Dr. Jie Cao is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Oklahoma and the director of the OUNLP Lab. His research centers on natural language processing and machine learning, with a particular focus on dialogue and discourse modeling, structured prediction, large-language-model alignment and agentic systems, multi-modal communication, and trustworthy AI.

Prior to joining OU, Dr. Cao was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the NSF AI Institute for Student-AI Teaming at the University of Colorado Boulder. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Utah, and his M.S. and B.Eng. from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

The OUNLP Lab works on building robust and interpretable AI systems that support human learning, communication, and collaboration. Current research directions include:

Dr. Cao is actively recruiting motivated Ph.D., Master’s, and undergraduate researchers who are interested in language technology, human-AI teaming, and interactive learning systems.

Publications

2026

AI Agent for Hydrologic Modeling: Definition, Development and Application
AI Agent for Hydrologic Modeling: Definition, Development and Application
Songkun Yan, Mengye Chen, Zhi Li, Yixin Wen, Siyu Zhu, …, Jie Cao, Xiaodong Chen, Chengbin Deng, Tiantian Yang, Yang Hong
Geophysical Research Letters  ·  Jun 2026
BibTeX
@article{yan2026grl,
  title = {AI Agent for Hydrologic Modeling: Definition, Development and Application},
  author = {Yan, Songkun and Chen, Mengye and Li, Zhi and Wen, Yixin and Zhu, Siyu and Zhang, Mofan and Liu, Di and Cao, Jie and Chen, Xiaodong and Deng, Chengbin and Yang, Tiantian and Hong, Yang},
  journal = {Geophysical Research Letters},
  year = {2026},
  month = {June},
  url = {https://essopenarchive.org/doi/full/10.22541/essoar.176894821.13120988/v1}
}
Beyond Supervised Clarification: Input Rewriting with LLMs for Dialogue Discourse Parsing
Beyond Supervised Clarification: Input Rewriting with LLMs for Dialogue Discourse Parsing
Yiming Liu, Ziyue Zhang, Zhichao Xu, Xin Yu, Yingheng Tang, Tianyu Jiang, Jie Cao
SIGDIAL 2026  ·  Jun 2026
BibTeX
@inproceedings{liu2026beyond,
  title = {Beyond Supervised Clarification: Input Rewriting with LLMs for Dialogue Discourse Parsing},
  author = {Liu, Yiming and Zhang, Ziyue and Xu, Zhichao and Yu, Xin and Tang, Yingheng and Jiang, Tianyu and Cao, Jie},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 27th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue (SIGDIAL 2026)},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.01964}
}
Rethinking On-policy Optimization for Query Augmentation
Rethinking On-policy Optimization for Query Augmentation
Zhichao Xu, Shengyao Zhuang, Xueguang Ma, Bingsen Chen, Yijun Tian, Fengran Mo, Tao Li, Jie Cao, Vivek Srikumar
Transactions on Machine Learning Research  ·  Jun 2026  ·  doi:10.48550/arXiv.2510.17139
BibTeX
@article{xu2025rethinking,
  title = {Rethinking On-policy Optimization for Query Augmentation},
  author = {Xu, Zhichao and Zhuang, Shengyao and Ma, Xueguang and Chen, Bingsen and Tian, Yijun and Mo, Fengran and Li, Tao and Cao, Jie and Srikumar, Vivek},
  journal = {Transactions on Machine Learning Research},
  issn = {2835-8856},
  year = {2026},
  month = {June},
  url = {https://openreview.net/forum?id=mmqbjhz5Br}
}
HydroAgent: Closing the Gap Between Frontier LLMs and Human Experts in Hydrologic Model Calibration via Simulator-Grounded RL
HydroAgent: Closing the Gap Between Frontier LLMs and Human Experts in Hydrologic Model Calibration via Simulator-Grounded RL
Zhi Li, Songkun Yan, Jie Cao, Mofan Zhang, Anjiang Wei, Jinwoong Yoo, Yang Hong
arXiv  ·  May 2026
BibTeX
@misc{li2026hydroagentclosinggapfrontier,
  title = {HydroAgent: Closing the Gap Between Frontier LLMs and Human Experts in Hydrologic Model Calibration via Simulator-Grounded RL},
  author = {Li, Zhi and Yan, Songkun and Cao, Jie and Zhang, Mofan and Wei, Anjiang and Yoo, Jinwoong and Hong, Yang},
  year = {2026},
  eprint = {2605.17792},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  primaryClass = {cs.LG},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.17792}
}
A Multimodal Large Language Model for Materials Science
A Multimodal Large Language Model for Materials Science
Yingheng Tang, Wenbin Xu, Jie Cao, Weilu Gao, Steve Farrell, Benjamin Erichson, Michael W. Mahoney, Andy Nonaka, Zhi Yao
Nature Machine Intelligence  ·  Apr 2026  ·  doi:10.1038/s42256-026-01214-y
BibTeX
@article{tang2026matterchat,
  title = {A Multimodal Large Language Model for Materials Science},
  author = {Yingheng Tang and Wenbin Xu and Jie Cao and Weilu Gao and Steve Farrell and Benjamin Erichson and Michael W. Mahoney and Andy Nonaka and Zhi Yao},
  journal = {Nature Machine Intelligence},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1038/s42256-026-01214-y},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-026-01214-y},
  publisher = {Nature Publishing Group}
}
Translation via Annotation: A Computational Study of Translating Classical Chinese into Japanese
Translation via Annotation: A Computational Study of Translating Classical Chinese into Japanese
Zilong Li, Jie Cao
EACL 2026  ·  Mar 2026
BibTeX
@inproceedings{li2026translation,
  title = {Translation via Annotation: A Computational Study of Translating Classical Chinese into Japanese},
  author = {Li, Zilong and Cao, Jie},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2026 Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL 2026)},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://aclanthology.org/2026.eacl-long.285/}
}

