Guanqun Bi

Here is Guanqun Bi (毕冠群) 👋.

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at CoAI Group, Tsinghua University, working with Prof. Minlie Huang.

I obtained my Ph.D. degree from Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences in June 2024, where I was fortunate to be advised by Prof. Yanan Cao.

When I’m not doing research, you can find me birdwatching 🐦 in parks around Beijing!

Research Interests

My research focuses on building AI systems that truly understand and support humans:

🧠 Social Intelligence - Developing AI with human-like social understanding and interaction capabilities
💚 AI for Mental Health - Leveraging AI to support mental well-being and provide accessible care
🗣️ Dialogue Systems - Building AI that can have meaningful, empathetic conversations
✍️ Controllable Text Generation - Generating text with desired attributes and safety guarantees

My long-term goal is to build socially intelligent AI systems that can genuinely understand human emotions, provide meaningful support, and contribute to mental health and well-being.

Education & Experience

🔬 Jul. 2024 - Present: Postdoctoral Researcher CoAI Group, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China Advisor: Prof. Minlie Huang
🎓 Sept. 2019 - Jun. 2024: Ph.D. in Cyber Security (NLP direction) Institute of Information Engineering, CAS, Beijing, China Advisor: Prof. Yanan Cao
🎓 Sept. 2015 - Jun. 2019: B.E. in Software Engineering
Shandong University, Jinan, China

news

Apr 07, 2026	🎉 2 papers accepted to ACL 2026: “S⁴” and “PsychePass”!
Nov 08, 2025	🎉 2 papers accepted to AAAI 2026: “Unveiling the Landscape of Clinical Depression Assessment” and “Ψ-Arena”!
Aug 20, 2025	📝 Our paper “A Group Fairness Lens for Large Language Models” is accepted to EMNLP 2025!
May 15, 2025	📝 Our paper “MAGI: Multi-Agent Guided Interview for Psychiatric Assessment” is accepted to ACL 2025!
Dec 09, 2024	🎉 Three papers accepted to AAAI 2025: CharacterBench, SocialSim, and SS-GEN!
Jul 10, 2024	🎓 Started my postdoc position at CoAI Group, Tsinghua University, working with Prof. Minlie Huang!

selected publications

ACL
S^4: Operationalizing Speech Act Theory for Strategic Semi-Structured Psychiatric Interview

Guanqun Bi, Zhoufu Liu, Zhuang Chen, Dazhen Wan, Xiyao Xiao, and 1 more author

In Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2026

🎤 Oral Abs Bib

Oral Presentation

We operationalize Speech Act Theory to design strategic semi-structured psychiatric interview agents, enabling systematic and clinically-grounded mental health assessment.
@inproceedings{bi2026s4, title = {S^{4}: Operationalizing Speech Act Theory for Strategic Semi-Structured Psychiatric Interview}, author = {Bi, Guanqun and Liu, Zhoufu and Chen, Zhuang and Wan, Dazhen and Xiao, Xiyao and Huang, Minlie}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)}, year = {2026}, }
ACL
PsychePass: Calibrating LLM Therapeutic Competence via Trajectory-Anchored Tournaments

Zhuang Chen, Dazhen Wan, Zhangkai Zheng, Guanqun Bi^†, Xiyao Xiao, and 2 more authors

In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026, 2026

Abs arXiv Bib

PsychePass calibrates LLM therapeutic competence through trajectory-anchored tournament evaluation, providing reliable assessment of AI counseling systems.
@inproceedings{chen2026psychepass, title = {PsychePass: Calibrating LLM Therapeutic Competence via Trajectory-Anchored Tournaments}, author = {Chen, Zhuang and Wan, Dazhen and Zheng, Zhangkai and Bi, Guanqun and Xiao, Xiyao and Li, Binghang and Huang, Minlie}, booktitle = {Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026}, year = {2026}, }

AAAI

Unveiling the Landscape of Clinical Depression Assessment: From Behavioral Signatures to Psychiatric Reasoning

Zhuang Chen, Guanqun Bi^†, Wen Zhang, Jiawei Hu, Aoyun Wang, and 3 more authors

In Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2026

Abs arXiv Bib

@inproceedings{chen2026unveiling,
  title = {Unveiling the Landscape of Clinical Depression Assessment: From Behavioral Signatures to Psychiatric Reasoning},
  author = {Chen, Zhuang and Bi, Guanqun and Zhang, Wen and Hu, Jiawei and Wang, Aoyun and Xiao, Xiyao and Feng, Kun and Huang, Minlie},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)},
  year = {2026},
}

