钱忱 · Chen Qian

Associate Professor
School of Artificial Intelligence
Shanghai Jiao Tong University

qianc62.github.io

Room 330, School of Artificial Intelligence, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Xuhui, Shanghai

Bio

My name is Chen Qian, and I am currently a tenure-track associate professor and PhD advisor of School of Artificial Intelligence, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Prior to this, I was a postdoctoral researcher in the "Shuimu Tsinghua Scholar Program" at the Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, where I worked in the Natural Language Processing Lab—THUNLP under the supervision of Professors Maosong Sun and Zhiyuan Liu. Before my postdoctoral research, I worked as an algorithm engineer at Tencent, where I was selected for the "Tech Elite" Program. I earned my PhD from School of Software, Tsinghua University in June 2021, under the guidance of Professor Lijie Wen, and my bachelor's degree from the Beijing Institute of Technology in June 2016. During my doctoral studies, I engaged as a visiting scholar at the School of Computing, National University of Singapore, mentored by Professors Tat-Seng Chua and Fuli Feng.

My research interests lie in artificial intelligence and natural language processing, with a particular focus on autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. I have published some papers in top-tier AI conferences such as NeurIPS, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, SIGIR and AAAI, where I also actively contribute to the academic community by serving as an area chair or program committee member. Additionally, we are launching the Agentic AI Lab (AAIL) — dedicated to shaping human–agent collaboration and building toward an intelligent, symbiotic future. Stay tuned for more updates!

News

2026-05
🎉 TeachMaster 2.0 is officially live!
TeachMaster 2.0 is officially live, featuring five major upgrades: minimalist lesson prep, MOOC-level visual quality, a 50% speed boost, chat-based editing, and a dedicated asset library, comprehensively doubling the efficiency of AI course creation.
📄 Paper 💻 Website
2026-05
🎉 Our AgentXRay paper is accepted by ICML'26!
📄 Paper
2026-04
🎉 Our TeachMaster paper is accepted by ACL'26 Industry Track!
📄 Paper 💻 Website
2026-02
🎉 Our "AI agent in healthcare" paper is accepted by Nature Portfolio (npj AI)!
📄 Paper
2026-02
🧪 New paper: Towards a Science of Collective AI: LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems Need a Transition from Blind Trial-and-Error to Rigorous Science
We introduce a theoretical framework that pushes LLM-based multi-agent systems from blind trial-and-error to a more rigorous, scientific paradigm for studying collective intelligence.
🔗 Paper
2026-02
🧩 New paper: AgentXRay — White-Boxing Agentic Systems via Workflow Reconstruction
We propose a new task to interpret black-box agents by reconstructing them into editable white-box workflows, making agentic systems more transparent and controllable.
🔗 Paper
2026-02
🤖 WeakAccept
Too many papers to read? WeakAccept uses AI agents like Gemini, Grok & Moltbot as automated reviewers. They debate and evaluate daily arXiv papers to help you filter the best ones. Check out their review process:
WeakAccept 🔗 Website
2026-01
🤖 TeachMaster
Introducing TeachMaster: A code-centric multi-agent framework for Generative Teaching. Our work demonstrates how autonomous agents can turn abstract pedagogical intent into curriculum-ready videos, significantly boosting production efficiency.
TeachMaster 👏🏻 We welcome contributions from the community!
🔗 Paper, Website 小红书
2026-01
🎉 ChatDev 2.0: Build Your Multi-Agent Systems with Just a Drag & Drop!
ChatDev has leveled up! The new release introduces a revolutionary "Drag + Configure" visual interface, allowing you to build complex multi-agent teams without writing a single line of code. With support for loops, infinite nesting, and decoupled control flow, you can now orchestrate everything from 3D modeling to deep research on an infinite canvas.
ChatDev 2.0 Visual Interface 👏🏻 We welcome contributions from the community!
🔗 GitHub, Paper, Twitter 小红书

Projects

Towards a Science of Collective AI

Towards a Science of Collective AI

A theoretical framework pushing LLM-based multi-agent systems from trial-and-error to rigorous science.

