Shaobo Wang (王少博)

Mail: gszfwsb@gmail.com

Tel: (+86) 15000937315

City: Shanghai, 200240

I am now a second-year Ph.D Candidate in the School of Artificial Intelligence, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), fortunate to be advised by Prof. Linfeng Zhang. Currently, I am also a research intern at the Alibaba Qwen Team, where I am supervised by Dr. Dayiheng Liu and Xingzhang Ren. Here, I also closely collaborate with Dr. Fei Huang, Huiqiang Jiang, Kexin Yang, Yubo Ma, and Beichen Zhang.

Previously, I was a master’s student of ReThinkLab at SJTU, where I was grateful to be mentored by Prof. Junchi Yan. Additionally, I collaborated closely with Prof. Xuming Hu at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), and Dr. Conghui He at Shanghai AI Laboratory. I used to work with Prof. Zhuoran Yang at Yale University.

Research. My research bridges empirical and theoretical perspectives on data-centric AI. I am primarily focused on data selection, synthesis, and sampling strategies for Large Language Model pre-training. Previously, my work centered on Explainable AI.

Awards & Honors

🏆 [May 2026] Our paper, “OPUS: Towards Efficient and Principled Data Selection in Large Language Model Pre-training in Every Iteration,” was selected as an ICML 2026 Spotlight and invited for a talk at Pinterest.
🏆 [July 2025] Tencent Hunyuan Scholar (Tencent PhD Research Incentive Program) (one of 23 recipients in China).
🏆 [March 2025] Our paper, “Dataset Distillation with Neural Characteristic Function: A Minmax Perspective,” was selected as a CVPR 2025 Highlight, received full scores (5/5/5) from all three reviewers, and was invited for a talk at BAAI.

Short bio. I was born in Hefei, China, in 1999, two years after IBM’s Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov. In some sense, I grew up in the long shadow of AI. I started playing chess at an early age and later won several chess championships in Anhui Province, China, under the guidance of Chess Grandmaster Chongsheng Zeng and Chess Master Yongjin Zhou. When AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol during my high school years, I was deeply shaken: as a chess player, I felt both the beauty of human intelligence and how small we are in front of a new kind of intelligence.

Music gave me a different but related feeling. I have been devoted to the piano for 15 years and once had the privilege of performing alongside the world-renowned pianist Lang Lang. My musical inspirations come from the Romantic era—especially Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt—as well as R&B, Jazz, and Neo-Soul. During my undergraduate years, seeing early demos of AI-generated music made me reflect on piano practice as a nearly religious form of self-cultivation: beautiful, demanding, and deeply personal, yet not necessarily a direct path to broader social progress. This reflection, together with my experiences in chess, gradually convinced me that AI was something I needed to work on.

The journey has not always been smooth, but I have continued along this path with the hope that my work can make a small contribution to human knowledge and progress.

Selected Publications

* denotes the equal contribution.

ICML spotlight

OPUS: Towards Efficient and Principled Data Selection in Large Language Model Pre-training in Every Iteration

Shaobo Wang , Xuan Ouyang , Tianyi Xu , Yuzheng Hu , Jialin Liu , Guo Chen , Tianyu Zhang , Junhao Zheng , and 4 more authors

In International Conference on Machine Learning , 2026

arXiv Bib HTML PDF Link

@inproceedings{wang2026opus,
  title = {OPUS: Towards Efficient and Principled Data Selection in Large Language Model Pre-training in Every Iteration},
  author = {Wang, Shaobo and Ouyang, Xuan and Xu, Tianyi and Hu, Yuzheng and Liu, Jialin and Chen, Guo and Zhang, Tianyu and Zheng, Junhao and Yang, Kexin and Ren, Xingzhang and Liu, Dayiheng and Zhang, Linfeng},
  booktitle = {International Conference on Machine Learning},
  year = {2026},
  eprint = {2602.05400},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://openreview.net/forum?id=FEfuE1mAB6},
}

ACL main

CircuitSeer: Mining High-Quality Data by Probing Mathematical Reasoning Circuits in LLMs

Shaobo Wang* , Yongliang Miao* , Yuancheng Liu , Qianli Ma , Ning Liao , and Linfeng Zhang

