About Me

Dr. Xin Kang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Science and Technology, Tokushima University, Japan. He received his PhD in Systems Innovation Engineering from Tokushima University in 2013. Dr. Kang supervises PhD, Master’s, and 4th-year undergraduate students, guiding research projects in Affective Computing, Neuro-Symbolic AI, Multimodal Machine Learning, and Knowledge Engineering. He has published over 100 papers in prestigious peer-reviewed journals and conferences. Dr. Kang serves on the editorial board of the journal Cognitive Robotics and is a member of IEEE, ACM, ACL, and CAAI.

Research Interests

  • Affective Computing: Complex Emotion Recognition, Depression Detection, Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis
  • Neuro-Symbolic AI: Transparent AI, Agentic AI, Fuzzy Logic
  • Multimodal Machine Learning: Video-Speech-Text Alignment, Large Multimodal Models
  • Knowledge Engineering: Semantic Information Extraction, Conceptual Modeling, Object-Process Methodology

Selected Publications

Journal Papers

  • Xuefeng Shi, Weiping Ding*, Min Hu, Xin Kang, and Fuji Ren, "Fuzzy Humanized Sentiment Knowledge Enhanced Dependency Graphs Implementing with Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis," IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, vol. –, no. –, pp. 1–13, 2025. DOI: 10.1109/TFUZZ.2025.3583050.
  • Xuefeng Shi*, Ming Yang, Min Hu, Fuji Ren, Xin Kang, and Weiping Ding, "Affective knowledge assisted bi-directional learning for Multi-modal Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis," Computer Speech & Language, vol. 91, Art. no. 101755, 2025. DOI: 10.1016/j.csl.2024.101755.
  • Linhuang Wang, Xin Kang*, Fei Ding, Satoshi Nakagawa, and Fuji Ren, "A joint local spatial and global temporal CNN-Transformer for dynamic facial expression recognition," Applied Soft Computing, vol. 161, Art. no. 111680, 2024. DOI: 10.1016/j.asoc.2024.111680.
  • Fei Ding, Xin Kang*, Linhuang Wang, Yunong Wu, Satoshi Nakagawa, and Fuji Ren, "Causal inference and prefix prompt engineering based on text generation models for financial argument analysis," Electronics, vol. 13, no. 9, Art. no. 1746, 2024. DOI: 10.3390/electronics13091746.
  • Fei Ding, Xin Kang*, and Fuji Ren, "Neuro or symbolic? Fine-tuned transformer with unsupervised LDA topic clustering for text sentiment analysis," IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 493-507, 2024. DOI: 10.1109/TAFFC.2023.3279318.
  • Fu-Ji Ren, Yang-Yang Zhou, Jia-Wen Deng, Kazuyuki Matsumoto, Duo Feng, Tian-Hao She, Zi-Yun Jiao, Zheng Liu, Tai-Hao Li, Satoshi Nakagawa, and Xin Kang*, "Tracking emotions using an evolutionary model of mental state transitions: Introducing a new paradigm," Intelligent Computing (A Science Partner Journal), vol. 3, Art. no. 0075, 2024. DOI: 10.34133/icomputing.0075.
  • Rongyu Dou and Xin Kang*, "TAM-SenticNet: A Neuro-Symbolic AI approach for early depression detection via social media analysis," Computers and Electrical Engineering, vol. 114, Art. no. 109071, 2024. DOI: 10.1016/j.compeleceng.2023.109071.
  • Yuxiang Zhou, Xin Kang*, Fuji Ren, Huimin Lu, Satoshi Nakagawa, and Xiao Shan, "A multi-attention and depthwise separable convolution network for medical image segmentation," Neurocomputing, vol. 564, Art. no. 126970, 2024. DOI: 10.1016/j.neucom.2023.126970.
  • Yangyang Zhou, Xin Kang, and Fuji Ren*, "Prompt consistency for multi-label textual emotion detection," IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 121-129, 2024. DOI: 10.1109/TAFFC.2023.3254883.
  • Zheng Liu, Xin Kang, and Fuji Ren*, "Dual-TBNet: Improving the robustness of speech features via dual-transformer-BiLSTM for speech emotion recognition," IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, vol. 31, pp. 2193-2203, 2023. DOI: 10.1109/TASLP.2023.3282092.
  • Xin Kang*, Xuefeng Shi, Yunong Wu, and Fuji Ren, "Active learning with complementary sampling for instructing class-biased multi-label text emotion classification," IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 523-536, 2023. DOI: 10.1109/TAFFC.2020.3038401.
  • Fuji Ren*, Zheng Liu, and Xin Kang, "An efficient framework for constructing speech emotion corpus based on integrated active learning strategies," IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 1929-1940, 2022. DOI: 10.1109/TAFFC.2022.3192899.
  • Zhiyang Li, Bin Li, Hongjun Ni*, Fuji Ren, Shuaishuai Lv*, and Xin Kang, "An effective surface defect classification method based on RepVGG with CBAM attention mechanism (RepVGG-CBAM) for aluminum profiles," Metals, vol. 12, no. 11, Art. no. 1809, 2022. DOI: 10.3390/met12111809.
  • Zheng Liu, Xin Kang, Shun Nishide, and Fuji Ren*, "Vowel priority lip matching scheme and similarity evaluation model based on humanoid robot Ren-Xin," Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, vol. 13, no. 11, pp. 5055-5066, 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s12652-020-02175-9.
  • Jiaqiao Zhang, Xin Kang, Hongjun Ni*, and Fuji Ren, "Surface defect detection of steel strips based on classification priority YOLOv3-dense network," Ironmaking & Steelmaking, vol. 48, no. 5, pp. 547-558, 2021. DOI: 10.1080/03019233.2020.1816806.
  • Wenjie Liu, Guoqing Wu*, Fuji Ren*, and Xin Kang, "DFF-ResNet: An insect pest recognition model based on residual networks," Big Data Mining and Analytics, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 300-310, 2020. DOI: 10.26599/BDMA.2020.9020021.
  • Xin Kang*, Yunong Wu, and Fuji Ren, "Toward action comprehension for searching: Mining actionable intents in query entities," Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, vol. 71, no. 2, pp. 143-157, 2020. DOI: 10.1002/asi.24220.
  • Xin Kang*, Fuji Ren, and Yunong Wu, "Exploring latent semantic information for textual emotion recognition in blog articles," IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 204-216, 2018. DOI: 10.1109/JAS.2017.7510421.
  • Fuji Ren, Xin Kang*, and Changqin Quan, "Examining accumulated emotional traits in suicide blogs with an emotion topic model," IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, vol. 20, no. 5, pp. 1384-1396, 2016. DOI: 10.1109/JBHI.2015.2459683.
  • Xin Kang*, Fuji Ren, and Yunong Wu, "Semisupervised learning of author-specific emotions in micro-blogs," IEEJ Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Engineering, vol. 11, no. 6, pp. 768-775, 2016. DOI: 10.1002/tee.22302.
  • Yan Sun, Changqin Quan*, Xin Kang, Zuopeng Zhang, and Fuji Ren, "Customer emotion detection by emotion expression analysis on adverbs," Information Technology and Management, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 303-311, Dec. 2015. DOI: 10.1007/s10799-014-0204-2.
  • Fuji Ren and Xin Kang*, "Employing hierarchical Bayesian networks in simple and complex emotion topic analysis," Computer Speech & Language, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 943-968, 2013. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csl.2012.07.012.
  • Xin Kang and Fuji Ren*, "Predicting complex word emotions and topics through a hierarchical Bayesian network," China Communications, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 99-109, 2012.

