The Research and Postgraduate Centre congratulates Master's student, Ng Wei Chen from the School of Computing and Data Science, and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tan Jian Ding from the School of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics and S.M.A.R.T. Nexus Center of Excellence, Xiamen University Malaysia (XMUM),  on their recent publication of a research article in Neurocomputing, a SCIE Q1 journal with the latest Impact Factor of 6.7.

Ng Wei Chen is pursuing his Master's degree in Master of Science in Computer Science and Technology at XMUM. This research is conducted in collaboration with Xie Qiyi, an alumnus of XMUM and a Master's student pursuing Master of Science in Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, United States. 

The article, entitled “Predicting Representations, Modeling Worlds, Recovering Causes: A Critical Review of JEPA, World Models, and Causal Representation Learning”, brings together recent developments in Joint-embedding predictive architectures (JEPA), world models, and causal representation learning, offering a unified perspective on how AI systems learn representations, anticipate future states, and reason about cause and effect. By identifying undelying key challenges and practical ways to evaluate these approaches, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of next-generation AI methods and their potential applications in complex, real-world environments.

The full article is available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2026.135279

This work was financially supported by Xiamen University Malaysia Research Fund (Grant No. ICOE/0005).

Dr. Tan Jian Ding received his PhD degree in Engineering from the University of Malaya, Malaysia. He is an Associate Professor and Head of Robotics and Automation Engineering at the School of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics and serves as the Director of the S.M.A.R.T. Nexus Center of Excellence at XMUM. His research interests include Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Robotics, Renewable Energy, and Embedded Systems.