Cheng Tan 谭铖

Researcher, Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

chengtan9907 [AT] gmail.com

Bio

I am a researcher in OpenDataLab at Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. I obtained my PhD degree from Zhejiang University & Westlake University in 2025, advised by Stan Z. Li. My research focuses on multimodal reasoning and AI for science.

Looking forward to any academic communications and feel free to contact me!

News

[2026/06] Invited as an Action Editor of TMLR.
[2026/06] Two co-author papers on Multimodal reasoning/video prediction, are accepted by ECCV 2026.
[2026/05] One co-author paper on Drug screening, is accepted by KDD (Oral).
[2026/05] One co-author paper on Biomolecular function, is accepted by Nature Communications.
[2026/04] One co-corresponding author paper on Multimodal reasoning, is accepted by ICML 2026 (Spotlight).
[2026/04] One co-first author paper on Multimodal reasoning, is accepted by ACL 2026.
[2026/02] Three corresponding author papers on Multimodal reasoning, are accepted by CVPR 2026.
[2026/01] One corresponding author paper on Biomolecular function, is accepted by ICLR 2026.
[2026/01] One co-first author paper on Single cell foundation model, is accepted by Nature Communications.
[2025/09] One first author paper on Biomolecular database, is accepted by NeurIPS 2025.
[2025/07] I have joined in Shanghai AI Laboratory as a Researcher.
[2025/07] One corresponding author paper on Multimodal reasoning, is accepted by ACM Multimedia 2025.
[2025/04] One co-first author paper on, Cryo-EM structure determination, is accepted by Nature Machine Intelligence.
[2025/04] One first author paper on, Video prediction, is accepted by TPAMI.
[2025/04] One first author paper on, Multimodal reasoning, is accepted by IJCAI 2025.
[2025/01] One co-first author paper on, Multimodal reasoning, is accepted by CVPR 2025 (Highlight).
[2025/01] One first author paper on, Biomolecular function, is accepted by ICLR 2025.
[2024/12] One first author paper on, Biomolecular design, is accepted by AAAI 2025 (Oral).
[2024/12] One first author paper on, Video prediction, is accepted by TMM.
[2024/09] Three co-first papers on, Biomolecular function, are accepted by NeurIPS 2024.
[2024/07] One first author paper on, Multimodal reasoning, is accepted by ECCV 2024.
[2024/05] One first author paper on, Biomolecular Design, is accepted by ICML 2024.
[2024/01] One co-first author paper on, Diffusion model, is accepted by TKDE.
[2024/01] Two first/co-first author papers on, Biomolecular design, are accepted by ICLR 2024.
[2023/12] One first author paper on, Biomolecular design, is accepted by AAAI 2024.
[2023/10] I have been honored with the National Scholarship.
[2023/09] Two first/co-first author papers on, Video prediction/biomolecular design, are accepted by NeurIPS 2023.
[2023/02] One first author paper on, Video prediction, is accepted by CVPR 2023.
[2023/01] One co-first paper is on, Biomolecular design, accepted by ICLR 2023.
[2022/03] Two first/co-first author papers on, Video prediction and SSL, are accepted by CVPR 2022.
[2021/08] One first author paper on, Semi-supervised learning, is accepted by ACM MM 2021 (Oral).

Selected Publications

Most recent publications on Google Scholar.
^‡ indicates equal contribution.
* indicates the corresponding author.

Tech Report

The Trinity of Consistency as a Defining Principle for General World Models

Jingxuan Wei, Siyuan Li, Yuhang Xu, Zheng Sun, Junjie Jiang, Hexuan Jin, Caijun Jia, Honghao He, Xinglong Xu, Chang Yu, Yumou Liu, Junnan Zhu, Xuanhe Zhou, Jintao Chen, Xiaobin Hu, Shancheng Pang, Bihui Yu, Ran He, Zhen Lei, Stan Z Li, Conghui He, Shuicheng Yan*, Cheng Tan*

Hugging Face #1 Paper of the Day Hugging Face 40k+ downloads

Paper Code

Journals

Illuminating Cell States by A Comprehensive and Interpretable Single Cell Foundation Model

Jue Wang^‡, Cheng Tan^‡, Zhangyang Gao, Sida Shao, Shiping Liu, Stan Z. Li*

Nature Communications, 2026.