Conference Papers

  • Xin Kang, Veronika Shteingardt, Yuhan Wang, and Dov Dori, "Neuro-Conceptual Artificial Intelligence: Integrating OPM with Deep Learning to Enhance Question Answering Quality," in Proceedings of the NeusymBridge Workshop at the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING), Abu Dhabi, UAE, Jan. 2025, pp. 71-85.
  • Xin Kang, Zhifei Zhang, Jiazheng Zhou, Yunong Wu, Xuefeng Shi, and Kazuyuki Matsumoto, "TMAK-Plus at SIGHAN-2024 dimABSA Task: Multi-Agent Collaboration for Transparent and Rational Sentiment Analysis," in Proceedings of the SIGHAN Workshop at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), Bangkok, Thailand, Aug. 2024, pp. 88-95.
  • Linhuang Wang, Xin Kang, Fei Ding, Haitao Yu, Yunong Wu, Kazuyuki Matsumoto, Satoshi Nakagawa, and Fuji Ren, "Self Decoupling-Reconstruction Network for Facial Expression Recognition," in Proceedings of the IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), Yokohama, Japan, July 2024, pp. 1-8.
  • Linhuang Wang, Xin Kang, Fei Ding, Satoshi Nakagawa, and Fuji Ren, "MSSTNet: A Multi-Scale Spatio-Temporal CNN-Transformer Network for Dynamic Facial Expression Recognition," in Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Seoul, Korea, April 2024, pp. 3015-3019.
  • Daiki Mori, Kazuyuki Matsumoto, Xin Kang, Manabu Sasayama, and Keita Kiuchi, "SMACS: Stress Management AI Chat System," in Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K), Porto, Portugal, 17-19 Nov. 2024, pp. 167-174.
  • Yuxiang Zhou, Xin Kang, Fuji Ren, Satoshi Nakagawa, and Xiao Shan, "DEU-Net: Dual Encoder U-Net for 3D Medical Image Segmentation," in Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom), Los Alamitos, CA, USA, November 2023, pp. 2735-2741.
  • Linhuang Wang, Xin Kang, Satoshi Nakagawa, and Fuji Ren, "CenterMatch: A Center Matching Method for Semi-Supervised Facial Expression Recognition," in Proceedings of the Chinese Conference on Pattern Recognition and Computer Vision (PRCV), Xiamen, China, October 2023, pp. 371-383.

