diff --git a/python/llm/src/ipex_llm/transformers/convert.py b/python/llm/src/ipex_llm/transformers/convert.py
index e8c24db1..9372f667 100644
--- a/python/llm/src/ipex_llm/transformers/convert.py
+++ b/python/llm/src/ipex_llm/transformers/convert.py
@@ -527,6 +527,16 @@ def replace_with_low_bit_linear_for_module(model, qtype, module_name=None,
 
 
 def _optimize_pre(model):
+    try:
+        from sentence_transformers.SentenceTransformer import SentenceTransformer
+        if isinstance(model, SentenceTransformer):
+            if str(model._modules['0']).strip().split(' ')[-1] == 'BertModel':
+                from ipex_llm.transformers.models.bert import merge_qkv
+                model.apply(merge_qkv)
+                return model
+    except ModuleNotFoundError:
+        pass
+
     from transformers.modeling_utils import PreTrainedModel
     # All huggingface format models are inherited from `PreTrainedModel`
     if not isinstance(model, PreTrainedModel):
@@ -793,6 +803,24 @@ def _optimize_post(model, lightweight_bmm=False):
     from ipex_llm.transformers.models.llama import llama_model_forward
     from transformers.modeling_utils import PreTrainedModel
 
+    try:
+        from sentence_transformers.SentenceTransformer import SentenceTransformer
+        if isinstance(model, SentenceTransformer):
+            if str(model._modules['0']).strip().split(' ')[-1] == 'BertModel':
+                modeling_module_name = model._modules['0'].auto_model.__class__.__module__
+                module = importlib.import_module(modeling_module_name)
+                from ipex_llm.transformers.models.bert import self_attention_forward
+                from ipex_llm.transformers.models.bert import encoder_forward
+                convert_forward(model,
+                                module.BertSelfAttention,
+                                self_attention_forward)
+                convert_forward(model,
+                                module.BertEncoder,
+                                encoder_forward)
+                return model
+    except ModuleNotFoundError:
+        pass
+
     # All huggingface format models are inherited from `PreTrainedModel`
     if not isinstance(model, PreTrainedModel):
         logger.info("Only HuggingFace Transformers models are currently "