2025

A Mamba-type of deep state space model for reservoir release simulation with a large-scale verification over 441 dams across CONUS
A Mamba-type of deep state space model for reservoir release simulation with a large-scale verification over 441 dams across CONUS
Jiaorui Zhang, Haowen Yue, Milad Basirifard, Jie Cao, Tiantian Yang
Journal of Hydrology  ·  Dec 2025  ·  doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2025.134145
BibTeX
@article{ZHANG2025134145,
  title = {A {{Mamba-type}} of Deep State Space Model for Reservoir Release Simulation with a Large-Scale Verification over 441 Dams across {{CONUS}}},
  author = {Zhang, Jiaorui and Yue, Haowen and Basirifard, Milad and Cao, Jie and Yang, Tiantian},
  year = {2025},
  journal = {Journal of Hydrology},
  pages = {134145},
  issn = {0022-1694},
  doi = {10.1016/j.jhydrol.2025.134145},
  url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022169425014830},
  keywords = {Large scale,Release simulation,SHAP,Structured State Space Model,Water management}
}
Do LLMs Encode Frame Semantics Evidence from Frame Identification
Do LLMs Encode Frame Semantics? Evidence from Frame Identification
Jayanth Krishna Chundru, Rudrashis Poddar, Jie Cao, Tianyu Jiang
EMNLP 2025  ·  Nov 2025
BibTeX
@inproceedings{jayanth2025emnlp,
  title = {Do LLMs Encode Frame Semantics? Evidence from Frame Identification},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2025 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing},
  author = {Chundru, Jayanth Krishna and Poddar, Rudrashis and Cao, Jie and Jiang, Tianyu},
  year = {2025},
  month = Nov,
  publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
  venue = {Suzhou, China},
  url = "https://aclanthology.org/2025.emnlp-main.1499/"
}
OUNLP at TSAR 2025 Shared Task: Multi-Round Text Simplifier via Code Generation
OUNLP at TSAR 2025 Shared Task: Multi-Round Text Simplifier via Code Generation
Cuong Huynh, Jie Cao
TSAR 2025 (EMNLP Workshop)  ·  Nov 2025
BibTeX
@inproceedings{huynh2025ounlp,
  title = {OUNLP at TSAR 2025 Shared Task: Multi-Round Text Simplifier via Code Generation},
  author = {Huynh, Cuong and Cao, Jie},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Workshop on Text Simplification, Accessibility and Readability (TSAR 2025)},
  year = {2025},
  url = {https://aclanthology.org/2025.tsar-1.19/}
}
Understanding Robustness Lottery : A Geometric Visual Comparative Analysis of Neural Network Pruning Approaches
“Understanding Robustness Lottery”: A Geometric Visual Comparative Analysis of Neural Network Pruning Approaches
Zhimin Li, Shusen Liu, Xin Yu, Kailkhura Bhavya, Jie Cao, James Daniel Diffenderfer, Peer-Timo Bremer, Valerio Pascucci
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics  ·  Sep 2025  ·  doi:10.1109/TVCG.2024.3514996
BibTeX
@article{vis-pruning2024,
  title = {"Understanding Robustness Lottery": A Geometric Visual Comparative Analysis of Neural Network Pruning Approaches},
  author = {Li, Zhimin and Liu, Shusen and Yu, Xin and Kailkhura, Bhavya and Cao, Jie and Diffenderfer, James Daniel and Bremer, Peer-Timo and Pascucci, Valerio},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/tvcg.2024.3514996},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics},
  year = {2024}
}
AQUAH: Automatic Quantification and Unified Agent in Hydrology
AQUAH: Automatic Quantification and Unified Agent in Hydrology
Songkun Yan, Zhi Li, Siyu Zhu, Yixin Wen, Mofan Zhang, Mengye Chen, Jie Cao, Yang Hong
arXiv  ·  Jan 2025  ·  doi:10.48550/arXiv.2508.02936
BibTeX
@article{songkun2025sea,
  title = {AQUAH: Automatic Quantification and Unified Agent in Hydrology},
  author = {Yan, Songkun and Li, Zhi and Zhu, Siyu and Wen, Yixin and Zhang, Mofan and Chen, Mengye and Cao, Jie and Hong, Yang},
  journal = {1st Workshop on Sustainability with Earth Observation and AI (co-located with ICCV 2025)},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.02936},
  year = {2025}
}