AgentXRay

AgentXRay

White-boxing agentic systems via workflow reconstruction for interpreting black-box agents.

WeakAccept

WeakAccept

AI-agent powered automated reviewers that debate and evaluate daily arXiv papers.

CPM

ChatDev

ChatDev: Communicative Agents for Software Development (ACL-2024)

CPM

ChatDev 2.0

Dev All through LLM-powered Multi-Agent Collaboration (Open-Source System)

CPM

TeachMaster

A teaching agent that plans and delivers lessons autonomously.

ModelCenter

Co-Learning

Experiential Co-Learning of Software-Developing Agents (ACL-2024)

EVA

MacNet

Scaling Large Language Model-based Multi-Agent Collaboration (ICLR-2025)

DHN

Puppeteer

Multi-Agent Collaboration via Evolving Orchestration (NeurIPS-2025)

SegGPT

iAgents

Autonomous Agents for Collaborative Task under Information Asymmetry (NeurIPS-2024)

PIC

Croto

Multi-Agent Software Development through Cross-Team Collaboration (ACL-2025)

BMTrain

AppCopilot

A general, accurate, long-horizon, and efficient mobile agent.

Swin Transformer

AgentVerse

AgentVerse: Facilitating Multi-Agent Collaboration and Exploring Emergent Behaviors (ICLR-2024)

VL-BERT

IoA

Internet of Agents: Weaving a Web of Heterogeneous Agents for Collaborative Intelligence (ICLR-2025)

GCNet

Optima

Optima: Optimizing Effectiveness and Efficiency for LLM-Based Multi-Agent System (ACL-2025)

DHN

AutoForm

Beyond Natural Language: LLMs Leveraging Alternative Formats for Enhanced Reasoning and Communication (EMNLP-2024)

BMTrain

Multi-Agent Research eBook

A comprehensive outline of large language model-based multi-agent research.

Selected Publications

  • ChatDev: Communicative Agents for Software Development
    Chen Qian, Wei Liu, Hongzhang Liu, Nuo Chen, Yufan Dang, Jiahao Li, Cheng Yang, Weize Chen, Yusheng Su, Xin Cong, Juyuan Xu, Dahai Li, Zhiyuan Liu, Maosong Sun
    In Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2024.

  • Experiential Co-Learning of Software-Developing Agents
    Chen Qian*, Yufan Dang*, Jiahao Li, Wei Liu, Weize Chen, Cheng Yang, Zhiyuan Liu, Maosong Sun
    In Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2024.

  • Scaling Large-Language-Model-based Multi-Agent Collaboration
    Chen Qian*, Zihao Xie*, Yifei Wang*, Wei Liu, Yufan Dang, Zhuoyun Du, Weize Chen, Cheng Yang, Zhiyuan Liu, Maosong Sun
    In International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2025.

  • Multi-Agent Collaboration via Evolving Orchestration
    Yufan Dang*, Chen Qian*, Xueheng Luo, Jingru Fan, Zihao Xie, Ruijie Shi, Weize Chen, Cheng Yang, Xiaoyin Che, Ye Tian, Xuantang Xiong, Lei Han, Zhiyuan Liu, Maosong Sun
    In Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2025.

  • Autonomous Agents for Collaborative Task under Information Asymmetry
    Wei Liu, Chenxi Wang, Yifei Wang, Zihao Xie, Rennai Qiu, Yufan Dang, Zhuoyun Du, Weize Chen, Cheng Yang, Chen Qian
    In Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2024.

  • TeachMaster: Generative Teaching via Code
    Yuheng Wang, Runde Yang, Lin Wu, Jie Zhang, Jingru Fan, Tianle Zhou, Ruoyu Fu, Huatao Li, Ruijie Shi, Siheng Chen, Weinan E, Chen Qian
    In Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2026.

  • AgentXRay: White-Boxing Agentic Systems via Workflow Reconstruction
    Ruijie Shi, Houbin Zhang, Yuecheng Han, Yuheng Wang, Jingru Fan, Runde Yang, Yufan Dang, Huatao Li, Dewen Liu, Yuan Cheng, Chen Qian
    In International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2026.