Paper Code

Learning the PTM Code through A Coarse-to-Fine Mechanism-Aware Framework

Jingjie Zhang, Hanqun Cao, Zijun Gao, Yu Wang, Shaoning Li, Jun Xu, Cheng Tan, Jun Zhu, Chang-Yu Hsieh, Chunbin Gu, Pheng Ann Heng*

Nature Communications, 2026.

Paper Code

End-to-end Cryo-EM Complex Structure Determination with High Accuracy and Ultra-fast Speed

Jue Wang^‡, Cheng Tan^‡, Zhangyang Gao^‡, GuiJun Zhang, Yang Zhang, Stan Z. Li*

Nature Machine Intelligence, 2025.

Paper Code

USTEP: Spatio-Temporal Predictive Learning under A Unified View

Cheng Tan^‡, Jue Wang^‡, Zhangyang Gao^‡, Siyuan Li, Stan Z. Li*

TPAMI, 2025.

Paper Code

SimVPv2: Towards Simple yet Powerful Spatiotemporal Predictive Learning

Cheng Tan^‡, Zhangyang Gao^‡, Siyuan Li^‡, Stan Z. Li*

TMM, 2024.

Code

A Survey on Generative Diffusion Model

Hanqun Cao^‡, Cheng Tan^‡, Zhangyang Gao^‡, Yilun Xu, Guangyong Chen, Pheng-Ann Heng, Stan Z. Li*

TKDE, 2024.

Google Scholar 1000+ citations GitHub 900+ stars

Paper Code

Self-supervised Learning on Graphs: Contrastive, Generative, or Predictive

Lirong Wu, Haitao Lin, Cheng Tan, Zhangyang Gao, Stan Z. Li*

TKDE, 2021.

Google Scholar 400+ citations

Paper Code

Conferences

How RL Unlocks the Aha Moment in Geometric Interleaved Reasoning

Xiangxiang Zhang, Caijun Jia, Siyuan Li, He Dingyu, Xiya Xiong, Zheng Sun, Honghao He, Yuchen Wu, Bihui Yu, Linzhuang Sun, Cheng Tan*, Jingxuan Wei*

ICML, 2026. Spotlight

Paper

Decouple to Generalize: Context-First Self-Evolving Learning for Data-Scarce Vision-Language Reasoning

Tingyu Li, Zheng Sun, Jingxuan Wei, Siyuan Li, Conghui He, Lijun Wu, Cheng Tan*

CVPR, 2026.

Paper Code

GGBench: A Geometric Generative Reasoning Benchmark for Unified Multimodal Models

Jingxuan Wei, Caijun Jia, Xi Bai, Xinglong Xu, Siyuan Li, Linzhuang Sun, Bihui Yu, Conghui He, Lijun Wu, Cheng Tan*

CVPR, 2026.

Paper Code

Geoint-R1: Formalizing Multimodal Geometric Reasoning with Dynamic Auxiliary Constructions

Jingxuan Wei, Caijun Jia, Qi Chen, Honghao He, Linzhuang Sun, Conghui He, Lijun Wu, Bihui Yu, Cheng Tan*

CVPR, 2026.

Paper Code

Lost in Tokenization: Context as the Key to Unlocking Biomolecular Understanding in Scientific LLMs

Kai Zhuang, Jiawei Zhang, Yumou Liu, Hanqun Cao, Chunbin Gu, Mengdi Liu, Zhangyang Gao, Zitong Jerry Wang, Xuanhe Zhou, Pheng-Ann Heng, Lijun Wu, Conghui He, Cheng Tan*

ICLR, 2026.

Paper Code

AlphaFold Database Debiasing for Robust Inverse Folding

Cheng Tan^‡, Zhenxiao Cao^‡, Zhangyang Gao, Siyuan Li, Yufei Huang, Stan Z. Li

NeurIPS, 2025.