In The 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics , 2026

arXiv Bib PDF

@inproceedings{wang2026circuitseer,
  title = {CircuitSeer: Mining High-Quality Data by Probing Mathematical Reasoning Circuits in LLMs},
  author = {Wang*, Shaobo and Miao*, Yongliang and Liu, Yuancheng and Ma, Qianli and Liao, Ning and Zhang, Linfeng},
  booktitle = {The 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics},
  year = {2026},
  eprint = {2510.18470},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
}

ACL findings

MelTrim: Coarse-to-Fine Data Pruning for Speech Classification

Shaobo Wang , Tianle Niu , Xuan Ouyang , Xintong Li , Zhengkun Ge , Yue Min , Xiaoqian Liu , Hankun Wang , and 9 more authors

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

Bib

@inproceedings{wang2026meltrim,
  title = {MelTrim: Coarse-to-Fine Data Pruning for Speech Classification},
  author = {Wang, Shaobo and Niu, Tianle and Ouyang, Xuan and Li, Xintong and Ge, Zhengkun and Min, Yue and Liu, Xiaoqian and Wang, Hankun and Wang, Jianjin and Zhang, Haoran and Ge, Yuan and Chang, Kaiyan and Xu, Chen and Xiao, Tong and Yu, Zhengtao and Zhang, Linfeng and Zhu, Jingbo},
  booktitle = {Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026},
  year = {2026}
}

CVPR

Socratic-Geo: Synthetic Data Generation and Cross-Modal Geometric Reasoning via Multi-Agent Interaction

Zhengbo Jiao* , Shaobo Wang* , Zifan Zhang* , Wei Wang , Bing Zhao , Hu Wei , and Linfeng Zhang

In Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition , 2026

arXiv Bib PDF Code Link

@inproceedings{jiao2026socraticgeo,
  title = {Socratic-Geo: Synthetic Data Generation and Cross-Modal Geometric Reasoning via Multi-Agent Interaction},
  author = {Jiao*, Zhengbo and Wang*, Shaobo and Zhang*, Zifan and Wang, Wei and Zhao, Bing and Wei, Hu and Zhang, Linfeng},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition},
  year = {2026},
  eprint = {2602.03414},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://cvpr.thecvf.com/virtual/2026/poster/38181}
}

ICLR

Grounding and Enhancing Informativeness and Utility in Dataset Distillation

Shaobo Wang , Yantai Yang , Guo Chen , Peiru Li , Kaixin Li , Yufa Zhou , Zhaorun Chen , and Linfeng Zhang

In The Fourteenth International Conference on Learning Representations , 2026

arXiv Bib PDF Link

@inproceedings{wang2026grounding,
  title = {Grounding and Enhancing Informativeness and Utility in Dataset Distillation},
  author = {Wang, Shaobo and Yang, Yantai and Chen, Guo and Li, Peiru and Li, Kaixin and Zhou, Yufa and Chen, Zhaorun and Zhang, Linfeng},
  booktitle = {The Fourteenth International Conference on Learning Representations},
  year = {2026},
  eprint = {2601.21296},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://openreview.net/forum?id=ThsYRbpv2F}
}

ICLR

Rethinking LLM Evaluation: Can We Evaluate LLMs with 200x Less Data?

Shaobo Wang* , Cong Wang* , Wenjie Fu* , Yue Min , Mingquan Feng , Isabel Guan , Xuming Hu , Conghui He , and 6 more authors

In The Fourteenth International Conference on Learning Representations , 2026

arXiv Bib PDF Code Link

@inproceedings{wang2026rethinking,
  title = {Rethinking LLM Evaluation: Can We Evaluate LLMs with 200x Less Data?},
  author = {Wang*, Shaobo and Wang*, Cong and Fu*, Wenjie and Min, Yue and Feng, Mingquan and Guan, Isabel and Hu, Xuming and He, Conghui and Wang, Cunxiang and Yang, Kexin and Ren, Xingzhang and Huang, Fei and Liu, Dayiheng and Zhang, Linfeng},
  booktitle = {The Fourteenth International Conference on Learning Representations},
  year = {2026},
  eprint = {2510.10457},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://openreview.net/forum?id=lZlZjSxdio}
}