  • Multi-Agent Collaboration via Cross-Team Orchestration
    Zhuoyun Du*, Chen Qian*, Wei Liu, Zihao Xie, YiFei Wang, Rennai Qiu, Yufan Dang, Weize Chen, Cheng Yang, Ye Tian, Xuantang Xiong, Lei Han
    In Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2025.

  • MAO: A Framework for Process Model Generation with Multi-Agent Orchestration
    Leilei Lin, Yumeng Jin, Yingming Zhou, Wenlong Chen, Chen Qian
    IEEE Transactions on Services Computing (TSC), 2025.

  • AgentVerse: Facilitating Multi-Agent Collaboration and Exploring Emergent Behaviors in Agents
    Weize Chen, Yusheng Su, Jingwei Zuo, Cheng Yang, Chenfei Yuan, Chen Qian, Chi-Min Chan, Yujia Qin, Yaxi Lu, Ruobing Xie, Zhiyuan Liu, Maosong Sun, Jie Zhou
    In International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2024.

  • Internet of Agents: Weaving a Web of Heterogeneous Agents for Collaborative Intelligence
    Weize Chen, Ziming You, Ran Li, Yitong Guan, Chen Qian, Chenyang Zhao, Cheng Yang, Ruobing Xie, Zhiyuan Liu, Maosong Sun
    In International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2025.

  • Optima: Optimizing Effectiveness and Efficiency for LLM-Based Multi-Agent System
    Weize Chen, Jiarui Yuan, Chen Qian, Cheng Yang, Zhiyuan Liu, Maosong Sun
    In Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2025.

  • Beyond Natural Language: LLMs Leveraging Alternative Formats for Enhanced Reasoning and Communication
    Weize Chen, Chenfei Yuan, Jiarui Yuan, Yusheng Su, Chen Qian, Cheng Yang, Ruobing Xie, Zhiyuan Liu, Maosong Sun
    In Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP), 2024.

  • AI Agent in Healthcare: Applications, Evaluations, and Future Directions
    Lina Zhao, Shengrui Liu, Tangsiwei Xin, Jiawen Tan, Xiaoran Wang, Yafang Li, Zihao Bian, Yiyang Chen, Fanyi Kong, Jinwei Bian, Chen Qian, Zongjiu Zhang
    In npj Artificial Intelligence, 2026.

  • Towards a Science of Collective AI: LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems Need a Transition from Blind Trial-and-Error to Rigorous Science
    Jingru Fan, Dewen Liu, Yufan Dang, Huatao Li, Yuheng Wang, Wei Liu, Feiyu Duan, Xuanwen Ding, Shu Yao, Lin Wu, Ruijie Shi, Wai-Shing Leung, Yuan Cheng, Zhongyu Wei, Cheng Yang, Chen Qian, Zhiyuan Liu, Maosong Sun
    In arXiv:2602.05289, 2026.

  • AppCopilot: Toward General, Accurate, Long-Horizon, and Efficient Mobile Agent
    Jingru Fan, Yufan Dang, Jingyao Wu, Huatao Li, Runde Yang, Xiyuan Yang, Yuheng Wang, Chen Qian
    In arXiv:2509.02444, 2025.

Professional Services

2026
Area Chair: ACL-2026
Program Committee Member: ICML-2026, AAMAS-2026, NeurIPS-2026, KDD-2026, AAAI-2026, WWW-2026
Journal Referee: Nature Biomedical Engineering, TSC
2025
Area Chair: ACL-2025, EMNLP-2025
Program Committee Member: KDD-2025 (Outstanding Reviewer), ICLR-2025, AAAI-2025, ICML-2025, SIGIR-2025
Journal Referee: TOSEM, SCIS
2024
Program Committee Member: SDM-2024, CVPR-2024, IJCAI-2024, NeurIPS-2024
Journal Referee: CL
2023
Program Committee Member: ACL-2023, IJCAI-2023, KDD-2023, EMNLP-2023
2022
Program Committee Member: ACL-2022, AAAI-2022, AACL-2022, EMNLP-2022, IJCAI-2022
2021
Program Committee Member: ACL-2021, EMNLP-2021, NAACL-2021, AAAI-2021, IJCAI-2021
2020
Program Committee Member: ACL-2020, EMNLP-2020, IJCAI-2020, AACL-2020, ICSOC-2020, SIGIR-2020
Journal Referee: TSE, TMIS