ACL

MAGI: Multi-Agent Guided Interview for Psychiatric Assessment

Guanqun Bi, Zhuang Chen, Zhoufu Liu, Hongkai Wang, Xiyao Xiao, and 6 more authors

In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2025, 2025

Abs arXiv Bib

@inproceedings{bi2025magi,
  title = {MAGI: Multi-Agent Guided Interview for Psychiatric Assessment},
  author = {Bi, Guanqun and Chen, Zhuang and Liu, Zhoufu and Wang, Hongkai and Xiao, Xiyao and Xie, Yuqiang and Zhang, Wen and Huang, Yongkang and Chen, Yuxuan and Peng, Libiao and others},
  booktitle = {Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2025},
  pages = {24898--24921},
  year = {2025},
}

EMNLP
A Group Fairness Lens for Large Language Models

Guanqun Bi, Lei Shen, Yuqiang Xie, Yanan Cao, Tiangang Zhu, and 1 more author

In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2025, 2025

Abs arXiv Bib

We investigate group fairness in large language models and propose methods to evaluate and mitigate unfair behaviors.
@inproceedings{bi2025fairness, title = {A Group Fairness Lens for Large Language Models}, author = {Bi, Guanqun and Shen, Lei and Xie, Yuqiang and Cao, Yanan and Zhu, Tiangang and He, Xiaodong}, booktitle = {Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2025}, year = {2025}, }

AAAI

SocialSim: Towards Socialized Simulation of Emotional Support Conversation

Zhuang Chen, Yaru Cao, Guanqun Bi^†, Jincenzi Wu, Jinfeng Zhou, and 4 more authors

In Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2025

Abs arXiv Bib

@inproceedings{chen2025socialsim,
  title = {SocialSim: Towards Socialized Simulation of Emotional Support Conversation},
  author = {Chen, Zhuang and Cao, Yaru and Bi, Guanqun and Wu, Jincenzi and Zhou, Jinfeng and Xiao, Xiyao and Chen, Si and Wang, Hongning and Huang, Minlie},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)},
  volume = {39},
  number = {2},
  pages = {1274--1282},
  year = {2025},
}

NLPCC

Enhancing Emotional Support Conversation with Cognitive Chain-of-Thought Reasoning

Yaru Cao, Zhuang Chen, Guanqun Bi^*, Yulin Feng, Min Chen, and 3 more authors

In CCF International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Chinese Computing (NLPCC), 2024

Abs Bib HTML

@inproceedings{cao2024enhancing,
  title = {Enhancing Emotional Support Conversation with Cognitive Chain-of-Thought Reasoning},
  author = {Cao, Yaru and Chen, Zhuang and Bi, Guanqun and Feng, Yulin and Chen, Min and Wan, Fucheng and Huang, Minlie and Yu, Hongzhi},
  booktitle = {CCF International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Chinese Computing (NLPCC)},
  pages = {175--187},
  year = {2024},
}

ACL
DiffusEmp: A Diffusion Model-Based Framework with Multi-Grained Control for Empathetic Response Generation

Guanqun Bi, Lei Shen, Yanan Cao, Meng Chen, Yuqiang Xie, and 1 more author

In Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2023

🎤 Oral Abs arXiv Bib

Oral Presentation

We design a framework DiffusEmp based on conditional diffusion language model to unify the utilization of dialogue context and attribute-oriented control signals for empathetic response generation.
@inproceedings{bi2023diffusemp, title = {DiffusEmp: A Diffusion Model-Based Framework with Multi-Grained Control for Empathetic Response Generation}, author = {Bi, Guanqun and Shen, Lei and Cao, Yanan and Chen, Meng and Xie, Yuqiang and He, Xiaodong}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)}, year = {2023}, }
ICASSP
SERI: SkEtching-Reasoning-Integrating Progressive Workflow for Empathetic Response Generation

Guanqun Bi, Yanan Cao, Piji Li, Yuqiang Xie, Fang Fang, and 1 more author

In IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 2023

Abs Bib

We propose a SkEtching-Reasoning-Integrating framework for empathetic response generation with multi-source information reasoning.
@inproceedings{bi2023seri, title = {SERI: SkEtching-Reasoning-Integrating Progressive Workflow for Empathetic Response Generation}, author = {Bi, Guanqun and Cao, Yanan and Li, Piji and Xie, Yuqiang and Fang, Fang and Lin, Zheng}, booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP)}, year = {2023}, }