Machine Learning Group

Established: August 3, 2016

The Machine Learning Group at Microsoft Research Asia pushes the frontier of machine learning from theoretic, algorithmic, and practical aspects. Our current research focus is on deep/reinforcement learning, distributed machine learning, and graph learning. Other research projects from our group include learning to rank, computational advertising, and cloud pricing. We have published many highly-cited papers on top conferences and journals, helped our partner product groups apply machine learning to large and complex tasks, and open-sourced Microsoft Distributed Machine Learning Toolkit (DMTK) and Microsoft Graph Engine.

 

微软亚洲研究院机器学习组在理论、算法、应用等不同层面推动机器学习领域的学术前沿。我们目前的研究重点为深度学习/增强学习、分布式机器学习和图学习。我们的研究课题还包括排序学习、计算广告和云定价。在过去的十几年间，我们在顶级国际会议和期刊上发表了大量高质量论文，帮助微软的产品部门解决了很多复杂问题，并向开源社区贡献了微软分布式机器学习工具包（DMTK）和微软图引擎，并受到广泛关注。

Selected Publications

[Book]

  • Tie-Yan Liu. Learning to Rank for Information Retrieval, Springer, 2011.

[Journal Papers]

  • Shuaiqiang Wang, Shanshan Huang, Tie-Yan Liu, Jun Ma, Zhumin Chen, Jari Veijalainen, Ranking-oriented Collaborative Filtering: A Listwise Approach, ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 2016
  • Xujin Chen, Xiaodong Hu, Tie-Yan Liu, Weidong Ma, Tao Qin, Pingzhong Tang, Changjun Wang, and Bo Zheng, Efficient Mechanism Design for Online Scheduling, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 2016.
  • Chang Xu, Gang Wang, Xiaoguang Liu, Tie-Yan Liu, Health Status Assessment and Failure Prediction for Hard Drives with Recurrent Neural Networks, IEEE Transactions on Computers, 2016.
  • Wei Chen, Tie-Yan Liu, and Xinxin Yang, Reinforcement Learning Behaviors in Sponsored Search, Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry, 2016.
  • Qing Cui, Bin Gao, Jiang Bian, Hanjun Dai, and Tie-Yan Liu, KNET: A General Framework for Learning Word Embedding using Morphological Knowledge, ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 2015.
  • Wei Wei, Bin Gao, Tie-Yan Liu, Taifeng Wang, Guohui Li, and Hang Li, A Ranking Approach on Large-scale Graph with Multi-dimensional Heterogeneous Information, IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, 2015.
  • Tao Qin, Wei Chen, and Tie-Yan Liu, Sponsored Search Auctions: Recent Advances and Future Directions, ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology, 2014.
  • Ying Zhang, Weinan Zhang, Bin Gao, Xiaojie Yuan, and Tie-Yan Liu, Bid Keyword Suggestion in Sponsored Search based on Competitiveness and Relevance, Information Processing and Management, 2014.
  • Di He, Wei Chen, Liwei Wang, and Tie-Yan Liu, Online Learning for Auction Mechanism in Bandit Setting, Decision Support Systems, 2013
  • Bin Gao, Tie-Yan Liu, Yuting Liu, Taifeng Wang, Zhiming Ma, and Hang Li, Page Importance Computation based on Markov Processes, Information Retrieval, 2011.
  • Olivier Chapelle, Yi Chang, and Tie-Yan Liu, Future research directions on learning to rank, Proceeding track, Journal of Machine Learning Research, 2011.
