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Edwin R. Hancock

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6 papers

2 author rows

AAAI Conference 2026 Conference Paper

SSHPool: The Separated Subgraph-based Hierarchical Pooling

Zhuo Xu
Lu Bai
Lixin Cui
Ming Li
Hangyuan Du
Ziyu Lyu
Yue Wang
Edwin R. Hancock

In this paper, we develop a novel local graph pooling method, namely the Separated Subgraph-based Hierarchical Pooling (SSHPool), for graph classification. We commence by assigning the nodes of a sample graph into different clusters, resulting in a family of separated subgraphs. We individually employ the local graph convolution units as the local structure to further compress each subgraph into a coarsened node, transforming the original graph into a coarsened graph. Since these subgraphs are separated by different clusters and the structural information cannot be propagated between them, the local convolution operation can significantly avoid the over-smoothing problem caused by message passing through edges in most existing Graph Neural Networks (GNNs). By hierarchically performing the proposed procedures on the resulting coarsened graph, the proposed SSHPool can effectively extract the hierarchical global features of the original graph structure, encapsulating rich intrinsic structural characteristics. Furthermore, we develop an end-to-end GNN framework associated with the SSHPool module for graph classification. Experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed model on real-world datasets.

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ICML Conference 2025 Conference Paper

ENAHPool: The Edge-Node Attention-based Hierarchical Pooling for Graph Neural Networks

Zhehan Zhao
Lu Bai 0001
Lixin Cui
Ming Li 0065
Ziyu Lyu
Lixiang Xu
Yue Wang 0014
Edwin R. Hancock

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have emerged as powerful tools for graph learning, and one key challenge arising in GNNs is the development of effective pooling operations for learning meaningful graph representations. In this paper, we propose a novel Edge-Node Attention-based Hierarchical Pooling (ENAHPool) operation for GNNs. Unlike existing cluster-based pooling methods that suffer from ambiguous node assignments and uniform edge-node information aggregation, ENAHPool assigns each node exclusively to a cluster and employs attention mechanisms to perform weighted aggregation of both node features within clusters and edge connectivity strengths between clusters, resulting in more informative hierarchical representations. To further enhance the model performance, we introduce a Multi-Distance Message Passing Neural Network (MD-MPNN) that utilizes edge connectivity strength information to enable direct and selective message propagation across multiple distances, effectively mitigating the over-squashing problem in classical MPNNs. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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ICML Conference 2024 Conference Paper

QBMK: Quantum-based Matching Kernels for Un-attributed Graphs

Lu Bai 0001
Lixin Cui
Ming Li 0065
Yue Wang 0014
Edwin R. Hancock

In this work, we develop a new Quantum-based Matching Kernel (QBMK) for un-attributed graphs, by computing the kernel-based similarity between the quantum Shannon entropies of aligned vertices through the Continuous-time Quantum Walk (CTQW). The theoretical analysis reveals that the proposed QBMK kernel not only addresses the shortcoming of neglecting the structural correspondence information between graphs arising in existing R-convolution graph kernels, but also overcomes the problem of neglecting the structural differences between pairs of aligned vertices arising in existing vertex-based matching kernels. Moreover, the proposed QBMK kernel can simultaneously capture both global and local structural characteristics through the quantum Shannon entropies. Experimental evaluations on standard graph datasets demonstrate that the proposed QBMK kernel is able to outperform state-of-the-art graph kernels and graph deep learning approaches.

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ICML Conference 2022 Conference Paper

A Hierarchical Transitive-Aligned Graph Kernel for Un-attributed Graphs

Lu Bai 0001
Lixin Cui
Edwin R. Hancock

In this paper, we develop a new graph kernel, namely the Hierarchical Transitive-Aligned Kernel, by transitively aligning the vertices between graphs through a family of hierarchical prototype graphs. Comparing to most existing state-of-the-art graph kernels, the proposed kernel has three theoretical advantages. First, it incorporates the locational correspondence information between graphs into the kernel computation, and thus overcomes the shortcoming of ignoring structural correspondences arising in most R-convolution kernels. Second, it guarantees the transitivity between the correspondence information that is not available for most existing matching kernels. Third, it incorporates the information of all graphs under comparisons into the kernel computation process, and thus encapsulates richer characteristics. Experimental evaluations demonstrate the effectiveness of the new transitive-aligned kernel.

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IJCAI Conference 2020 Conference Paper

A Quantum-inspired Entropic Kernel for Multiple Financial Time Series Analysis

Lu Bai
Lixin Cui
Yue Wang
Yuhang Jiao
Edwin R. Hancock

Network representations are powerful tools for the analysis of time-varying financial complex systems consisting of multiple co-evolving financial time series, e. g. , stock prices, etc. In this work, we develop a new kernel-based similarity measure between dynamic time-varying financial networks. Our ideas is to transform each original financial network into quantum-based entropy time series and compute the similarity measure based on the classical dynamic time warping framework associated with the entropy time series. The proposed method bridges the gap between graph kernels and the classical dynamic time warping framework for multiple financial time series analysis. Experiments on time-varying networks abstracted from financial time series of New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) database demonstrate that our approach can effectively discriminate the abrupt structural changes in terms of the extreme financial events.

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ICML Conference 2015 Conference Paper

An Aligned Subtree Kernel for Weighted Graphs

Lu Bai 0001
Luca Rossi 0004
Zhihong Zhang 0001
Edwin R. Hancock

In this paper, we develop a new entropic matching kernel for weighted graphs by aligning depth-based representations. We demonstrate that this kernel can be seen as an \textbfaligned subtree kernel that incorporates explicit subtree correspondences, and thus addresses the drawback of neglecting the relative locations between substructures that arises in the R-convolution kernels. Experiments on standard datasets demonstrate that our kernel can easily outperform state-of-the-art graph kernels in terms of classification accuracy.

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