2024

Classifying Tutor Discursive Moves at Scale in Mathematics Classrooms with Large Language Models
Classifying Tutor Discursive Moves at Scale in Mathematics Classrooms with Large Language Models
Baptiste Moreau-Pernet, Yu Tian, Sandra Sawaya, Peter Foltz, Jie Cao, Brent Milne, Thomas Christie
Learning @ Scale (L@S) 2024  ·  Jul 2024
BibTeX
@inproceedings{talkmove-llm-2024,
  author = {Moreau-Pernet, Baptiste and Tian, Yu and Sawaya, Sandra and Foltz, Peter and Cao, Jie and Milne, Brent and Christie, Thomas},
  title = {Classifying Tutor Discursive Moves at Scale in Mathematics Classrooms with Large Language Models},
  year = {2024},
  isbn = {9798400706332},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3657604.3664664},
  doi = {10.1145/3657604.3664664},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Eleventh ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale},
  pages = {361–365},
  numpages = {5},
  keywords = {discourse analysis, llm classification, math tutor training},
  location = {Atlanta, GA, USA},
  series = {L@S '24}
}
Enhancing Talk Moves Analysis in Mathematics Tutoring through Classroom Teaching Discourse
Enhancing Talk Moves Analysis in Mathematics Tutoring through Classroom Teaching Discourse
Jie Cao, Abhijit Suresh, Jennifer Jacobs, Charis Clevenger, Amanda Howard, Chelsea Brown, Brent Milne, Tom Fischaber, Tamara Sumner, James H. Martin
arXiv  ·  Jan 2024  ·  doi:10.48550/arxiv.2412.13395
BibTeX
@inproceedings{talkmove-coling-2024,
  title = {Enhancing Talk Moves Analysis in Mathematics Tutoring through Classroom Teaching Discourse},
  author = {Cao, Jie and Suresh, Abhijit and Jacobs, Jennifer and Clevenger, Charis and Howard, Amanda and Brown, Chelsea and Milne, Brent and Fischaber, Tom and Sumner, Tamara and Martin, James H.},
  booktitle = {The 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics},
  year = {2025}
}

