Licheng Zong @ CUHK

Licheng Zong (宗理成)

I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK-CSE), advised by Prof. Yu Li.

I obtained my Bachelor's degree from Xi'an Jiaotong University in 2021. Before that, I graduated from Hefei No.1 High School in 2014.

I'm also a Visiting Fellow at EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), working with Dr. Robert Finn and University of Bath, working with Dr. Jiawei Wang.

Email: zolich729ATgmail.com

Google Scholar / GitHub / DBLP / ORCID

News

[Jun. 2025] I passed my Ph.D. Oral Defence!

[May. 2025] Oral Presentation at Wolfson Research Event of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge.

[Feb. 2025] Invited Talk by CSSA Cambridge, University of Cambridge.

[Nov. 2024] Poster Presentation of SeRTS at EMNLP 2024.

[Sep. 2024] SeRTS accepted by EMNLP 2024.

[Sep. 2024] Oral Presentation at the BioASQ workshop of CLEF 2024.

[Jun. 2024] Started visiting at EMBL-EBI and University of Cambridge.

[Jun. 2024] One paper accepted by BioASQ workshop of CLEF 2024.

[Apr. 2024] Won the Silver Poster Award at Advancing Health with AI by Nature Conferences.

[Feb. 2024] ProNet DB was accepted by Database.

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering	Aug. 2021-Jun. 2025
Chinese University of Hong Kong \| Hong Kong SAR
Visiting Ph.D. student at Wolfson College	Jun. 2024-May. 2025
Univeristy of Cambridge \| Cambridge
B.E. in Automation Science and Technology	Aug. 2017 - Jul. 2021
Xi'an Jiaotong University \| Xi'an, Shaanxi

Publications (*equal contribution, ^#corresponding)

9.	SeRTS: Self-Rewarding Tree Search for Biomedical Retrieval-Augmented Generation
	Minda Hu, Licheng Zong, Hongru Wang, Jingyan Zhou, Jingjing Li, Yichen Gao, Kam-Fai Wong, Yu Li, Irwin King Findings of The 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP)**, 2024 [Paper] \| [BIB]

8.	Enhancing Biomedical Question Answering with Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning and Hierarchical Retrieval Augmented Generation
	Yichen Gao, Licheng Zong, Yu Li^# BioASQ Workshop of the Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum (CLEF)**, 2024 [Paper] \| [BIB]

7.	ProNet DB: A proteome-wise database for protein surface property representations and RNA-binding profiles
	Junkang Wei, Siyuan Chen, Jin Xiao, Licheng Zong, Xin Gao^#, Yu Li^# Database: The Journal of Biological Databases and Curation*, 2024 [Paper] \| [Web Server] \| [BIB]

6.	AcrNET: Predicting Anti-CRISPR with Deep Learning
	Yunxiang Li, Yumeng Wei, Sheng Xu, Qingxiong Tan, Licheng Zong, Jiuming Wang, Yixuan Wang, Jiayang Chen, Liang Hong, Yu Li^# Bioinformatics, 2023 [Paper] \| [Codes] \| [Web Server] \| [BIB]

5.	Interpretable RNA Foundation Model from Unannotated Data for Highly Accurate RNA Structure and Function Predictions
	Jiayang Chen, Zhihang Hu, Siqi Sun^#, Qingxiong Tan, Yixuan Wang, Qinze Yu, Licheng Zong, Liang Hong, Jin Xiao, Tao Shen, Irwin King, Yu Li^# ICML Workshop on Computational Biology, 2022 [Paper] \| [Codes] \| [Web Server] \| [BIB] Covered by [Synced (机器之心, in Chinese)]

4.	Self-supervised contrastive learning for integrative single cell RNA-seq data analysis
	Wenkai Han, Yuqi Cheng, Jiayang Chen, Huawen Zhong, Zhihang Hu, Siyuan Chen, Licheng Zong, Liang Hong, Ting Fung Chan, Irwin King, Xin Gao^#, Yu Li^# Briefings in Bioinformatics*, Volume 23, Issue 5, Sep 2022 [Paper] \| [Codes] \| [BIB]

3.	Protein-RNA interaction prediction with deep learning: Structure matters
	Junkang Wei, Siyuan Chen, Licheng Zong, Xin Gao^#, Yu Li^# Briefings in Bioinformatics*, Volume 23, Issue 1, Jan 2022 [Paper] \| [BIB]

2.	HMD-AMP: Protein Language-Powered Hierarchical Multi-label Deep Forest for Annotating Antimicrobial Peptides
	Qinze Yu, Zhihang Dong, Xingyu Fan, Licheng Zong, Yu Li^# arXiv Preprint, 2021 [Paper] \| [BIB]

1.	Model Adaption Object Detection System for Robot
	Jingwen Fu, Licheng Zong, Yinbing Li, Ke Li, Bingqian Yang, Xibei Liu 39th Chinese Control Conference (CCC), 2020 [Paper] \| [BIB]

Teaching

TA - AIST4010: Foundation of applied deep learning	Spring 2024
TA - AIST4010: Foundation of applied deep learning	Spring 2023
TA - AIST1000: Introduction to artificial intelligence and machine learning	Fall 2022
TA - AIST4010: Foundation of applied deep learning	Spring 2022
TA - BMEG3105: Data analytics for personalized genomics and precision medicine	Fall 2021

Honors and Awards

Full Postgraduate Studentship \| The Chinese Univeristy of Hong Kong	2021
Excellent Graduate \| Xi'an Jiaotong University	2021
Excellent Student \| Xi'an Jiaotong University	2018, 2019, 2020
First Prize \| National College Robot Competition (ROBOCON)	2019
Meritorious Winner \| MCM/ICM Contest in Modeling	2019

Updated Jun. 2025