Yuyang Ji

Yuhan Zhu, Yuyang Ji, Zhiyu Zhao et al.

Pre-trained vision-language models (VLMs) have shown impressive results in various visual classification tasks. However, we often fail to fully unleash their potential when adapting them for new concept understanding due to limited information on new classes. To address this limitation, we introduce a novel adaptation framework, AWT (Augment, Weight, then Transport). AWT comprises three key components: augmenting inputs with diverse visual perspectives and enriched class descriptions through image transformations and language models; dynamically weighting inputs based on the prediction entropy; and employing optimal transport to mine semantic correlations in the vision-language space. AWT can be seamlessly integrated into various VLMs, enhancing their zero-shot capabilities without additional training and facilitating few-shot learning through an integrated multimodal adapter module. We verify AWT in multiple challenging scenarios, including zero-shot and few-shot image classification, zero-shot video action recognition, and out-of-distribution generalization. AWT consistently outperforms the state-of-the-art methods in each setting. In addition, our extensive studies further demonstrate AWT's effectiveness and adaptability across different VLMs, architectures, and scales.

Yuyang Ji, Yixuan Shen, Shengjie Zhu et al.

We present BioCoach, a biomechanics-grounded vision--language framework for fitness coaching from streaming video. BioCoach fuses visual appearance and 3D skeletal kinematics, through a novel three-stage pipeline: an exercise-specific degree-of-freedom selector that focuses analysis on salient joints; a structured biomechanical context that pairs individualized morphometrics with cycle and constraint analysis; and a vision--biomechanics conditioned feedback module that applies cross-attention to generate precise, actionable text. Using parameter-efficient training that freezes the vision and language backbones, BioCoach yields transparent, personalized reasoning rather than pattern matching. To enable learning and fair evaluation, we augment QEVD-fit-coach with biomechanics-oriented feedback to create QEVD-bio-fit-coach, and we introduce a biomechanics-aware LLM judge metric. BioCoach delivers clear gains on QEVD-bio-fit-coach across lexical and judgment metrics while maintaining temporal triggering; on the original QEVD-fit-coach, it improves text quality and correctness with near-parity timing, demonstrating that explicit kinematics and constraints are key to accurate, phase-aware coaching.

Eric Xue, Ke Chen, Zeyi Huang et al.

Large language model (LLM) agents have emerged as a promising solution to automate the workflow of machine learning, but most existing methods share a common limitation: they attempt to optimize entire pipelines in a single step before evaluation, making it difficult to attribute improvements to specific changes. This lack of granularity leads to unstable optimization and slower convergence, limiting their effectiveness. To address this, we introduce Iterative Refinement, a novel strategy for LLM-driven ML pipeline design inspired by how human ML experts iteratively refine models, focusing on one component at a time rather than making sweeping changes all at once. By systematically updating individual components based on real training feedback, Iterative Refinement improves overall model performance. We also provide some theoretical edvience of the superior properties of this Iterative Refinement. Further, we implement this strategy in IMPROVE, an end-to-end LLM agent framework for automating and optimizing object classification pipelines. Through extensive evaluations across datasets of varying sizes and domains, we demonstrate that Iterative Refinement enables IMPROVE to consistently achieve better performance over existing zero-shot LLM-based approaches.