Books

  • Hiroki Tanioka and Xin Kang, A Gentle Introduction to Deep Learning (Chinese Edition), Faces Publications, Beijing, China, pp. 114-239, Jan. 2019.
  • Hiroki Tanioka and Xin Kang, A Gentle Introduction to Deep Learning (Korean Edition), WIKIBOOK, Seoul, Korea, pp. 135-231, Oct. 2018.
  • Hiroki Tanioka and Xin Kang, A Gentle Introduction to Deep Learning (Japanese Edition), Sotechsha Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, pp. 114-239, Feb. 2018.
  • Deyi Li, Yi Du, Fuji Ren, Shun Nishide, Kazuyuki Matsumoto, Xin Kang, Duo Feng, and Mengjia He, Artificial Intelligence with Uncertainty, NTS Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, pp. 1-26, 183-228, Apr. 2017.

Teaching

Undergraduate Courses

  • STEM Practice
  • Software Design and Experiment
  • Technical English Fundamentals (2)
  • Introduction to Intelligent Information
  • Introduction to Science and Technology
  • Information Technology and the Workplace
  • SIH (Strike while the Iron is Hot) Training

Graduate Courses

  • Data Science
  • Advanced Machine Translation
  • Graduate Seminar on Computer Science
  • Research Approaches in Science and Technology (E)

Professional Services

Memberships

  • Member, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
  • Member, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
  • Member, Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
  • Member, Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence (CAAI)

Editorship

  • Editorial Board Member, Cognitive Robotics (2021–Present)
  • Editorial Board Member, International Journal of Advanced Intelligence (2015–2022)

Professional Services

  • Area Chair, The 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING 2025)
  • Reviewer, 2025 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2025)
  • Invited Talk, Utilization of Next-Generation AI-Integrated Digital Biomarkers, IEICE Technical Committee on Information Theory, June 28, 2024.
  • Program Committee Member, 8th International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Information Retrieval, 2024
  • Program Committee Member, 5th International Conference on Financial Technology, 2024
  • Program Committee Member, 17th NTCIR Conference on Evaluation of Information Access Technologies, 2023
  • Program Committee Member, 7th International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Information Retrieval, 2023
  • Program Committee Member, 6th International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Information Retrieval, 2022
  • Program Committee Member, 4th International Conference on Natural Language Processing, 2022
  • General Secretary, 16th International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Knowledge Engineering (NLP-KE), 2021
  • General Secretary, 15th International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Knowledge Engineering (NLP-KE), 2020
  • General Secretary, 14th International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Knowledge Engineering (NLP-KE), 2019
  • General Secretary, 13th International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Knowledge Engineering (NLP-KE), 2018
  • General Secretary, 12th International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Knowledge Engineering (NLP-KE), 2017
  • General Secretary, 11th International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Knowledge Engineering (NLP-KE), 2016

Reviewers

  • Research (A Science Partner Journals)
  • Intelligent Computing (A Science Partner Journals)
  • IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IEEE)
  • IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing (IEEE)
  • IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence (IEEE)
  • Pattern Recognition (Elsevier)
  • Applied Soft Computing (Elsevier)
  • Computers in Biology and Medicine (Elsevier)
  • Neurocomputing (Elsevier)
  • Measurement: Sensors (Elsevier)
  • Cognitive Robotics (Elsevier)
  • IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems (IEICE)
  • IEEJ Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Engineering (IEEJ)

Awards

  • 2024: Health Technology Award for "Next-Generation AI-Powered Digital Biomarkers," Tokushima Business Challenge Expo Committee, Japan
  • 2023: First Ranking, FinArg-1 Task at the NTCIR Conference on Evaluation of Information Access Technologies
  • 2022: First Ranking, Early Depression Detection in the eRisk Task at the Conference and Labs of Evaluation Forum (CLEF)
  • 2022: First Ranking, DialEval-2 Task at the NTCIR Conference on Evaluation of Information Access Technologies
  • 2021: Outstanding Member, Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence
  • 2020: First Ranking, DialEval-1 Task at the NTCIR Conference on Evaluation of Information Access Technologies
  • 2020: Best Contribution Award, International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Knowledge Engineering
  • 2019: Best Presentation Award for the paper "Building Label-Balanced Emotion Corpus Based on Active Learning for Text Emotion Classification," International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
  • 2017: Best Paper Award for the paper "Learning Efficient Drawing Sequence Through Training of Recurrent Neural Network Model," International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Knowledge Engineering
  • 2014: First Ranking, Temporalia Task at the NTCIR Conference on Evaluation of Information Access Technologies
  • 2013: International Exchange Research Award, Tokushima University
  • 2011: Best Paper Award, International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Knowledge Engineering
  • 2009: Japanese Government Scholarship, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
  • 2005: Honorable Mention, The Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM)