--- title: "Tiancheng Zhao — author profile and papers · Dialogue systems" description: "Tiancheng Zhao, Northeastern University: 3 papers on Elamur Research (2017–2019), h-index 19 — affiliations, topics, co-authors and who…" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/tiancheng-zhao/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/tiancheng-zhao/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [authors](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/) / Tiancheng Zhao # Tiancheng Zhao Tiancheng Zhao has 3 papers in our library, in 2017–2019, most of them on [Dialogue systems](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/dialogue-systems/), [Discourse analysis](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/discourse-analysis/); often with [Maxine Eskenazi](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/maxine-eskenazi/), [Chenyan Xiong](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/chenyan-xiong/), [Eric Xing](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/eric-xing/). 3 papers in our library · 2017–2019 [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/A5114246802) · [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7443-0666) · [**h-index 19**](https://openalex.org/authors/A5114246802) · [68 works](https://openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5114246802) · [2,253 citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5114246802&sort=cited_by_count:desc) OpenAlex, 2026-10-14 [📄 3 works in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/tiancheng-zhao/#papers) · [🔗 Cited 382 times in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/tiancheng-zhao/cited-by/) · [⭐ Paper Stars ranking: #1784](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/paper-stars/page/18/#star-1784) The profile is the library's match of the name; two people with one name are not always told apart. Elsewhere: [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=search_authors&mauthors=Tiancheng+Zhao) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/search?q=Tiancheng+Zhao) · [dblp](https://dblp.org/search?q=Tiancheng+Zhao) · [ACL Anthology](https://aclanthology.org/search/?q=Tiancheng+Zhao) ## Affiliations [🎓**Georgia Institute of Technology** Atlanta · United States 2025–2026 · 2 papers*current*](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/georgia-institute-of-technology/) · [🎓**Saint Louis University** St Louis · United States 2022–2026 · 2 papers*current*](https://ror.org/01p7jjy08) · [🎓**Northeastern University** Boston · United States 2026 · 1 paper*current*](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/northeastern-university/) · [🎓**Carnegie Mellon University** Pittsburgh · United States 2015–2022 · 32 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/carnegie-mellon-university/) · [🎓**Zhejiang University** Hangzhou · China 2022–2025 · 8 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/zhejiang-university/) · [🎓**University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign** Urbana · United States 2020–2022 · 4 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-illinois-urbana-champaign/) · [🎓**Nanjing Normal University** Nanjing · China 2025 · 2 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/nanjing-normal-university/) · [🎓**Nanjing Xiaozhuang University** Nanjing · China 2025 · 2 papers](https://ror.org/03fnv7n42) · [🏢**Jilin Electric Power Research Institute** Changchun · China 2022 · 2 papers](https://ror.org/03pw0zs24) · [🎓**Beijing Normal University** Beijing · China 2016–2017 · 2 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/beijing-normal-university/) From the bylines of their papers (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14), ORCID and Wikidata; institutions on papers are matched by machine. 3 more institutions on single bylines are not listed. ## Concepts, shelves and topics Of its works in our library: the number of works on each and its rating among them. 📚 Shelves 4 The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).[Artificial Intelligence · 3 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/computer-science/artificial-intelligence/) · [Arts and Humanities · 3 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/) · [Computer Science · 3 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/computer-science/) · [Language and Linguistics · 3 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/language-and-linguistics/) 🧭 Topics 2 Research subjects and languages the work is about.[Dialogue systems · 2 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/dialogue-systems/) · [Discourse analysis · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/discourse-analysis/) ## Works by year ### 2010s [**2019** 2 papers Tiancheng Zhao's papers of 2019](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/tiancheng-zhao/year/2019/) · [**2017** 1 paper Learning Discourse-level Diversity for Neural Dialog Models using Conditional Variational Autoencoders](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/zhao-2017-learning-discourse-level-diversity-neural/) ## Papers The most cited first (OpenAlex and our library). 1. **[Learning Discourse-level Diversity for Neural Dialog Models using Conditional Variational Autoencoders](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/zhao-2017-learning-discourse-level-diversity-neural/)** *(2017 · 990 citations)* Neural encoder-decoder dialog models trained with MLE tend to produce bland, generic replies such as "I don't know." Earlier fixes mostly worked at the word level, for example through decoding tricks. 2. **[Rethinking Action Spaces for Reinforcement Learning in End-to-end Dialog Agents with Latent Variable Models](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/zhao-2019-rethinking-action-spaces-reinforcement-learning/)** *(2019 · 168 citations)* Applying reinforcement learning to end-to-end dialog agents is hard because the action space is usually either a set of handcrafted dialog acts, which does not scale to complex domains, or the full output vocabulary. 3. **[Target-Guided Open-Domain Conversation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/tang-2019-target-guided-open-domain-conversation/)** *(2019 · 166 citations)* The paper asks how an open-domain chatbot can pursue a goal: talk naturally with a person while steering the dialogue toward a hidden target word, such as "e-books" or "McDonald's". ## Co-authors here 7 co-authors with a page, the most papers together first. - [Maxine Eskenazi](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/maxine-eskenazi/) ×2 - [Chenyan Xiong](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/chenyan-xiong/) - [Eric Xing](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/eric-xing/) - [Jianheng Tang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/jianheng-tang/) - [Kaige Xie](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/kaige-xie/) - [Xiaodan Liang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/xiaodan-liang/) - [Zhiting Hu](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/zhiting-hu/) ## Venues Where their works here were published, the most works first, with the editions of those that have a page. - [Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/acl/) ×2: [ACL 2019](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/acl/2019/), [ACL 2017](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/acl/2017/) - [Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (NAACL)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/naacl/): [NAACL 2019](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/naacl/2019/) ## Cited by Papers of our library cite their works 382 times (of the 141,840 papers whose bibliographies we read); [25 citing papers with a page here →](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/tiancheng-zhao/cited-by/). Updated 24 October 2026