Sunkyung Lee
Ph.D. Candidate | SKKU
I’m a Ph.D. candidate advised by Prof. Jongwuk Lee in the Data Intelligence and Learning Lab (DIAL Lab) at Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), Korea. I received my M.S. degree in Artificial Intelligence from SKKU in 2023, under the supervision of Prof. Jongwuk Lee. Previously, I earned my B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering and B.A. in Economics from SKKU in 2021. During my Ph.D. studies, I completed research internships at Roblox, Snap Research, and Naver. My research focuses on generative search and recommendation, combining information retrieval and natural language processing. I’m interested in using large language models for personalization and user modeling. My CV is available here.
Publications
SteerGR: Steering Generative Recommendation via Sparse Autoencoders for Controllable Game Discovery [link]
Sunkyung Lee, Xiaokai Wei, Da Long, Hyunsik Jeon, Jiajun Wu, Rithwik Seth, Jongwuk Lee, Michelle Gong, Gungor Polatkan
Preprint, 2026
On the Memorization Behavior of LLMs in Generative Recommendation: Observations, Implications, and Training Strategies [link]
Sunwoo Kim, Sunkyung Lee, Clark Mingxuan Ju, Donald Loveland, Bhuvesh Kumar, Kijung Shin, Neil Shah, Liam Collins
Preprint, 2026
From Relevance to Authority: Authority-aware Generative Retrieval in Web Search Engines [link]
Sunkyung Lee*, Jihye Back*, Donghyeon Jeon, Soonhwan Kwon, Moonkwon Kim, Inho Kang, Jongwuk Lee
The 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL Industry Track, Oral)
San Diego, California, United States, Jul 2–7, 2026
Enhancing Time Awareness in Generative Recommendation [link] [code]
Sunkyung Lee, Seongmin Park, Jonghyo Kim, Mincheol Yoon, Jongwuk Lee
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2025 (EMNLP Findings)
Suzhou, China, Nov 5-9, 2025
GRAM: Generative Recommendation via Semantic-aware Multi-granular Late Fusion [link] [code]
Sunkyung Lee, Minjin Choi, Eunseong Choi, Hye-young Kim, Jongwuk Lee
The 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
Vienna, Austria, Jul 27–Aug 1, 2025
Linear Item-Item Models with Neural Knowledge for Session-based Recommendation [link] [code]
Minjin Choi, Sunkyung Lee, Seongmin Park, Jongwuk Lee
The 48th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR, Oral)
Padua, Italy, Jul 13-17, 2025
DIFF: Dual Side-Information Filtering and Fusion for Sequential Recommendation [link] [code]
Hye-young Kim, Minjin Choi, Sunkyung Lee, Ilwoong Baek, Jongwuk Lee
The 48th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR, Oral)
Padua, Italy, Jul 13-17, 2025
From Reading to Compressing: Exploring the Multi-document Reader for Prompt Compression [link] [code]
Eunseong Choi, Sunkyung Lee, Minjin Choi, June Park, Jongwuk Lee
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2024 (EMNLP Findings)
Miami, Florida, USA, Nov 12-16, 2024
MARS: Matching Attribute-aware Representations for Text-based Sequential Recommendation [link] [code] [poster]
Hyunsoo Kim*, Junyoung Kim*, Minjin Choi, Sunkyung Lee, Jongwuk Lee (* : equal contribution)
The 33rd ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM, short paper)
Boise, Idaho, USA, Oct 21-25, 2024
GLEN: Generative Retrieval via Lexical Index Learning [link] [code] [blog(korean)]
Sunkyung Lee*, Minjin Choi*, Jongwuk Lee (* : equal contribution)
The 2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP)
Singapore, Dec 6-10, 2023
ConQueR: Contextualized Query Reduction using Search Logs [link] [code] [blog(korean)]
Hye-young Kim*, Minjin Choi*, Sunkyung Lee, Eunseong Choi, Young-In Song and Jongwuk Lee (* : equal contribution)
The 46th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR, short paper)
Taipei, Taiwan, Jul 23-27, 2023
SpaDE: Improving Sparse Representations using a Dual Document Encoder for First-stage Retrieval [link] [code]
Eunseong Choi*, Sunkyung Lee*, Minjin Choi, Hyeseon Ko, Young-In Song and Jongwuk Lee (* : equal contribution)
The 31st ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM, Oral)
Atlanta, Georgia, USA, Oct 17-21, 2022
MelBERT: Metaphor Detection via Contextualized Late Interaction using Metaphorical Identification Theories [link] [code] [slide] [video]
Minjin Choi, Sunkyung Lee, Eunseong Choi, Heesoo Park, Junhyuk Lee, Dongwon Lee, Jongwuk Lee
2021 Annual Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (NAACL, Oral)
Mexico City, Mexico (Virtual Event), Jun 6–11, 2021
Experience
Roblox CorporationAug 2026 – Nov 2026
Research Intern, Discovery Team (San Mateo, CA, USA)
Worked on mechanistic interpretability and controllability for generative recommendation
Snap ResearchMar 2026 – Jun 2026
Research Intern, User Modeling and Personalization Team (Bellevue, WA, USA)
Worked on understanding the properties of effective item tokenization for generative recommendation
NAVER Corp.Jun 2025 – Sep 2025
Research Intern, Search LLM Solution (Seongnam, Republic of Korea)
Worked on a trustworthy generative information retrieval system leveraging large language models on real-world search log data
NAVER Corp.Jul 2021 – Aug 2021
Research Intern, Search CIC (Seongnam, Republic of Korea)
Developed a sparse representation-based document retrieval system utilizing pretrained language models and implemented pipelines to validate retrieval performance on real-world search data
Education
Sungkyunkwan University, Republic of KoreaMar 2023 – Feb 2027 (Expected)
Ph.D., Department of Artificial Intelligence
Advisor: Prof. Jongwuk Lee
Thesis: Toward Effective Generative Search and Recommendation
Sungkyunkwan University, Republic of KoreaMar 2021 – Feb 2023
M.S., Department of Artificial Intelligence
Advisor: Prof. Jongwuk Lee
Thesis: A Dual Document Encoder Based on Sparse Representations for First-stage Retrieval
Sungkyunkwan University, Republic of KoreaMar 2017 – Feb 2021
B.S., Department of Computer Science and Engineering
B.A., Department of Global Economics