Chanwoong Yoon

        



Ph.D. student
Manning College of Information & Computer Sciences
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval (CIIR) Lab

I'm a first-year Ph.D. student at Umass Amherst, advised by Negin Rahimi and Andrew McCallum. My research focuses on self-evolving agentic systems and long-horizon search.

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News


Selected Publications

retpo

Ask Optimal Questions: Aligning Large Language Models with Retriever's Preference in Conversational Search
Chanwoong Yoon*, Gangwoo Kim*, Byeongguk Jeon, Sungdong Kim, Yohan Jo, Jaewoo Kang
NAACL 2025 Findings.

Paper / Code

we present Retriever’s Preference Optimization (RetPO), which optimizes a language model (LM) for reformulating search queries in line with the preferences of the target retrieval systems.

compact

CompAct: Compressing Retrieved Documents Actively for Question Answering
Chanwoong Yoon, Taewhoo Lee, Hyeon Hwang, Minbyul Jeong, Jaewoo Kang
EMNLP 2024 Main.

Paper / Code

We propose a novel framework that employs an active strategy for compressing extensive documents. CompAct dynamically preserves query-related contexts, focusing on the integration of information across documents.

ethic

ETHIC: Evaluating Large Language Models on Long-Context Tasks with High Information Coverage
Taewhoo Lee, Chanwoong Yoon, Kyochul Jang, Donghyun Lee, Minju Song, Hyunjae Kim, Jaewoo Kang
NAACL 2025 Main.

Paper / Code

We introduce ETHIC, a new benchmark to evaluate the ability of large language models on long-context tasks that require high information coverage.

meerkat

Small language models learn enhanced reasoning skills from medical textbooks

NPJ digital medicine.

Paper / Model

We released a new medical LM, Meerkat-7B, passed the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) for the first time among 7B-parameter models. This study demonstrates that small language models can achieve enhanced medical reasoning abilities through targeted training on specialized medical textbooks.


Awards and Honors

  • National Research Fellowship, KIAT May 2025
    - Selected as one of only four recipients for the KIAT Fellowship (USD 21,000), recognizing exceptional research potential in AI.
  • Outstanding Research Paper Award, Korea University Feb. 2025
    - CompAct: Compressing Retrieved Documents Actively for Question Answering (EMNLP 2024)
  • Encouragement Award, KIISE Korea Computer Congress Competition Jul. 2022
  • Merit-based Scholarships (50% Tuition), Hanyang University Fall 2020 — Spring 2022

Academic Service

  • Reviewer: ICLR 2026, ARR Review (Mar. 2026, May 2026), AAAI 2027
  • Secondary Reviewer: ARR Review (Dec. 2025), ACL 2025

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