  • Xiubo Geng, Tie-Yan Liu, Tao Qin, Xueqi Cheng, Hang Li, Selecting Optimal Training Data for Learning to Rank, Information Processing and Management, 2011.
  • Yin He and Tie-Yan Liu, Tendency Correlation Analysis for Direct Optimization of Evaluation Measures in Information Retrieval, Information Retrieval, 2010.
  • Tie-Yan Liu, Thorsten Joachims, Hang Li, and Chengxiang Zhai, Introduction to special issue on learning to rank for information retrieval, Information Retrieval, 2010.
  • Tie-Yan Liu. Learning to Rank for Information Retrieval, Foundations and Trends in Information Retrieval, 2009.
  • Yuting Liu, Tie-Yan Liu, Zhiming Ma, and Hang Li. A Framework to Compute Page Importance based on User Behaviors, Information Retrieval, 2009.
  • Tao Qin, Tie-Yan Liu, and Hang Li, A General Approximation Framework for Direct Optimization of Information Retrieval Measures, Information Retrieval, 2009.
  • Tao Qin, Tie-Yan Liu, Jun Xu, and Hang Li, LETOR: A Benchmark Collection for Research on Learning to Rank for Information Retrieval, Information Retrieval, 2009
  • Tao Qin, Xu-Dong Zhang, Ming-Feng Tsai, De-Sheng Wang, Tie-Yan Liu, and Hang Li. Query-level Loss Function for Information Retrieval. Information Processing and Management, 2007.
  • Tao Qin, Xu-Dong Zhang, Tie-Yan Liu, De-Sheng Wang, Hong-Jiang Zhang. An Active Feedback Framework for Image Retrieval, Pattern Recognition Letters, 2007.
  • Ying Bao, Guang Feng, Tie-Yan Liu, Zhiming Ma and Ying Wang. Ranking Websites: A Probabilistic View, Internet Mathematics, 2007.
  • Tao Qin, Tie-Yan Liu, Xu-Dong Zhang, Guang Geng, De-Sheng Wang, and Wei-Ying Ma. Topic Distillation Via Subsite Retrieval, Information Processing and Management, 2006.
  • Bin Gao, Tie-Yan Liu, Xin Zheng, Qiansheng Cheng, and Wei-Ying Ma. Hierarchical Taxonomy Preparation for Text Categorization Using Consistent Bipartite Spectral Graph Co-partitioning, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 2005.
  • Tie-Yan Liu, Yiming Yang, Hao Wan, Hua-Jun Zeng, Zheng Chen, and Wei-Ying Ma. Support Vector Machines Classification with Very Large Scale Taxonomy, SIGKDD Explorations, 2005.
  • Tie-Yan Liu, Kwoktung Lo, Xu-Dong Zhang, and Jian Feng. A New Cut Detection Algorithm with Constant False-Alarm Ratio for Video Segmentation, Journal of Visual Communications and Image Representation, 2004. 
  • Tie-Yan Liu, Xu-Dong Zhang, Jian Feng, and Kwoktung Lo. Shot Reconstruction Degree: a Novel Criterion for Key Frame Selection, Pattern Recognition Letters, 2004.
  • Tie-Yan Liu, Kwoktung Lo, Xu-Dong Zhang, and Jian Feng. Frame Interpolation Scheme Using Inertia Motion Prediction. Signal Processing: Image Communication, 2003.
  • Tie-Yan Liu, Kwoktung Lo, Xu-Dong Zhang, and Jian Feng. Inertia-based Cut Detection and Its Integration with Video Coder. IEE Proceedings on Vision, Image and Signal Processing, 2003.

[Conference Papers]

2016:

  • Xiang Li, Tao Qin, and Tie-Yan Liu, 2-Component Recurrent Neural Networks, NIPS 2016
  • Di He, Yingce Xia, Tao Qin, Tie-Yan Liu, and Wei-Ying Ma, Machine Translation Through Learning From a Communication Game, NIPS 2016
  • Qi Meng, Guolin Ke, Qiwei Ye, Taifeng Wang, Wei Chen, and Tie-Yan Liu, PV-Tree: A Communication-Efficient Parallel Algorithm for Decision Tree, NIPS 2016
  • Huazheng Wang, Fei Tian, Bin Gao, Chenjieren Zhu, Jiang Bian, Tie-Yan Liu, Solving Verbal Comprehension Questions in IQ Test by Knowledge-Powered Word Embedding, EMNLP 2016.
  • Yiren Wang, Fei Tian, Recurrent Residual Learning for Sequence Classification,  EMNLP 2016, short paper.
  • Yingce Xia, Tao Qin, Weidong Ma, Nenghai Yu and Tie-Yan Liu, Budgeted Multi-armed Bandits with Multiple Plays, IJCAI 2016.
  • Qi Meng, Wei Chen, Jingcheng Yu, Taifeng Wang and Tie-Yan Liu, Asynchronous Accelerated Stochastic Gradient Descent, IJCAI 2016.
  • Hongbin Ma, Bin Shao, Yanghua Xiao, Liang Jeff Chen, Haixun Wang. G-SQL: Fast Query Processing via Graph Exploration. PVLDB 2016.
  • Yingce Xia, Tao Qin, Tie-Yan Liu, Best Action Selection in a Stochastic Environment, AAMAS 2016.
  • Tie-Yan Liu, Weidong Ma, Pingzhong Tang, Tao Qin, Guang Yang, Bo Zheng, Online Non-Preemptive Story Scheduling in Web Advertising, AAMAS 2016
  • Jiang Rong, Tao Qin, Bo An, Tie-Yan Liu, Optimal Sample Size for Adword Auctions, AAMAS 2016.
  • Bo Zheng, Li Xiao, Guang Yang, Tao Qin, Online Posted-Price Mechanism with a Finite Time Horizon, AAMAS 2016, short paper.
  • Shizhao Sun, Wei Chen, Liwei Wang, and Tie-Yan Liu, On the Depth of Deep Neural Networks: A Theoretical View, AAAI 2016.

2015:

  • Yingce Xia, Haifang Li, Tao Qin, Nenghai Yu, and Tie-Yan Liu, Thompson Sampling for Budgeted Multi-armed Bandits, IJCAI 2015.
  • Bolei Xu, Tao Qin, Guoping Qiu, and Tie-Yan Liu, Competitive Pricing for Cloud Computing in an Evolutionary Market, IJCAI 2015.
  • Changjun Wang, Weidong Ma, Tao Qin, Xujin Chen, Xiaodong Hu, and Tie-Yan Liu, Selling Reserved Instances in Cloud Computing, IJCAI 2015.
  • Long Tran-Thanh, Yingce Xia, Tao Qin, Nick Jenning, Efficient Algorithms with Performance Guarantees for the Stochastic Multiple-Choice Knapsack Problem, IJCAI 2015.
  • Yitan Li, Linli Xu, Fei Tian, Liang Jiang, Xiaowei Zhong and Enhong Chen, Word Embedding Revisited: A New Representation Learning and Explicit Matrix Factorization Perspective, IJCAI 2015.
  • Shanshan Huang, Shuaiqiang Wang, Tie-Yan Liu, Jun Ma, Zhumin Chen, and Jari Veijalainen, Listwise Collaborative Filtering, SIGIR 2015.
  • Binyi Chen, Tao Qin, and Tie-Yan Liu, Mechanism Design for Daily Deals, AAMAS 2015.
  • Jiang Rong, Tao Qin, and Bo An. Quantal Response Equilibrium for Sponsored Search Auctions, AAMAS 2015, short paper.
  • Jinhui Yuan, Fei Gao, Qirong Ho, Wei Dai, Jinliang Wei, Xun Zheng, Eric Xing, Tie-Yan Liu, and Wei-Ying Ma, LightLDA: Big Topic Models on Modest Computer Cluster, WWW 2015.
  • Tie-Yan Liu, Wei Chen, and Tao Qin, Mechanism Learning with Mechanism Induced Data, Senior Member Track, AAAI 2015.
  • Haifang Li, Wei Chen, Fei Tian, Tao Qin, and Tie-Yan Liu, Generalization Analysis for Game-theoretic Machine Learning, AAAI 2015.
  • Qizhen Zhang, Haoran Wang, Yang Chen, Tao Qin, Ying Yan, Thomas Moscibroda, A Shapley Value Approach for Cost Allocation in the Cloud, SOCC 2015, poster.
  • Liang He, Bin Shao, Yatao Li, Enhong Chen. Distributed Real-Time Knowledge Graph Serving. BigComp 2015. Invited Paper.