AAAI

UNSEEN: Enhancing Dataset Pruning from a Generalization Perspective

Furui Xu* , Shaobo Wang* , Jiajun Zhang , Chenghao Sun , Haixiang Tang , and Linfeng Zhang

In Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence , 2026

arXiv Bib HTML PDF

@inproceedings{xu2026unseen,
  title = {UNSEEN: Enhancing Dataset Pruning from a Generalization Perspective},
  author = {Xu*, Furui and Wang*, Shaobo and Zhang, Jiajun and Sun, Chenghao and Tang, Haixiang and Zhang, Linfeng},
  booktitle = {Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence},
  year = {2026},
  eprint = {2511.12988},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  doi = {10.1609/aaai.v40i32.39938}
}

AAAI

ImagebindDC: Compressing Multi-modal Data with Imagebind-based Condensation

Yue Min* , Shaobo Wang* , Jiaze Li , Tianle Niu , Junxin Fan , Yongliang Miao , Lijin Yang , and Linfeng Zhang

In Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence , 2026

arXiv Bib HTML PDF

@inproceedings{min2026imagebinddc,
  title = {ImagebindDC: Compressing Multi-modal Data with Imagebind-based Condensation},
  author = {Min*, Yue and Wang*, Shaobo and Li, Jiaze and Niu, Tianle and Fan, Junxin and Miao, Yongliang and Yang, Lijin and Zhang, Linfeng},
  booktitle = {Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence},
  year = {2026},
  eprint = {2511.08263},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  doi = {10.1609/aaai.v40i18.38582}
}

ACL main

Data Whisperer: Efficient Data Selection for Task-Specific LLM Fine-Tuning via Few-Shot In-Context Learning

Shaobo Wang , Xiangqi Jin , Ziming Wang , Jize Wang , Jiajun Zhang , Kaixin Li , Zichen Wen , Zhong Li , and 3 more authors

In Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics , 2025

arXiv Bib HTML PDF Code Website

@inproceedings{wang2025datawhisperer,
  title = {Data Whisperer: Efficient Data Selection for Task-Specific LLM Fine-Tuning via Few-Shot In-Context Learning},
  author = {Wang, Shaobo and Jin, Xiangqi and Wang, Ziming and Wang, Jize and Zhang, Jiajun and Li, Kaixin and Wen, Zichen and Li, Zhong and He, Conghui and Hu, Xuming and Zhang, Linfeng},
  booktitle = {Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics},
  year = {2025},
  eprint = {2505.12212},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
}

CVPR highlight

Dataset Distillation with Neural Characteristic Function: A Minmax Perspective

Shaobo Wang , Yicun Yang , Zhiyuan Liu , Chenghao Sun , Xuming Hu , Conghui He , and Linfeng Zhang

In Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition , 2025

arXiv Bib HTML PDF Code News (Chinese)

@inproceedings{wang2025dataset,
  title = {Dataset Distillation with Neural Characteristic Function: A Minmax Perspective},
  author = {Wang, Shaobo and Yang, Yicun and Liu, Zhiyuan and Sun, Chenghao and Hu, Xuming and He, Conghui and Zhang, Linfeng},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition},
  year = {2025},
  eprint = {2502.20653},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  news_zh = {https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/VtIqPF_a098qAEvrTKbi6A},
}

ICLR

Gnothi Seauton: Empowering Faithful Self-Interpretability in Black-Box Transformers

Shaobo Wang , Hongxuan Tang , Mingyang Wang , Hongrui Zhang , Xuyang Liu , Weiya Li , Xuming Hu , and Linfeng Zhang

In International Conference on Learning Representations , 2025

arXiv Bib PDF Code Link

@inproceedings{wang2025gnothi,
  title = {Gnothi Seauton: Empowering Faithful Self-Interpretability in Black-Box Transformers},
  author = {Wang, Shaobo and Tang, Hongxuan and Wang, Mingyang and Zhang, Hongrui and Liu, Xuyang and Li, Weiya and Hu, Xuming and Zhang, Linfeng},
  booktitle = {International Conference on Learning Representations},
  year = {2025},
  eprint = {2410.21815},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://openreview.net/forum?id=UvMSKonce8}
}