I'm a research scientist at Google DeepMind.

I did my Ph.D. at UC San Diego, working with Prof. Julian McAuley. I obtained my M.E. and B.E. from Renmin University of China, advised by Prof. Wayne Xin Zhao. My research interests focus on generative recommendation, semantic IDs, tokenization, and large language models.

Selected Publication [Full]

† denotes equal contribution, # denotes corresponding author

2026

• Expressiveness Limits of Autoregressive Semantic ID Generation in Generative Recommendation.

  Yupeng Hou, Haven Kim, Clark Mingxuan Ju, Eduardo Escoto, Neil Shah, Julian McAuley.

  preprint, arxiv:2605.06331. [paper] [code] [bib]

  
  

  @article{hou2026latte,
    title={Expressiveness Limits of Autoregressive Semantic ID Generation in Generative Recommendation},
    author={Yupeng Hou and Haven Kim and Clark Mingxuan Ju and Eduardo Escoto and Neil Shah and Julian McAuley},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.06331},
    year={2026}
  }
                      

• How Well Does Generative Recommendation Generalize?

  Yijie Ding, Zitian Guo, Jiacheng Li, Letian Peng, Shuai Shao, Wei Shao, Xiaoqiang Luo, Luke Simon, Jingbo Shang, Julian McAuley, Yupeng Hou^#.

  KDD 2026 [paper] [code] [bib] Oral

  
  

  @inproceedings{ding2026generalize,
    title={How Well Does Generative Recommendation Generalize?},
    author={Yijie Ding and Zitian Guo and Jiacheng Li and Letian Peng and Shuai Shao and Wei Shao and Xiaoqiang Luo and Luke Simon and Jingbo Shang and Julian McAuley and Yupeng Hou},
    booktitle={{KDD}},
    year={2026}
  }
                      

  Accepted at KDD 2026 under its original title, "On the Memorization and Generalization of Generative Recommendation".

• Bridging Language and Items for Retrieval and Recommendation: Benchmarking LLMs as Semantic Encoders.

  Yupeng Hou^†, Jiacheng Li^†, Xiangjun Fu^†, Zhankui He, An Yan, Xiusi Chen, Julian McAuley.

  ACL 2026 [paper] [code] [bib] Oral

  
  

  @inproceedings{hou2026bridging,
    title={Bridging Language and Items for Retrieval and Recommendation},
    author={Hou, Yupeng and Li, Jiacheng and He, Zhankui and Yan, An and Chen, Xiusi and McAuley, Julian},
    booktitle={{ACL}},
    year={2026}
  }
                      

  Amazon Reviews 2023 Dataset. [page] [🤗 HF] [code]

2025

• ActionPiece: Contextually Tokenizing Action Sequences for Generative Recommendation.

  Yupeng Hou, Jianmo Ni, Zhankui He, Noveen Sachdeva, Wang-Cheng Kang, Ed H. Chi, Julian McAuley, Derek Zhiyuan Cheng.

  ICML 2025 [paper] [code] [poster] [bib] Spotlight

  
  

  @inproceedings{hou2025actionpiece,
    title={{ActionPiece}: Contextually Tokenizing Action Sequences for Generative Recommendation},
    author={Yupeng Hou and Jianmo Ni and Zhankui He and Noveen Sachdeva and Wang-Cheng Kang and Ed H. Chi and Julian McAuley and Derek Zhiyuan Cheng},
    booktitle={{ICML}},
    year={2025}
  }
                      

• Generating Long Semantic IDs in Parallel for Recommendation.

  Yupeng Hou, Jiacheng Li, Ashley Shin, Jinsung Jeon, Abhishek Santhanam, Wei Shao, Kaveh Hassani, Ning Yao, Julian McAuley.