2014:

  • Chang Xu, Yalong Bai, Jiang Bian, Bin Gao, and Tie-Yan Liu, A General Approach to Incorporate Knowledge into Word Representation, CIKM 2014.
  • Fei Tian, Jiang Bian, Bin Gao, Hanjun Dai, Rui Zhang, and Tie-Yan Liu, A Scalable Probabilistic Model for Learning Multi-Prototype Word Embedding, COLING 2014.
  • Siyu Qiu, Qing Cui, Jiang Bian, Bin Gao, and Tie-Yan Liu, Co-learning of Word Representations and Morpheme Representations, COLING 2014.
  • Bin Gao, Jiang Bian, and Tie-Yan Liu, Knowledge Powered Deep Learning for Word Embedding, ECML/PKDD 2014.
  • Junpei Komiyama and Tao Qin, Time-Decaying Bandits for Non-stationary Systems, WINE 2014.
  • Wei Chen, Di He, Tie-Yan Liu, Tao Qin, Yixin Tao, Liwei Wang, Generalized Second Price Auction with Probabilistic Broad Match, EC 2014.
  • Jiang Rong, Tao Qin, and Bo An. Quantal Response Equilibrium for Sponsored Search Auctions: Computation and Inference, Ad Auctions 2014, in conjunction with EC 2014.
  • Yingce Xia, Tao Qin and Tie-Yan Liu, Incentivizing High-quality Content from Heterogeneous Users: On the Existence of Nash Equilibrium, AAAI 2014.
  • Fei Tian, Haifang Li, Wei Chen, Tao Qin and Tie-Yan Liu, Agent Behavior Prediction and Its Generalization Analysis, AAAI 2014.
  • Fei Tian, Bin Gao and Tie-Yan Liu, Learning Deep Representations for Graph Clustering, AAAI 2014.
  • Yuyu Zhang, Hanjun Dai, Chang Xu, Jun Feng, Taifeng Wang, Jiang Bian, Bin Wang and Tie-Yan Liu, Sequential Click Prediction for Sponsored Search with Recurrent Neural Networks, AAAI 2014.
  • Tie-Yan Liu, Weidong Ma, Tao Qin, and Tao Wu, Generalized Second Price Auctions with Value Externalities, AAMAS 2014.
  • Jiang Bian, Taifeng Wang, and Tie-Yan Liu, Sampling Dilemma: Towards Effective Data Sampling for Click Prediction in Sponsored Search, WSDM 2014.
  • Lu Wang, Yanghua Xiao, Bin Shao, Haixun Wang, How to Partition a Billion-Node Graph ICDE 2014.
  • Huanhuan Xia, Tun Lu, Bin Shao, Guo Li, Xianghua Ding, Ning Gu, A partial Replication Approach for Anywhere Anytime Mobile Commenting   CSCW 2014.
  • Zichao Qi, Yanghua Xiao, Bin Shao, Haixun Wang. Toward a Distance Oracle for Billion-Node Graphs. PVLDB 2014.

2013:

  • Yining Wang, Liwei Wang, Yuanzhi Li, Di He, Wei Chen, and Tie-Yan Liu, A Theoretical Analysis of NDCG Type Ranking Measures, COLT 2013.
  • Weihao Kong, Jian Li, Tie-Yan Liu and Tao Qin, Optimal Allocation for Chunked-Reward Advertising, WINE 2013.
  • Min Xu, Tao Qin, and Tie-Yan Liu, Estimation Bias in Multi-Armed Bandit Algorithms for Search Advertising, NIPS 2013.
  • Taifeng Wang, Jiang Bian, Shusen Liu, Yuyu Zhang, and Tie-Yan Liu, Psychological Advertising: Exploring Consumer Psychology for Click Prediction in Sponsored Search, KDD 2013.
  • Bin Shao, Haixun Wang, Yatao Li, Trinity: A Distributed Graph Engine on a Memory Cloud, SIGMOD 2013.  
  • Kai Zeng, Jiacheng Yang, Haixun Wang, Bin Shao, Zhongyuan Wang, A Distributed Graph Engine for Web Scale RDF Data, PVLDB 2013.
  • Di He, Wei Chen, Liwei Wang, and Tie-Yan Liu, A Game-theoretic Machine Learning Approach for Revenue Maximization in Sponsored Search, IJCAI 2013.
  • Wenkui Ding, Tao Qin, and Tie-Yan Liu, Multi-Armed Bandit with Budget Constraint and Variable Costs, AAAI 2013.
  • Haifeng Xu, Diyi Yang, Bin Gao and Tie-Yan Liu, Predicting Advertiser Bidding Behaviors in Sponsored Search by Rationality Modeling, WWW 2013.

2012:

  • Lei Yao, Wei Chen and Tie-Yan Liu, Convergence Analysis for Weighted Joint Strategy Fictitious Play in Generalized Second Price Auction, WINE 2012.
  • Weinan Zhang, Ying Zhang, Bin Gao, Yong Yu, Xiaojie Yuan, and Tie-Yan Liu, Joint optimization of bid and budget allocation in sponsored search, KDD 2012.
  • Chenyan Xiong, Taifeng Wang, Wenkui Ding, Yidong Shen, Tie-Yan Liu. Relational Click Prediction for Sponsored Search, WSDM 2012.
  • Yanyan Lan, Jiafeng Guo, Xueqi Cheng, Tie-Yan Liu, Statistical Consistency of Ranking Methods in A Rank-Differentiable Probability Space. NIPS 2012.
  • Zhao Sun, Hongzhi Wang, Haixun Wang, Bin Shao, and Jianzhong Li. Efficient Subgraph Matching on Billion Node Graphs. PVLDB 2012

2011:

  • Bin Gao, Tie-Yan Liu, Taifeng Wang, Wei Wei, and Hang Li, Semi-supervised graph ranking with rich meta data, KDD 2011
  • Zhicong Cheng, Bin Gao, Congkai Sun, Yanbing Jiang, and Tie-Yan Liu. Let Web Spammers Expose Themselves, WSDM 2011.

2010:

  • Zhicong Cheng, Bin Gao, and Tie-Yan Liu, Actively Predicting Diverse Search Intent from User Browsing Behaviors, WWW 2010.
  • Tao Qin, Xiubo Geng, and Tie-Yan Liu, A New Probabilistic Model for Rank Aggregation, NIPS 2010.
  • Wei Chen, Tie-Yan Liu, Zhiming Ma, Two-Layer Generalization Analysis for Ranking Using Rademacher Average, NIPS 2010.
  • Jiang Bian, Tie-Yan Liu, Tao Qin, and Hongyuan Zha, Query-dependent Loss Function for Web Search. WSDM 2010.

Pre-2010:

