-Chair of the Undergraduate Consortium (UC) for the AAAI-26 Conference.