  KDD 2025 [paper] [code] [poster] [slides] [bib]

  
  

  @inproceedings{hou2025rpg,
    title={Generating Long Semantic IDs in Parallel for Recommendation},
    author={Yupeng Hou and Jiacheng Li and Ashley Shin and Jinsung Jeon and Abhishek Santhanam and Wei Shao and Kaveh Hassani and Ning Yao and Julian McAuley},
    booktitle={{KDD}},
    year={2025}
  }
                      

2024

• Adapting Large Language Models by Integrating Collaborative Semantics for Recommendation.

  Bowen Zheng, Yupeng Hou, Hongyu Lu, Yu Chen, Wayne Xin Zhao, Ji-Rong Wen.

  ICDE 2024 [paper] [code] [bib]

  
  

  @inproceedings{zheng2024lcrec,
    title={Adapting Large Language Models by Integrating Collaborative Semantics for Recommendation},
    author={Bowen Zheng and Yupeng Hou and Hongyu Lu and Yu Chen and Wayne Xin Zhao and Ji-Rong Wen},
    booktitle={{ICDE}},
    year={2024}
  }
                      

• Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Rankers for Recommender Systems.

  Yupeng Hou^†, Junjie Zhang^†, Zihan Lin, Hongyu Lu, Ruobing Xie, Julian McAuley, Wayne Xin Zhao.

  ECIR 2024 [paper] [code] [bib]

  
  

  @inproceedings{hou2024llmrank,
    title={Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Rankers for Recommender Systems},
    author={Yupeng Hou and Junjie Zhang and Zihan Lin and Hongyu Lu and Ruobing Xie and Julian McAuley and Wayne Xin Zhao},
    booktitle={{ECIR}},
    year={2024}
  }
                      

2023

• Learning Vector-Quantized Item Representation for Transferable Sequential Recommenders.

  Yupeng Hou, Zhankui He, Julian McAuley, Wayne Xin Zhao.

  WWW 2023 [paper] [code] [bib]

  
  

  @inproceedings{hou2023vqrec,
    author = {Yupeng Hou and Zhankui He and Julian McAuley and Wayne Xin Zhao},
    title = {Learning Vector-Quantized Item Representation for Transferable Sequential Recommenders},
    booktitle={{WWW}},
    year = {2023}
  }
                      

2022

• Towards Universal Sequence Representation Learning for Recommender Systems.

  Yupeng Hou^†, Shanlei Mu^†, Wayne Xin Zhao, Yaliang Li, Bolin Ding, Ji-Rong Wen.

  KDD 2022 [paper] [code] [poster] [slides] [bib]

  
  

  @inproceedings{hou2022unisrec,
    author = {Yupeng Hou and Shanlei Mu and Wayne Xin Zhao and Yaliang Li and Bolin Ding and Ji-Rong Wen},
    title = {Towards Universal Sequence Representation Learning for Recommender Systems},
    booktitle = {{KDD}},
    year = {2022}
  }
                      

• RecBole 2.0: Towards a More Up-to-Date Recommendation Library.

  Wayne Xin Zhao, Yupeng Hou^†, Xingyu Pan^†, Chen Yang, Zeyu Zhang, Zihan Lin, Jingsen Zhang, Shuqing Bian, Jiakai Tang, Wenqi Sun, Yushuo Chen, Lanling Xu, Gaowei Zhang, Zhen Tian, Changxin Tian, Shanlei Mu, Xinyan Fan, Xu Chen, Ji-Rong Wen.

  CIKM 2022 Resource Track. [paper] [GitHub] [poster] [slides] [bib] Best Resource Paper Runner-up.

  
  

  @inproceedings{zhao2022recbole2,
    title={RecBole 2.0: Towards a More Up-to-Date Recommendation Library},
    author={Wayne Xin Zhao and Yupeng Hou and Xingyu Pan and Chen Yang and Zeyu Zhang and Zihan Lin and Jingsen Zhang and Shuqing Bian and Jiakai Tang and Wenqi Sun and Yushuo Chen and Lanling Xu and Gaowei Zhang and Zhen Tian and Changxin Tian and Shanlei Mu and Xinyan Fan and Xu Chen and Ji-Rong Wen},
    booktitle={{CIKM}},
    year={2022}
  }
                      

• Modeling Two-Way Selection Preference for Person-Job Fit.

