Shaoxiong Ji
Dr. Shaoxiong Ji is a principal investigator at ELLIS Institute Finland and an assistant professor at the University of Turku. He is a Foundation PS Fellow and a faculty member of the ELLIS Society.
Prior to his current positions, he worked as an independent research group leader at the Technical University of Darmstadt (2024-2025) and as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki (2023-2024). He completed his PhD at Aalto University (2019-2023) under the supervision of Pekka Marttinen. During his doctoral candidature, he was a visiting researcher at Institute for Information and Language Processing, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU Munich) and the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL).
Research Interests
His research focuses on developing versatile, robust, and socially impactful artificial intelligence systems across three core areas:
- Natural Language Processing: Large language models, multilingual NLP, reasoning, datasets, and evaluation.
- Machine Learning: Continual learning, reinforcement learning, and multimodal learning.
- AI for Health: Clinical decision support systems, foundation health models, and AI for mental health.
Research Projects
- FINe-Health Foundry: Unlocking next-generation decision-making in healthcare and beyond (PI, 10/2026 - 2029). Funded by Business Finland Rise to the Challenge Funding
- HAIF: Human-Centric Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Future: Human-centric AI for multimodal intelligence and health (PhD Supervisor, 10/2025 - ). Co-funded by EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action.
- DYNAMIC: Dynamic Network Approach of Mental Health: Dynamic Network Approach of Mental Health to Stimulate Innovations for Change (Research Group Leader, 10/2024 - 09/2025). Funded by the Hessian research funding program LOEWE (2024-2027)
- MaLA: Massive Language Adaptation of Large Language Models: MaLA focuses on adapting LLMs to support underrepresented languages (PI, 06/2023 - 06/2025). Funded by the EU-funded UTTER Financial Support for Third Parties in 2024
- HPLT: High-Performance Language Technologies: HPLT combines petabytes of natural language data with large-scale model training (Postdoc, 01/2023 - 09/2024). Funded by Horizon Europe and UK Research and Innovation (2023-2025)
Professional Activities
Editorial & Organization
Organization: EMNLP’26 Publication Chair, MultiPsyche Workshop @ AACL’26,
SemEval 2025 Shared Task 3, BioNLP 2026 Shared Task PsyDefConv @ ACL’26
Guest Editor: Neurocomputing (2020-21), Future Generation Computer Systems (2020-21)
Program Committee & Area Chair
Area Chair: ACL Rolling Review (ACL’25, EMNLP’25), EMNLP Demo (2025), EACL Demo (2026),
Program Committee: ACL’23, EMNLP(’24,’22,’21), COLING’22, EACL’23, ECML-PKDD(’23,’22,’21),
NAACL’21, AAAI(’23,’22), ACM CSCW’21
Journal Reviewer
ACM TOIS (’25,’24,’21), ACM TKDD (’20), IEEE TNNLS (’25), IEEE TAC (’22), IEEE TCSS (’22), IEEE TSP(’21), IEEE TMM(’21,’20), IEEE TGCN (’23), IEEE TETCI(’23), IEEE T-IFS(’20), Nature Communications (’22,’21), Nature Mental Health (’23,’22), Neural Networks(’21)
Awards
Foundation PS Fellowship (2025), SemEval-2025 Best Task Runner-up Award (2025), Top 2% Annual Impact (2023-25), UTTER FSTP Grant (2024), Nokia Scholarship (2021), ELISE Mobility Grant (2022), FCAI Travel Grant (2022).
Teaching & Mentorship
I am committed to training the next generation of AI and NLP researchers. My teaching portfolio includes advanced courses in natural language processing and mathematics for linguistics.
- Technical University of Darmstadt: Data Analysis Software Project for Natural Language (Mentor, 2024-25)
- University of Helsinki: Mathematics for Linguists (Lecturer, 2024 Spring), Independent project, Language Technology Research Project (Mentor, 2024)
- Aalto University: Machine Learning: Advanced Probabilistic Methods (TA, 2021), Research Project in Machine Learning, Data Science & AI (Mentor, 2020-23), Seminar in Computer Science: Internet, Data and Things (Mentor, 2020-21)
I have supervised and instructed numerous MSc and PhD students across Aalto University, University of Helsinki, and Technical University of Darmstadt, with many former students pursuing doctoral studies or leadership roles in industry (e.g., HUS, OP, Metsä Group).
- Research Team: Meet our researchers, PhD students, and collaborators.
- Alumni: Explore where our former members are currently working.
- Join Us: Check open opportunities for students and researchers.
Talks
- Continual Training, Reasoning, and
Evaluation in Multilingual LLMs
29 June 2026, TruX Distinguished Seminar Series @University of Luxembourg - Natural Language Processing for Early
Detection of Mental Health
18 November 2024, GeMTeX Large Language Model Workshop @Klinikum rechts der Isar of the Technical University of Munich
Fun Facts
- Erdős number: 3 (Paul Erdős
→ Giuseppe Melfi → Erik Cambria).
Another path: Paul Erdős → Ronald Graham → Boris Lubachevsky → Anwar Walid - Dijkstra number: 4 (Edsger W. Dijkstra → Jayadev Misra → Laura M. Haas → Philip S. Yu).