Invited Talks

  • NUS NExT Workshop 2026 (NExT Workshop) PARTICIPATOR
    May 2026, National University of Singapore, Singapore
  • NUS-Google Workshop: Future of CS Education and Curriculum in the AI Era (NUS-Google Workshop) SPEAKER
    November 2025, National University of Singapore, Singapore
  • The Thirteenth China National Conference on Social Media Processing (SMP-2025) FORUM CHAIR
    November 2025, Wuhan, Hubei
  • China's Annual Academic Conference (LMG-2025) HOST
    November 2025, Chengdu, Sichuan
  • The International Conference on Machine Learning 2025 Workshop on Multi-Agent Systems (ICML-2025 Workshop on MAS) PANELIST
    July 2025, Vancouver, Canada
  • The 24th China Conference on Computational Linguistics (CCL-2025) SPEAKER
    August 2025, Jinan, Shandong
  • The 7th BAAI Conference (BAAI-2025) SPEAKER
    June 2025, Beijing
  • The 14th Chinese Conference on Business Process Management (CBPM-2024) KEYNOTE
    November 2024, Hefei, Anhui
  • Chinese Information Processing Society of China's Annual Academic Conference (CIPS-LMG-2024) SPEAKER
    November 2024, Jiaxing, Zhejiang
  • The 13th CCF International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Chinese Computing (NLPCC-2024) SPEAKER
    November 2024, Hangzhou, Zhejiang
  • The 12th Social Media Processing Conference (SMP-2024) SPEAKER
    October 2024, Xinxiang, Henan
  • The 23rd China National Conference on Computational Linguistics (CCL-2024) SPEAKER
    August 2024, Taiyuan, Shanxi
  • The 6th BAAI Conference (BAAI-2024) SPEAKER
    June 2024, Beijing
  • The 21st Young Scholars Symposium on NLP (YSSNLP-2024) SPEAKERPANELIST
    June 2024, Kunming, Yunnan
  • CCF Advanced Disciplines Lectures (CCF-ADL) SPEAKER
    May 2024, Beijing
  • 2024 China Generative AI Conference (GenAICon-2024) SPEAKER
    April 2024, Beijing
  • ZGC Forum: Large Model Intelligent Application Conference SPEAKER
    January 2024, Beijing
  • Huawei Future Applications Forum SPEAKER
    December 2023, Xiamen, Fujian
  • Qiyuan Lab "Four Seasons Green" Forum HOST
    November 2023, Beijing
  • The 11th Social Media Processing Conference (SMP-2023) SPEAKER
    November 2023, Hefei, Anhui

Teaching

LECTURER

Data Structure (Honor)

Undergraduate Students
Spring Semester 2026
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
SPEAKER

Natural Language Processing

Graduate Students
Spring Semester 2025
Tsinghua University
SPEAKER

Introduction to Large Language Models

Graduate Students
Fall Semester 2024
Online

Join Us

We invite passionate individuals to join us in advancing cutting-edge research in Natural Language Processing, Large Language Model, Autonomous Agent, Multi-Agent Collaboration and Collective Intelligence. Whether you are an Undergraduate, or aiming to pursue a Master's degree, PhD, Postdoctoral Research, or work as a Research Assistant or Engineer, we welcome you to be part of our journey (approximately 3 PhD and 1 Master’s opening for the Class of 2027). Here, you'll have the opportunity to contribute to innovative projects in an inspiring, supportive, and collaborative environment that fosters creativity and professional growth.

Feel free to reach out via email