Paper

ResearchPulse: Building Method-Experiment Chains through Multi-Document Scientific Inference

Qi Chen, Jingxuan Wei, Zhuoya Yao, Haiguang Wang, Gaowei Wu, Bihui Yu, Siyuan Li, Cheng Tan*

ACM Multimedia, 2025.

Paper Code

SketchAgent: Generating Structured Diagrams from Hand-Drawn Sketches

Cheng Tan^‡, Qi Chen^‡, Jingxuan Wei^‡, Gaowei Wu, Zhangyang Gao, Siyuan Li, Bihui Yu, Ruifeng Guo, Stan Z. Li*

IJCAI, 2025.

Paper Code

Multimodal Regression for Enzyme Turnover Rates Prediction

Bozhen Hu^‡, Cheng Tan^‡, Siyuan Li, Jiangbin Zheng, Jun Xia, Stan Z. Li*

IJCAI, 2025.

Paper Code

From Words to Structured Visuals: A Benchmark and Framework for Text-to-Diagram Generation and Editing

Jingxuan Wei^‡, Cheng Tan^‡, Qi Chen, Gaowei Wu, Siyuan Li, Zhangyang Gao, Linzhuang Sun, Bihui Yu, Ruifeng Guo*

CVPR, 2025. Highlight

Paper Code

MeToken: Uniform Micro-environment Token Boosts Post-Translational Modification Prediction

Cheng Tan, Zhenxiao Cao, Zhangyang Gao, Lirong Wu, Siyuan Li, Yufei Huang, Jun Xia, Bozhen Hu, Stan Z. Li*

ICLR, 2025.

Paper Code

dyAb: Flow Matching for Flexible Antibody Design with AlphaFold-driven Pre-binding Antigen

Cheng Tan^‡, Yijie Zhang^‡, Zhangyang Gao^‡, Yufei Huang, Haitao Lin, Lirong Wu, Fandi Wu, Mathieu Blanchette, Stan Z. Li*

AAAI, 2025. Oral

Paper Code

FoldToken: Learning Protein Language via Vector Quantization and Beyond

Zhangyang Gao^‡, Cheng Tan^‡, Jue Wang, Yufei Huang, Lirong Wu, Stan Z. Li*

AAAI, 2025.

Paper Code

Learning Complete Protein Representation by Dynamically Coupling of Sequence and Structure

Bozhen Hu^‡, Cheng Tan^‡, Jun Xia, Yue Liu, Lirong Wu, Jiangbin Zheng, Yongjie Xu, Yufei Huang, Stan Z. Li*

NeurIPS, 2024.

Paper Code

ProtGO: Function-Guided Protein Modeling for Unified Representation Learning

Bozhen Hu^‡, Cheng Tan^‡, Yongjie Xu, Zhangyang Gao, Jun Xia, Lirong Wu, Stan Z. Li*

NeurIPS, 2024.

Paper

UniIF: Unified Molecule Inverse Folding

Zhangyang Gao^‡, Jue Wang^‡, Cheng Tan^‡, Lirong Wu, Yufei Huang, Siyuan Li, Zhirui Ye, Stan Z. Li*

NeurIPS, 2024.

Paper Code

Boosting the Power of Small Multimodal Reasoning Models to Match Larger Models with Self-Consistency Training

Cheng Tan^‡, Jingxuan Wei^‡, Zhangyang Gao, Linzhuang Sun, Siyuan Li, Bihui Yu, Ruifeng Guo, Stan Z. Li*

ECCV, 2024

Paper Code

RFold: Deciphering RNA Secondary Structure Prediction: A Probabilistic K-Rook Matching Perspective

Cheng Tan^‡, Zhangyang Gao^‡, Hanqun Cao, Xingran Chen, Ge Wang, Lirong Wu, Jun Xia, Jiangbin Zheng, Stan Z. Li*

ICML, 2024.