  Chen Yang, Yupeng Hou, Yang Song, Tao Zhang, Ji-Rong Wen, Wayne Xin Zhao.

  RecSys 2022 [paper] [code] [bib] Best Student Paper Runner-up.

  
  

  @inproceedings{yang2022dpgnn,
    author = {Chen Yang and Yupeng Hou and Yang Song and Tao Zhang and Ji-Rong Wen and Wayne Xin Zhao},
    title = {Modeling Two-Way Selection Preference for Person-Job Fit},
    booktitle = {{RecSys}},
    year = {2022}
  }
                      

2021

• RecBole: Towards a Unified, Comprehensive and Efficient Framework for Recommendation Algorithms.

  Wayne Xin Zhao, Shanlei Mu^†, Yupeng Hou^†, Zihan Lin, Kaiyuan Li, Yushuo Chen, Yujie Lu, Hui Wang, Changxin Tian, Xingyu Pan, Yingqian Min, Zhichao Feng, Xinyan Fan, Xu Chen, Pengfei Wang, Wendi Ji, Yaliang Li, Xiaoling Wang, Ji-Rong Wen.

  CIKM 2021 Resource Track. [paper] [website] [GitHub] [datasets] [bib]

  
  

  @inproceedings{zhao2021recbole,
    author = {Zhao, Wayne Xin and Mu, Shanlei and Hou, Yupeng and Lin, Zihan and Chen, Yushuo and Pan, Xingyu and Li, Kaiyuan and Lu, Yujie and Wang, Hui and Tian, Changxin and Min, Yingqian and Feng, Zhichao and Fan, Xinyan and Chen, Xu and Wang, Pengfei and Ji, Wendi and Li, Yaliang and Wang, Xiaoling and Wen, Ji-Rong},
    title = {RecBole: Towards a Unified, Comprehensive and Efficient Framework for Recommendation Algorithms},
    year = {2021},
    booktitle = {{CIKM}},
  }
                      

Open Source Project

Education

• Ph.D., University of California, San Diego

  2023 - 2026, Computer Science & Engineering
  Advisor: Prof. Julian McAuley

  
• M.E., Renmin University of China

  2020 - 2023, Gaoling School of Artificial Intelligence
  Valedictorian
  Advisor: Prof. Wayne Xin Zhao

  
• B.E., Renmin University of China

  2016 - 2020, School of Information

Service

• Web Chair @ DSAA 2024
• Co-organizing Personalized Generative AI @ CIKM 2023.
• Program Committee / Conference Reviewer: ICML (2024-2026; 2026 Golden Reviewer Award), ICLR (2024-2026), NeurIPS (2023-2026), KDD (2022-2026), WWW (2024-2025), SIGIR (2023-2025), RecSys (2023-2025), ACL Rolling Review (ARR) (May 2026, Jan 2026, Oct 2025, Oct 2024), AISTATS (2025), AAAI (2023-2026), CIKM (2024), SDM (2024), LoG (2022-2024), SIGIR-AP (2023-2024), EMNLP (2023), ECML-PKDD (2022-2023), WSDM (2022), and Workshops & Symposiums.
GenAIRecP @ KDD 2025 & KDD 2024, GENNEXT @ SIGIR 2025, LLM4Good @ UMAP 2025, SoCal NLP 2024, PGAI @ CIKM 2023
• Journal Reviewer: ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), TKDE, TOIS, TORS, TKDD, TIST, IPM, TALLIP.

Award

• Wu Yuzhang Scholarship (the highest honor for RUC students, 10 per year), Renmin Univ. of China, 2023.
• National Scholarship, Ministry of Education of China, 2022.
• Star of the Graduates (10 per year), Renmin Univ. of China, 2020.
• Silver Medal, The ICPC Asia-East Continent Final, Xi'an Site, 2018.