---
title: "Zonghai Yao — author profile and papers — Elamur Research"
description: "Zonghai Yao, University of Massachusetts Lowell: 6 papers on Elamur Research (2023–2026), h-index 10 — affiliations, topics, co-authors…"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/zonghai-yao/"
---
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# Zonghai Yao

Zonghai Yao has 6 papers in our library, in 2023–2026, most of them on [Language models & pretraining](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/language-models/), [Question answering](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/question-answering/), [Evaluation & benchmarks](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/evaluation-benchmarks/); often with [Hong Yu](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/hong-yu/), [Feiyun Ouyang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/feiyun-ouyang/), [Junda Wang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/junda-wang/).

6 papers in our library · 2023–2026

[OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/A5012790041) · [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5707-8410) · [**h-index 10**](https://openalex.org/authors/A5012790041) · [101 works](https://openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5012790041) · [375 citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5012790041&sort=cited_by_count:desc) OpenAlex, 2026-10-14

[📄 6 works in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/zonghai-yao/#papers) · [🔗 Cited 49 times in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/zonghai-yao/cited-by/) · [2 more in our library without a page yet](#also) · [⭐ Paper Stars ranking: #7515](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/paper-stars/page/76/#star-7515)

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=Zonghai+Yao) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/search?q=Zonghai+Yao) · [dblp](https://dblp.org/search?q=Zonghai+Yao) · [ACL Anthology](https://aclanthology.org/search/?q=Zonghai+Yao)

## Affiliations

[🎓**University of Massachusetts Amherst** Amherst Center · United States 2020–2026 · 77 papersEmployment*current*](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-massachusetts-amherst/) · [🔬**Center for Health Optimization and Implementation Research** Bedford · United States 2025–2026 · 14 papers*current*](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/labs/center-for-health-optimization-and-implementation-research/) · [🎓**University of Massachusetts Lowell** Lowell · United States 2025–2026 · 5 papers*current*](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-massachusetts-lowell/) · [🎓**Amherst College** Amherst Center · United States 2024–2026 · 3 papers*current*](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/amherst-college/) · [🏥**Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital** Bedford · United States 2025–2026 · 2 papers*current*](https://ror.org/015nymp25) · [🏥**VA New England Healthcare System** Bedford · United States 2025–2026 · 2 papers*current*](https://ror.org/00s61s029) · [🔬**Center for the Study of Healthcare Provider Behavior** Los Angeles · United States 2026 · 1 paper*current*](https://ror.org/04thxh256) · [🎓**Fudan University** Shanghai · China 2023–2024 · 3 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/fudan-university/) · [🎓**University of Minnesota** Minneapolis · United States 2023–2024 · 3 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-minnesota/)

From the bylines of their papers (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14), ORCID and Wikidata; institutions on papers are matched by machine. 4 more institutions on single bylines are not listed.

## Fields, topics and concepts

Of its works in our library, with the number of works on each.

📚 Shelves 13 The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).[Computer Science · 5 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/computer-science/) · [Medicine · 4 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/medicine/) · [Health Informatics · 4 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/medicine/health-informatics/) · [Artificial Intelligence · 5 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/) · [Health Professions · 2 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/health-professions/) · [Language and Linguistics · 3 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/language-and-linguistics/) · [Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · 2 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/computer-science/computer-vision-and-pattern-recognition/) · [Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/) · [General Health Professions · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/health-professions/general-health-professions/) · [Molecular Biology · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/molecular-biology/) · [Information Systems · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/computer-science/information-systems/) · [Health Information Management · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/health-professions/health-information-management/)

🧭 Topics 5 Research subjects and languages the work is about.[Question answering · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/question-answering/) · [Evaluation & benchmarks · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/evaluation-benchmarks/) · [Information retrieval & search · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/information-retrieval/) · [Language models & pretraining · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/language-models/) · [Reasoning · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/reasoning/)

## Works by year

### 2020s

[**2026** 3 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/zonghai-yao/year/2026/) · [**2025** 2 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/zonghai-yao/year/2025/) · [**2023** 1 paper](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/zonghai-yao/year/2023/)

## Papers

The most cited first (OpenAlex and our library).

