Prof. Dit-Yan Yeung and Team Awarded Test of Time Award at KDD 2025

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dit-Yan Yeung, Chair Professor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, along with his former PhD students, Hao Wang and Naiyan Wang, has been honored with the prestigious Test of Time Award (Research) at the 31st ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD 2025), held in Toronto, Canada, from August 3-7, 2025. This award recognizes the enduring impact of their co-authored paper titled “Collaborative Deep Learning for Recommender Systems,” published a decade ago at KDD 2015.

The Collaborative Deep Learning (CDL) framework introduced in the KDD 2015 paper was one of the first deep learning methods for recommender systems, effectively launching the era of deep recommender systems. From a technical perspective, it merges traditional collaborative filtering (hence the term “collaborative” in the title) with modern deep learning into an innovative Bayesian deep learning framework. As of August 2025, the paper has been cited over 2,000 times according to Google Scholar. Its influence extends beyond academia, inspiring numerous follow-up research efforts and leading to significant advancements in the development of cutting-edge deep recommender systems in the industry.

The first author, Hao Wang, is currently an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Rutgers University. The second author, Naiyan Wang, previously served as the CTO of TuSimple China and is now focused on autonomous driving at Xiaomi Auto. This prestigious recognition underscores the Department’s commitment to high-quality postgraduate research programs and its dedication to pioneering, impactful research in AI and related fields.

(From left) Prof. Geoff Webb, Chair of the 2025 SIGKDD Test of Time Awards Committee; CSE alumnus Dr. Hao Wang; and Prof. Dit-Yan Yeung, Chair Professor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

Dr. Hao Wang presenting at the 31st ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD 2025).

Dr. Hao Wang presenting at the 31st ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD 2025).