Natural Language Interfaces to Data
Connecting natural language with databases, focusing on data-centric tasks including Text-to-SQL, Text-to-Visualization, and Text-to-OverpassQL.
About Me
I am a second-year Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University under the supervision of Professor Chen Jason Zhang. I also work closely with Professor Raymond Chi-Wing Wong. I previously earned my Master’s degree from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and my Bachelor of Science from Chongqing University.
My research centers on Natural Language Processing (NLP) for Database, with a particular focus on data-centric tasks. I am also interested in MLLM pre-training data construction, including efficient and automated data quality assessment models, data acquisition and curation, diversity assurance, noisy data cleaning, and coreset selection. In addition, I explore mathematical optimization techniques to enhance the performance and efficiency of Data Agents.
💡 I am seeking exchange or visiting research opportunities in 2027, as well as long-term research collaborators with shared interests. If you are interested in my work, please feel free to contact me via email: zhuoy.wan@connect.polyu.hk.
Research Thrust
MLLM Pre-training Data Construction
Efficient data acquisition and curation, with a focus on diversity, noisy data cleaning, and coreset selection.
Data Agents & Optimization
Exploring autonomous data agents and mathematical optimization to improve their performance and efficiency.
News
🎉 Two papers have been accepted to ICDE 2027 (CCF-A): my first-author paper, “XOver: Execution-Calibrated Exemplar Contextualization for Multilingual Text-to-OverpassQL on OpenStreetMap”, and our co-authored paper, “Text-to-RLS: Towards Constraint-Anchored Row-Level Security in Natural Language Database Interfaces”!
🎉 Our co-authored paper, “Meta-Moderator: Empowering Multi-Agent Debate with Meta-Cognition”, has been accepted to Findings of EMNLP 2026!
🎉 I was invited to serve as a Program Committee Member for WSDM 2027.
🎉 My first-author paper, “TACO: Token-Aware Context Optimization for Structured OpenStreetMap Query Generation”, has been accepted to SIGMOD 2027 (First Round, CCF-A)!
Earlier updates
🎉 Our co-authored paper, “SrDetection: A Self-Referential Framework for Data Leakage Detection in Code Large Language Models”, has been accepted to Findings of ACL 2026!
🎉 I became a Ph.D. candidate at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University!
🎉 Two papers have been accepted to ICDE 2026 (CCF-A): my first-author paper, “OsmT: Bridging OpenStreetMap Queries and Natural Language with Open-source Tag-aware Language Models”, and our co-authored paper, “VisPoison: An Effective Backdoor Attack Framework for Tabular Data Visualization Models”!
🎉 Our co-authored paper, “Medical Image Debiasing by Learning Adaptive Agreement from a Biased Council”, has been accepted to Medical Image Analysis (JCR Q1)!
🎉 My first-author paper, “DataVisT5: A Pre-trained Language Model for Jointly Understanding Text and Data Visualization”, has been accepted to ICDE 2025 (CCF-A)!
Publications
Google Scholar ↗PUBLISHED & ACCEPTED
XOver: Execution-Calibrated Exemplar Contextualization for Multilingual Text-to-OverpassQL on OpenStreetMap
IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering
TACO: Token-Aware Context Optimization for Structured OpenStreetMap Query Generation
ACM Conference on Management of Data
OsmT: Bridging OpenStreetMap Queries and Natural Language with Open-source Tag-aware Language Models
IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering
DataVisT5: A Pre-trained Language Model for Jointly Understanding Text and Data Visualization
IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering
Text-to-RLS: Towards Constraint-Anchored Row-Level Security in Natural Language Database Interfaces
IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering
Meta-Moderator: Empowering Multi-Agent Debate with Meta-Cognition
The Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
SrDetection: A Self-Referential Framework for Data Leakage Detection in Code Large Language Models
The Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics
VisPoison: An Effective Backdoor Attack Framework for Tabular Data Visualization Models
IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering
PREPRINTS
Education
Honors & Awards
Second Prize, The Chinese Mathematics Competitions
Second-class Scholarship, Chongqing University
Advanced Individual of Scientific and Technological academic innovation, Chongqing University
Third Prize, The 8th TipDM Cup Data Mining Challenge Committee
Outstanding Student, Chongqing University
Outstanding Student, Chongqing University
Third-class Scholarship, Chongqing University
Contact
UNIVERSITY ADDRESS
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong · 香港九龍紅磡
zhuoy.wan@connect.polyu.hk