  • Fen Xia, Tie-Yan Liu, Hang Li, Statistical Consistency of Top-k Ranking, NIPS 2009.
  • Wei Chen, Tie-Yan Liu, Yanyan Lan, Zhiming Ma, Hang Li, Ranking Measures and Loss Functions in Learning to Rank, NIPS 2009.
  • Yanyan Lan, Tie-Yan Liu, Zhiming Ma, and Hang Li. Generalization Analysis for Listwise Learning to Rank Algorithms, ICML 2009.
  • Tao Qin, Tie-Yan Liu, Xu-Dong Zhang, De-Sheng Wang, and Hang Li. Global Ranking Using Continuous Conditional Random Fields, NIPS 2008.
  • Fen Xia, Tie-Yan Liu, Jue Wang, Wensheng Zhang, and Hang Li. Listwise Approach to Learning to Rank: Theory and Algorithm, ICML 2008.
  • Yanyan Lan, Tie-Yan Liu, Tao Qin, Zhiming Ma, and Hang Li. Query-level Stability and Generalization in Learning to Rank, ICML 2008.
  • Tao Qin, Tie-Yan Liu, Xu-Dong Zhang, De-Sheng Wang, Wen-Ying Xiong, and Hang Li. Learning to Rank Relational Objects and Its Application to Web Search, WWW 2008.
  • Xiubo Geng, Tie-Yan Liu, Tao Qin, Andrew Arnold, Hang Li, and Heung-Yeung Shum. Query-dependent Ranking using K-Nearest Neighbor, SIGIR 2008.
  • Yuting Liu, Bin Gao, Tie-Yan Liu, Ying Zhang, Zhiming Ma, Shuyuan He, and Hang Li. BrowseRank: Letting Web Users Vote for Page Importance, SIGIR 2008.
  • Jun Xu, Tie-Yan Liu, Min Lu, Hang Li, and Wei-Ying Ma. Directly Optimizing IR Evaluation Measures in Learning to Rank, SIGIR 2008.
  • Zhe Cao, Tao Qin, Tie-Yan Liu, Ming-Feng Tsai, and Hang Li. Learning to Rank: From Pairwise Approach to Listwise Approach. ICML 2007.
  • Yuting Liu, Tie-Yan Liu, Tao Qin, Zhi-Ming Ma, and Hang Li. Supervised Rank Aggregation, WWW 2007.
  • Xiubo Geng, Tie-Yan Liu, Tao Qin, and Hang Li. Feature Selection for Ranking, SIGIR 2007.
  • Mingfeng Tsai, Tie-Yan Liu, Tao Qin, Hsin-Hsi Chen, and Wei-Ying Ma. FRank: A Ranking Method with Fidelity Loss, SIGIR 2007.
  • Tao Qin, Tie-Yan Liu, Wei Lai, Xu-Dong Zhang, De-Sheng Wang, and Hang Li. Ranking with Multiple Hyperplanes, SIGIR 2007.
  • Guang Feng, Tie-Yan Liu, Ying Wang, Ying Bao, Zhiming Ma, Xu-Dong Zhang, and Wei-Ying Ma. AggregateRank: Bringing Order to Websites, SIGIR 2006.
  • Yunbo Cao, Jun Xu, Tie-Yan Liu, Hang Li, Yalou Huang, and Hsiao-Wuen Hon. Adapting Ranking SVM to Document Retrieval, SIGIR 2006.
  • Qiankun Zhao, Chuhong Hoi, Tie-Yan Liu, Sourav S. Bhowmick, Michael R. Lyu, and Wei-Ying Ma. Time-Dependent Semantic Similarity Measure of Queries Using Historical Click-Through Data, WWW 2006.
  • Qiankun Zhao, Tie-Yan Liu, Sourav S. Bhowmick, and Wei-Ying Ma. Event Detection from Evolution of Click-through Data, KDD 2006.
  • Tao Qin, Tie-Yan Liu, Xu-Dong Zhang, Zheng Chen, and Wei-Ying Ma. A Study on Relevance Propagation for Web Search, SIGIR 2005.
  • Bin Gao, Tie-Yan Liu, Xin Zheng, Qian-Sheng Cheng, and Wei-Ying Ma. Consistent Bipartite Graph Co-Partitioning for Star-Structured High-Order Heterogeneous Data Co-Clustering, KDD 2005.
  • Bin Gao, Tie-Yan Liu, Tao Qin, Xin Zheng, Qian-Sheng Cheng, and Wei-Ying Ma. Web Image Clustering by Consistent Utilization of Visual Features and Surrounding Texts, ACM Multimedia 2005.
  • Tie-Yan Liu, Tao Qin and Hong-Jiang Zhang. Time-constraint Boost for TV Commercials Detection. IEEE ICIP 2004.
  • Bin Gao, Tie-Yan Liu, Qian-Sheng Cheng, and Wei-Ying Ma. A Linear Approximation Based Method for Noise-Robust and Illumination-invariant Image Change Detection. PCM 2004.

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