Bio

I am a PhD candidate at the UC Santa Cruz working with Prof. Yi Zhang. I received my Bachelor's degree in Computer Science with a Statistics minor from UC Santa Cruz. I'm currently a Student Researcher at Google DeepMind.

My research aims to empower AI systems with advanced reasoning capabilities. I work at the intersection of the following topics:
  • Complex Planning and Reasoning: My research aims to solve real-world problems, which often require multi-step reasoning and actions.
  • Multi-agent Collaboration: I work on MAS (multi-agent systems), so my study also includes how agents coordinate, communicate, and share information.
  • Information Retrieval: I conduct research on, but not limited to, RAG with LLM; broadly speaking, I care about Retrieval-Augmented AI.

News

Experience

  • Google DeepMind: Student Researcher, 2025
  • Amazon Alexa: Applied Scientist Intern, 2023
  • Mineral.ai, an Alphabet company, previous Google[X] project: AI Resident, 2023, 2024

Services

Reviewer:
  NeurIPS 2023
  TheWebConf (WWW) 2024, CVPR 2024, ICML 2024, NeurIPS 2024
  ECIR 2025, ICLR 2025, ICML 2025, SIGIR 2025, ACL 2025, NeurIPS 2025
  Knowledge-Based Systems

Event Organizer:
  Co-organized the tools-meet-llm tutorial at ACM SIGIR 2024.
  Co-chair and organizer of the 1st AI Student Research Symposium at UC Santa Cruz.

Teaching assistant:
  Programming Abstractions 2022
  Advanced Topics in Natural Language Processing 2023
  Applied Machine Learning: Deep Learning 2023, 2024

Selected Publications

Full publication list can be found on Google Scholar page. (* indicates equal contribution).

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GenIR: Generative Visual Feedback for Mental Image Retrieval
Diji Yang*, Minghao Liu*, Chung-Hsiang Lo, Yi Zhang, James Davis
arXiv:2506.06220 [Paper] [Code]

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Knowing You Don't Know: Learning When to Continue Search in Multi-round RAG through Self-Practicing
Diji Yang, Linda Zeng, Jinmeng Rao, Yi Zhang
SIGIR 2025 [Paper] [Code]

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Right this way: Can VLMs Guide Us to See More to Answer Questions?
Li Liu*, Diji Yang*, Sijia Zhong, Kalyana Suma Sree Tholeti, Lei Ding, Yi Zhang, Leilani H. Gilpin
NeurIPS 2024 [Paper] [Code] [Dataset]

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IM-RAG: Multi-Round Retrieval-Augmented Generation Through Learning Inner Monologues
Diji Yang, Jinmeng Rao, Kezhen Chen, Xiaoyuan Guo, Yawen Zhang, Jie Yang, Yi Zhang
SIGIR 2024 [Paper]

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Tackling vision language tasks through learning inner monologues
Diji Yang, Jinmeng Rao, Kezhen Chen, Xiaoyuan Guo, Yawen Zhang, Jie Yang, Yi Zhang
AAAI 2024 [Paper]

Get Connected

I am always interested in working with new collaborators from all backgrounds on research ideas and/or impactful projects related to my areas of interest. That being said, I commit the sufficient time to each project I take on, so my availability for new projects may depends on current commitments.

If you’re interested in collaborating, feel free to send me an email to find a time to chat!