2023

Mind the Gap between the Application Track and the Real World
Mind the Gap between the Application Track and the Real World
Ananya Ganesh, Jie Cao, E. Margaret Perkoff, Rosy Southwell, Martha Palmer, Katharina Kann
ACL 2023  ·  Jul 2023
BibTeX
@article{ananya-acl23,
  title = {Mind the Gap between the Application Track and the Real World},
  author = {Ganesh, Ananya and Cao, Jie and Perkoff, E. Margaret and Southwell, Rosy and Palmer, Martha and Kann, Katharina},
  journal = {Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 2023},
  year = {2023}
}
Comparing Neural Question Generation Architectures for Reading Comprehension
Comparing Neural Question Generation Architectures for Reading Comprehension
E. Margaret Perkoff, Abhidip Bhattacharyya, Jon Cai, Jie Cao
BEA 2023 (ACL Workshop)  ·  Jul 2023
BibTeX
@inproceedings{perkoff2023comparing,
  title = {Comparing Neural Question Generation Architectures for Reading Comprehension},
  author = {Perkoff, E. Margaret and Bhattacharyya, Abhidip and Cai, Jon and Cao, Jie},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 18th Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications (BEA 2023)},
  year = {2023},
  url = {https://aclanthology.org/2023.bea-1.47/}
}
Designing an AI Partner for Jigsaw Classrooms
Designing an AI Partner for Jigsaw Classrooms
Jie Cao, Rachel Dickler, Marie Grace, Alessandro Roncone, Leanne Hirshfield, Marilyn Walker, Martha Palmer
AIAIC 2023 (Workshop)  ·  Jun 2023
BibTeX
@article{cao-jigsaw23,
  title = {Designing an AI Partner for Jigsaw Classrooms},
  author = {Cao, Jie and Dickler, Rachel and Grace, Marie and Roncone, Alessandro and Hirshfield, Leanne and Walker, Marilyn and Palmer, Martha},
  journal = {Workshop on Language-Based AI Character Interaction with Children},
  year = {2023}
}
A Comparative Analysis of Automatic Speech Recognition Errors in Small Group Classroom Discourse
A Comparative Analysis of Automatic Speech Recognition Errors in Small Group Classroom Discourse
Jie Cao, Ananya Ganesh, Jon Cai, Rosy Southwell, E. Margaret Perkoff, Michael Regan, Katharina Kann, James Martin, Martha Palmer, Sidney D’Mello
UMAP 2023  ·  Jun 2023
BibTeX
@article{cao-umap23,
  title = {A Comparative Analysis of Automatic Speech Recognition Errors in Small Group Classroom Discourse},
  author = {Cao, Jie and Ganesh, Ananya and Cai, Jon and Southwell, Rosy and Perkoff, Margaret and Regan, Michael and Kann, Katharina and Martin, James and Palmer, Martha and D'Mello, Sidney},
  journal = {Proceedings of the 31st ACM Conference on User Modeling Adaptation and Personalization},
  year = {2023}
}
Dependency Dialogue Acts Annotation Scheme and Case Study
Dependency Dialogue Acts — Annotation Scheme and Case Study
Jon Cai, Brendan D. King, E. Margaret Perkoff, Shiran Dudy, Jie Cao, …, Ananya Ganesh, James Martin, Martha Palmer, Marilyn Walker, Jeffrey Flanigan
IWSDS 2023  ·  Feb 2023
BibTeX
@article{jon-dda2022,
  title = {Dependency Dialogue Acts — Annotation Scheme and Case Study},
  author = {Cai, Jon and King, Brendan D. and Perkoff, Margaret and Dudy, Shiran and Cao, Jie and Grace, Marie and Wojarnik, Natalia and Ganesh, Ananya and Martin, James and Palmer, Martha and Walker, Marilyn and Flanigan, Jeffrey},
  journal = {The 13th International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue Systems Technology},
  year = {2022}
}

2022

Inductive Biases for Deep Linguistic Structured Prediction with Independent Factorization
Inductive Biases for Deep Linguistic Structured Prediction with Independent Factorization
Jie Cao
PhD Dissertation, University of Utah  ·  May 2022
BibTeX
@article{dissertation-proquest,
  title = {Inductive Biases for Deep Linguistic Structured Prediction with Independent Factorization},
  author = {Cao, Jie},
  journal = {Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I;ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (2777357718)},
  year = {2022}
}

2021

Database Workload Characterization with Query Plan Encoders
Database Workload Characterization with Query Plan Encoders
Debjyoti Paul, Jie Cao, Feifei Li, Vivek Srikumar
PVLDB (VLDB 2022)  ·  Dec 2021
BibTeX
@article{cao2021dbqencoder,
  title = {Database Workload Characterization with Query Plan Encoders},
  author = {Paul, Debjyoti and Cao, Jie and Li, Feifei and Srikumar, Vivek},
  journal = {Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment},
  volume = {15},
  number = {4},
  pages = {923--935},
  year = {2021},
  publisher = {VLDB Endowment}
}
A Comparative Study on Schema-Guided Dialogue State Tracking
A Comparative Study on Schema-Guided Dialogue State Tracking
Jie Cao, Yi Zhang
NAACL 2021  ·  Jun 2021
BibTeX
@inproceedings{cao2021comparative,
  title = {A Comparative Study on Schema-Guided Dialogue State Tracking},
  author = {Cao, Jie and Zhang, Yi},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2021 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies},
  pages = {782--796},
  year = {2021}
}

