Taehoon Yoon

Ph.D. Student in Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor.

I am a Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan, advised by Prof. Liyue Shen. Previously, I completed my M.S. in Artificial Intelligence at KAIST under the supervision of Prof. Minhyuk Sung. I was also fortunate to be mentored by Prof. Jong Chul Ye at KAIST during my research internship. I received my B.S. in Physics with a double major in Computer Science and Engineering from Sogang University, where I graduated as valedictorian of the College of Natural Sciences.

My research interests broadly lie in generative modeling and probabilistic inference. I am particularly interested in modern generative modeling frameworks, including diffusion models, flow-matching models, and other emerging generative modeling paradigms. From the perspective of probabilistic inference, I am especially interested in sampling methods and their connections to modern generative models. A central theme of my research is to improve the controllability, alignment, and reliability of generative models at inference time, with a focus on controllable generation, reward alignment, inverse problems, and particle-based sampling methods.

I am always open to collaborations, so please feel free to contact me!

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Ann Arbor, MI, US


thyoon@umich.edu

Publications

* denotes equal contribution.

2026

  1. NeurIPS
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    Contrastive Distribution Matching for Amortized Sequential Monte Carlo in Discrete Diffusion
    Jaihoon Kim, Taehoon Yoon, Prin Phunyaphibarn, Seungjun Kim, Morteza Mardani, and Minhyuk Sung
    NeurIPS 2026

2025

  1. NeurIPS, Spotlight
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    Ψ-Sampler: Initial Particle Sampling for SMC-Based Inference-Time Reward Alignment in Score Models
    Taehoon Yoon*, Yunhong Min*, Kyeongmin Yeo*, and Minhyuk Sung
    NeurIPS 2025, Spotlight (top 3.2%)
  2. NeurIPS
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    Inference-Time Scaling for Flow Models via Stochastic Generation and Rollover Budget Forcing
    Jaihoon Kim*, Taehoon Yoon*, Jisung Hwang*, and Minhyuk Sung
    NeurIPS 2025

2024

  1. NeurIPS
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    GrounDiT: Grounding Diffusion Transformers via Noisy Patch Transplantation
    Phillip Y. Lee*, Taehoon Yoon*, and Minhyuk Sung
    NeurIPS 2024

Education

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor 2026 – Present
Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering
Advised by Liyue Shen
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) 2024 – 2026
M.S. in Artificial Intelligence
Advised by Minhyuk Sung
Sogang University 2017 – 2024
B.S. in Physics · B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering
Valedictorian, College of Natural Sciences