Researcher profile

Ning Mao

Ning Mao contributes to research discovery and scholarly infrastructure.

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Published work

6 published item(s)

preprint2026arXiv

A Breast Vision Pathology Foundation Model for Real-world Clinical Utility

Pathology foundation models have shown strong retrospective performance, but whether such systems can support clinically relevant use remains unclear. This challenge is particularly important in breast cancer, where pathological assessment serves as the gold standard for diagnosis and guides treatment planning, surgical decision-making and risk stratification across pre-, intra- and post-operative stages. Here we present \textbf{BRAVE}, a breast-adaptive pathology foundation model developed and evaluated using a total resource of 101,638 breast whole-slide images from 32 sources across Asia, Europe and North America. We assessed BRAVE across 34 tasks in 82 cohorts spanning pre-operative biopsy, intra-operative frozen section and post-operative resection, using an evidence chain comprising retrospective benchmarking, clinically challenging scenarios, workflow-oriented clinical impact simulations, prospective observational validation with the thresholds locked in the retrospective cohorts and crossover pathologist-AI interaction studies. Across these settings, BRAVE supported practical roles in the clinical workflow, including safe exclusion of low-risk cases from routine review, AI-assisted second-review rescue of initially missed positives and prioritization of cases for further assessment. In prospective validation across three centres, BRAVE excluded 76.9% of negative biopsy cases (NPV 0.953) and 70.1% of negative frozen-section cases (NPV 0.973), and triaged 78.8% of post-operative subtyping cases as high-confidence clear-cut cases (NPV 1.000). In reader studies, AI assistance improved balanced accuracy from 88.5% to 95.1% (OR 3.14, P<0.001), with better efficiency, confidence and inter-rater agreement. BRAVE-derived scores also independently predicted disease-free survival (adjusted HR 4.79, P<0.001) and overall survival (adjusted HR 8.14, P<0.001).

preprint2026arXiv

MindWatcher: Toward Smarter Multimodal Tool-Integrated Reasoning

Traditional workflow-based agents exhibit limited intelligence when addressing real-world problems requiring tool invocation. Tool-integrated reasoning (TIR) agents capable of autonomous reasoning and tool invocation are rapidly emerging as a powerful approach for complex decision-making tasks involving multi-step interactions with external environments. In this work, we introduce MindWatcher, a TIR agent integrating interleaved thinking and multimodal chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning. MindWatcher can autonomously decide whether and how to invoke diverse tools and coordinate their use, without relying on human prompts or workflows. The interleaved thinking paradigm enables the model to switch between thinking and tool calling at any intermediate stage, while its multimodal CoT capability allows manipulation of images during reasoning to yield more precise search results. We implement automated data auditing and evaluation pipelines, complemented by manually curated high-quality datasets for training, and we construct a benchmark, called MindWatcher-Evaluate Bench (MWE-Bench), to evaluate its performance. MindWatcher is equipped with a comprehensive suite of auxiliary reasoning tools, enabling it to address broad-domain multimodal problems. A large-scale, high-quality local image retrieval database, covering eight categories including cars, animals, and plants, endows model with robust object recognition despite its small size. Finally, we design a more efficient training infrastructure for MindWatcher, enhancing training speed and hardware utilization. Experiments not only demonstrate that MindWatcher matches or exceeds the performance of larger or more recent models through superior tool invocation, but also uncover critical insights for agent training, such as the genetic inheritance phenomenon in agentic RL.

preprint2024arXiv

Multiple Chern bands in twisted MoTe$_2$ and possible non-Abelian states

We investigate the moiré band structures and possible even denominator fractional quantum Hall state in small angle twisted bilayer MoTe$_2$, using combined large-scale local basis density functional theory calculation and continuum model exact diagonalization. Via large-scale first principles calculations at $θ=1.89^{\circ}$, we find a sequence of $C=1$(Chern number in K valley)moiré Chern bands, in analogy to Landau levels. By constructing the continuum model with multiple Chern bands, we undertake band-projected exact diagonalization using unscreened Coulomb repulsion to identify possible non-Abelian states near twist angle $θ=1.89^{\circ}$ at the half filling of second moiré band.

preprint2022arXiv

Doubled Quantum Spin Hall Effect with High-Spin Chern Number in $α$-Antimonene and $α$-Bismuthene

The discovery of quantum spin Hall effect has ignited the field of topological physics with vast variety of exotic properties. Here, we present the emergence of doubled quantum spin Hall effect in two dimensions characterized with a high spin Chern number of ${\mathcal C_S}=2$ and two pairs of helical edge states. Although is overlooked and invisible in topological quantum chemistry and symmetry indicator theory, the already experimentally synthesized $α$-antimonene and $α$-bismuthene are revealed as realistic material candidates of predicted topological states with band inversions emerging at generic $k$-points, rather than the high-symmetry momenta. Remarkably, the nontrivial energy gap can be as large as 464 meV for $α$-bismuthene, indicating the high possibility of room-temperature observation of the doubled quantum spin Hall effect. Moreover, a four-band effective model is constructed to demonstrate further the feasibility of attaining this type of nontrivial topology. Our results not only uncover a novel topological character of antimony and bismuth, but will also facilitate the experimental characterization of the previously overlooked hidden topology.

preprint2022arXiv

Orbital shift-induced boundary obstructed topological materials with a large energy gap

We propose boundary obstructed topological phases caused by Wannier orbital shift between ordinary atomic sites, which, however, cannot be indicated by symmetry eigenvalues at high symmetry momenta (symmetry indicators) in bulk. On the open boundary, Wannier charge centers can shift to different atoms from those in bulk, leading to in-gap surface states, higher-order hinge states or corner states. To demonstrate such orbital-shift-induced boundary obstructed topological insulators, we predict eight material candidates, all of which were overlooked in present topological databases. Metallic surface states, hinge states, or corner states cover the large bulk energy gap (for example, more than 1 eV in TlGaTe$_2$) at related boundary, which are ready for experimental detection. Additionally, we find these materials are also fragile topological insulators with hourglass like surface states.

preprint2021arXiv

Intertwined Ferroelectricity and Topological State in Two-Dimensional Multilayer

The intertwined ferroelectricity and band topology will enable the non-volatile control of the topological states, which is of importance for nanoelectrics with low energy costing and high response speed. Nonetheless, the principle to design the novel system is unclear and the feasible approach to achieve the coexistence of two parameter orders is absent. Here, we propose a general paradigm to design 2D ferroelectric topological insulators by sliding topological multilayers on the basis of first-principles calculations. Taking trilayer Bi2Te3 as a model system, we show that in the van der Waals multilayer based 2D topological insulators, the in-plane and out-of-plane ferroelectricity can be induced through a specific interlayer sliding, to enable the coexistence of ferroelectric and topological orders. The strong coupling of the order parameters renders the topological states sensitive to polarization flip, realizing non-volatile ferroelectric control of topological properties. The revealed design-guideline and ferroelectric-topological coupling not only are useful for the fundamental research of the coupled ferroelectric and topological physics in 2D lattices, but also enable novel applications in nanodevices.