2019

Amazon at MRP 2019: Parsing Meaning Representations with Lexical and Phrasal Anchoring
Amazon at MRP 2019: Parsing Meaning Representations with Lexical and Phrasal Anchoring
Jie Cao, Yi Zhang, Adel Youssef, Vivek Srikumar
CoNLL 2019 (MRP Shared Task)  ·  Nov 2019
BibTeX
@inproceedings{cao2019amazon,
  title = {Amazon at MRP 2019: Parsing Meaning Representations with Lexical and Phrasal Anchoring},
  author = {Cao, Jie and Zhang, Yi and Youssef, Adel and Srikumar, Vivek},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Shared Task on Cross-Framework Meaning Representation Parsing at the Conference on Natural Language Learning},
  pages = {138--148},
  year = {2019}
}
Rhetorically Controlled Encoder-Decoder for Modern Chinese Poetry Generation
Rhetorically Controlled Encoder-Decoder for Modern Chinese Poetry Generation
Zhiqiang Liu, Zuohui Fu, Jie Cao, Gerard de Melo, Yik-Cheung Tam, Cheng Niu, Jie Zhou
ACL 2019  ·  Jul 2019
BibTeX
@inproceedings{rhetorical-poetry2019,
  title = {Rhetorically Controlled Encoder-Decoder for Modern Chinese Poetry Generation},
  author = {Liu, Zhiqiang and Fu, Zuohui and Cao, Jie and {de Melo}, Gerard and Tam, Yik-Cheung and Niu, Cheng and Zhou, Jie},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 57th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics},
  year = {2019},
  location = {Florence, Italy}
}
Observing Dialogue in Therapy: Categorizing and Forecasting Behavioral Codes
Observing Dialogue in Therapy: Categorizing and Forecasting Behavioral Codes
Jie Cao, Michael Tanana, Zac Imel, Eric Poitras, David Atkins, Vivek Srikumar
ACL 2019  ·  Jul 2019
BibTeX
@inproceedings{cao2019observing,
  title = {Observing Dialogue in Therapy: Categorizing and Forecasting Behavioral Codes},
  author = {Cao, Jie and Tanana, Michael and Imel, Zac and Poitras, Eric and Atkins, David and Srikumar, Vivek},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 57th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics},
  year = {2019},
  location = {Florence, Italy}
}
End-to-end Gated Self-attentive Memory Network for Dialog Response Selection
End-to-end Gated Self-attentive Memory Network for Dialog Response Selection
Shuo Sun, Yik-Cheung Tam, Jie Cao, Canxiang Yan, Zuohui Fu, Cheng Niu, Jie Zhou
AAAI DSTC7 Workshop 2019  ·  Jan 2019
BibTeX
@inproceedings{jie2019dstc,
  title = {End-to-end Gated Self-attentive Memory Network for Dialog Response Selection},
  author = {Sun, Shuo and Tam, Yik-Cheung and Cao, Jie and Yan, Canxiang and Fu, Zuohui and Niu, Cheng and Zhou, Jie},
  booktitle = {AAAI DSTC7 Workshop (Equal Contribution)},
  year = {2019},
  location = {Honolulu, USA}
}

2015

A Distributed SVM Method Based on the Iterative MapReduce
A Distributed SVM Method Based on the Iterative MapReduce
Xijiang Ke, Hai Jin, Xia Xie, Jie Cao
IEEE ICSC 2015  ·  Feb 2015
BibTeX
@inproceedings{ke2015distributed,
  title = {A Distributed SVM Method Based on the Iterative MapReduce},
  author = {Ke, Xijiang and Jin, Hai and Xie, Xia and Cao, Jie},
  booktitle = {Semantic Computing (ICSC), IEEE International Conference on},
  pages = {116--119},
  year = {2015},
  organization = {IEEE}
}

2012

JRBridge: A Framework of Large-Scale Statistical Computing for R
JRBridge: A Framework of Large-Scale Statistical Computing for R
Xia Xie, Jie Cao, Hai Jin, Xijiang Ke, Wenzhi Cao
IEEE APSCC 2012  ·  Dec 2012
BibTeX
@inproceedings{xie2012jrbridge,
  title = {JRBridge: A framework of large-scale statistical computing for R},
  author = {Xie, Xia and Cao, Jie and Jin, Hai and Ke, Xijiang and Cao, Wenzhi},
  booktitle = {Services Computing Conference (APSCC), IEEE Asia-Pacific},
  pages = {27--34},
  year = {2012},
  organization = {IEEE}
}

Search for Jie Cao's papers on the Research page