1. **[PaniniQA: Enhancing Patient Education Through Interactive Question Answering](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/cai-2023-paniniqa-enhancing-patient-education-through/)** *(2023 · 24 citations)* Patients leaving hospital often struggle to grasp or remember their discharge instructions, and their misreadings usually go uncorrected. PaniniQA addresses this with a chatbot that quizzes patients about their own instructions. It follows the Prompt–Evaluate–Expand–Repeat (P.E.E.R.) cycle from Dialogic Reading.
2. **[RARE: Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning Enhancement for Large Language Models](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/tran-2025-rare-retrieval-augmented-reasoning-enhancement/)** *(2025 · 20 citations)* Answering knowledge-heavy questions, especially in medicine, requires both several reasoning steps and facts that a pretrained model may lack or hold only in outdated form.
3. **[Knowing When to Abstain: Medical LLMs Under Clinical Uncertainty](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/machcha-2026-knowing-when-abstain-medical-llms/)** *(2026 · 9 citations)* Benchmarks for medical LLMs mostly reward correct answers. They rarely check whether a model should have declined to respond. The authors present MedAbstain, a benchmark and evaluation protocol for uncertainty and abstention in medical multiple-choice QA. They argue this discrete-choice format also models action…
4. **[From Scores to Steps: Diagnosing and Improving LLM Performance in Evidence-Based Medical Calculations](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/wang-2025-scores-steps-diagnosing-improving-llm/)** *(2025 · 5 citations)* LLMs are increasingly considered for clinical decision support, yet their skill at medical calculations, such as GFR or cardiovascular risk scores, is poorly measured.
5. **[MedQA-CS: Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE)-Style Benchmark for Evaluating LLM Clinical Skills](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/yao-2026-medqa-cs-objective-structured-clinical/)** *(2026 · 3 citations)* Most medical LLM benchmarks, such as MedQA, rely on multiple-choice questions. These test what a model knows but not whether it can carry out a patient encounter. MedQA-CS fills this gap with an AI-SCE benchmark modeled on the OSCE format of the USMLE Step 2 CS exam, targeting the "shows how" tier of Miller's Pyramid.
6. **[Exploiting Tree Structure for Credit Assignment in Reinforcement Learning with Large Language Models](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/tran-2026-exploiting-tree-structure-credit-assignment/)** *(2026)* Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards improves LLM reasoning, but a single outcome reward at the end of a long chain makes it hard to tell which tokens mattered.

## All works

8 works of theirs in our library, the most cited first; 6 with a page here, the others link their original until we summarise them.

1. **[PaniniQA: Enhancing Patient Education Through Interactive Question Answering](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/cai-2023-paniniqa-enhancing-patient-education-through/) [Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics (TACL)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/tacl/)**Pengshan Cai, Zonghai Yao, Fei Liu, et al.*2023 · 24 citations*
2. **[RARE: Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning Enhancement for Large Language Models](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/tran-2025-rare-retrieval-augmented-reasoning-enhancement/) [Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/acl/)**Hieu Tran, Zonghai Yao, Zhichao Yang, et al.*2025 · 20 citations*
3. **[Improving Formality Style Transfer with Context-Aware Rule Injection ↗](https://aclanthology.org/2021.acl-long.124/) Proceedings of the 59th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and the 11th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing (Volume 1: Long Papers) · no summary yet**Zonghai Yao, Hong Yu*2021 · 20 citations*
4. **[Knowing When to Abstain: Medical LLMs Under Clinical Uncertainty](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/machcha-2026-knowing-when-abstain-medical-llms/) [Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/eacl/)**Sravanthi Machcha, Sushrita Yerra, Sahil Gupta, et al.*2026 · 9 citations*
5. **[From Scores to Steps: Diagnosing and Improving LLM Performance in Evidence-Based Medical Calculations](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/wang-2025-scores-steps-diagnosing-improving-llm/) [Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/emnlp/)**Benlu Wang, Iris Xia, Yifan Zhang, et al.*2025 · 5 citations*
6. **[MedQA-CS: Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE)-Style Benchmark for Evaluating LLM Clinical Skills](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/yao-2026-medqa-cs-objective-structured-clinical/) [Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/eacl/)**Zonghai Yao, Zihao Zhang, Chaolong Tang, et al.*2026 · 3 citations*
7. **[Exploiting Tree Structure for Credit Assignment in Reinforcement Learning with Large Language Models](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/tran-2026-exploiting-tree-structure-credit-assignment/) [Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/findings/)**Hieu Tran, Zonghai Yao, Hong yu*2026*
8. **[LLM-Based Multi-Agent Systems for Clinical Workflows: A Survey of AI Hospitals ↗](https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.2123/) Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) · no summary yet**Zonghai Yao, Hong yu*2026*

## Co-authors here

12 of 15 co-authors with a page, the most papers together first.

- [Hong Yu](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/hong-yu/) ×6
- [Feiyun Ouyang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/feiyun-ouyang/) ×3
- [Junda Wang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/junda-wang/) ×3
- [Hieu Tran](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/hieu-tran/) ×2
- [Huixue Zhou](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/huixue-zhou/) ×2
- [Shuo Han](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/shuo-han/) ×2
- [Yifan Zhang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/yifan-zhang/) ×2
- [Zhichao Yang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/zhichao-yang/) ×2
- [Arman Cohan](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/arman-cohan/)
- [Benlu Wang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/benlu-wang/)
- [Dakuo Wang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/dakuo-wang/)
- [Fei Liu](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/fei-liu/)

## 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 2025](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/acl/2025/)
- [Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/eacl/) ×2: [EACL 2026](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/eacl/2026/) ×2
- [Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/emnlp/): [EMNLP 2025](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/emnlp/2025/)
- [Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/findings/): [Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics 2026](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/findings/2026/)
- [Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics (TACL)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/tacl/): [Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics (TACL) 2023](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/tacl/2023/)
- Proceedings of the 59th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and the 11th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing (Volume 1: Long Papers)

## Cited by

Papers of our library cite their works 49 times (of the 149,439 papers whose bibliographies we read); [8 citing papers with a page here →](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/zonghai-yao/cited-by/).

Updated 1 November 2026