Paper Code

RDesign: Hierarchical Data-efficient Representation Learning for Tertiary Structure-based RNA Design

Cheng Tan^‡, Yijie Zhang^‡, Zhangyang Gao^‡, Bozhen Hu, Siyuan Li, Zicheng Liu, Stan Z. Li*

ICLR, 2024.

Paper Code

KW-Design: Pushing the Limit of Protein Design via Knowledge Refinement

Zhangyang Gao^‡, Cheng Tan^‡, Xingran Chen, Yijie Zhang, Jun Xia, Siyuan Li, Stan Z. Li*

ICLR, 2024.

Paper Code

Cross-Gate MLP with Protein Complex Invariant Embedding is A One-Shot Antibody Designer

Cheng Tan^‡, Zhangyang Gao^‡, Lirong Wu, Jun Xia, Jiangbin Zheng, Xihong Yang, Yue Liu, Bozhen Hu, Stan Z. Li*

AAAI, 2024.

Paper Code

OpenSTL: A Comprehensive Benchmark of Spatio-Temporal Predictive Learning

Cheng Tan^‡, Siyuan Li^‡, Zhangyang Gao, Wenfei Guan, Zedong Wang, Zicheng Liu, Lirong Wu, Stan Z. Li*

NeurIPS, 2023.

Google Scholar 100+ citations GitHub 1000+ stars

Paper Code

Proteininvbench: Benchmarking Protein Inverse Folding on Diverse Tasks, Models, and Metrics

Zhangyang Gao^‡, Cheng Tan^‡, Yijie Zhang, Xingran Chen, Lirong Wu, Stan Z. Li*

NeurIPS, 2023.

GitHub 200+ stars

Paper Code

Temporal Attention Unit: Towards Efficient Spatiotemporal Predictive Learning

Cheng Tan^‡, Zhangyang Gao^‡, Lirong Wu, Yongjie Xu, Jun Xia, Siyuan Li, Stan Z. Li*

CVPR, 2023.

Google Scholar 300+ citations

Paper Code

PiFold: Toward Effective and Efficient Protein Inverse Folding

Zhangyang Gao^‡, Cheng Tan^‡, Stan Z. Li*

ICLR, 2023. Spotlight

Google Scholar 200+ citations GitHub 100+ stars

Paper Code

Hyperspherical Consistency Regularization

Cheng Tan^‡, Zhangyang Gao^‡, Lirong Wu, Siyuan Li, Stan Z. Li*

CVPR, 2022.

Paper Code

SimVP: Simpler yet Better Video Prediction

Zhangyang Gao^‡, Cheng Tan^‡, Lirong Wu, Stan Z. Li*

CVPR, 2022.

Google Scholar 600+ citations GitHub 200+ stars

Paper Code

Co-learning: Learning from Noisy Labels with Self-supervision

Cheng Tan, Jun Xia, Lirong Wu, Stan Z. Li*

ACM MM, 2021. Oral

Google Scholar 200+ citations GitHub 100+ stars

Paper Code

Service

Conference - Area Chair

ICLR, NeurIPS, TMLR, etc.

Conference - Program committee member

ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, AISTATS, CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, AAAI, ACL, EMNLP, ACM MM, ECML-PKDD, ICASSP, etc.

Journal - Editor

TMLR, etc.

Journal - Reviewer

IJCV, TPAMI, TIP, TMM, TCSVT, TNNLS, TCBB, Pattern Recognition, EAAI, Neurocomputing, etc.

Vitæ

July 2025 - Present

Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

Researcher

Sept 2021 - June 2025

Zhejiang University & Westlake University

Ph.D. Student

Computer Science and Technology
Supervisor: Prof. Stan Z. Li

Oct 2023 - Oct 2024

Tencent AI Lab

Research on Controllable Protein Design

Supervisor: Dr. Fandi Wu

Sept 2017 - June 2021

Northwest A&F University

B.Sc. Student

Computer Science and Technology

July 2019 - Oct 2019

University of Alberta, Canada.

Research Assistant

Artificial General Intelligence Lab
Prof. Vadim Bulitko (Professor, Computer Science)
Prof. Erin Bayne (Professor, Biology)

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