👋 About Me

Hi, I am Zheng YUAN, a third-year Ph.D. student (since 2023.09) in PolyU X AI Lab at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), Department of Computing, under the supervision of Prof. Xiao HUANG. I received a B.E. from Shenzhen University (SZU), Computer Science and Technology, supervised by Prof. Weike PAN. Prior to commencing my Ph.D. study at PolyU, I worked as a Research Assistant at Representation Learning Lab, Westlake University supervised by Fajie YUAN and the Laboratory for High Performance Data Mining, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) supervised by Min YANG.

My current research interests focus on Post-Training of Large Language Models (LLM), with a focus on agent scenarios; LLM applications in data-driven scenarios, including Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and Natural Language to SQL (Text-to-SQL).

📧 yzheng[dot]yuan[at]connect[dot]polyu[dot]hk

🔥 News

• 2026.04: 🎉🎉 Our paper “Collision to Cognition: Hash-Driven Graph Construction for Efficient RAG” is accepted by ACL 2026 Main Conference.
• 2026.04: 🎉🎉 Our paper “Beyond Black-Box Interventions: Latent Probing for Faithful Retrieval-Augmented Generation” is accepted by ACL 2026 Findings.
• 2025.11: 🎉🎉 Our paper “You Don’t Need Pre-built Graphs for RAG: Retrieval Augmented Generation with Adaptive Reasoning Structures” is accepted by AAAI 2026.
• 2025.10: 🎉🎉 Our paper “Knapsack Optimization-based Schema Linking for LLM-based Text-to-SQL Generation” is accepted by ICDE 2026.
• 2025.09: 🎉🎉 Our paper “Neuro-symbolic Entity Alignment via Variational Inference” is accepted by NeurIPS 2025.
• 2025.09: 🎉🎉 Our text-to-SQL survey “Next-Generation Database Interfaces: A Survey of LLM-based Text-to-SQL” is accepted by TKDE 2025.
• 2025.08: 🎉🎉 Our paper “Exploring the Limits of Text-Based Collaborative Filtering Using LLMs: Discoveries and Insights” is accepted by CIKM 2025.
• 2025.02: 🔥🔥 Our GraphRAG survey “A Survey of Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Customized Large Language Models” has been released. Take a look!
• 2024.05: 🎉🎉 Our paper “Knowledge-to-SQL: Enhancing SQL Generation with Data Expert LLM” is accepted by ACL 2024.

⚒️ Projects

• Awesome-GraphRAG

📝 Publications

• Collision to Cognition: Hash-Driven Graph Construction for Efficient RAG

  Chuang Zhou, Zheng Yuan, Linhao Luo, Zhaozhuo Xu, Yilin Xiao, Junnan Dong, Siyu An, Di Yin, Xing Sun, Xiao Huang

  ACL 2026 Main

• Beyond Black-Box Interventions: Latent Probing for Faithful Retrieval-Augmented Generation

  Linfeng Gao, Qinggang Zhang, Baolong Bi, Bo Zeng, Zheng Yuan, Zerui Chen, Zhimin Wei, Shenghua Liu, Linlong Xu, Longyue Wang, Weihua Luo, Jinsong Su

  ACL 2026 Findings

• Deep Tabular Research via Continual Experience-Driven Execution

  Junnan Dong, Chuang Zhou, Zheng Yuan, Yifei Yu, Qiufeng Wang, Yinghui Li, Siyu An, Di Yin, Xing Sun, Feiyue Huang

  arXiv Preprint

• ErrorLLM: Modeling SQL Errors for Text-to-SQL Refinement

  Zijin Hong, Hao Chen, Zheng Yuan, Qinggang Zhang, Luyao Zhuang, Qing Liao, Feiran Huang, Yangqiu Song, Xiao Huang

  arXiv Preprint

• You Don’t Need Pre-built Graphs for RAG: Retrieval Augmented Generation with Adaptive Reasoning Structures

  Shengyuan Chen, Chuang Zhou, Zheng Yuan, Qinggang Zhang, Zeyang Cui, Hao Chen, Yilin Xiao, Jiannong Cao, Xiao Huang

  AAAI 2026

• Knapsack Optimization-based Schema Linking for LLM-based Text-to-SQL Generation

  Zheng Yuan, Hao Chen, Zijin Hong, Qinggang Zhang, Feiran Huang, Qing Li, Xiao Huang

  ICDE 2026

• Neuro-symbolic Entity Alignment via Variational Inference

  Shengyuan Chen, Zheng Yuan, Qinggang Zhang, Wen Hua, Jiannong Cao, Xiao Huang

  NeurIPS 2025

• A Survey of Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Customized Large Language Models

  Qinggang Zhang, Shengyuan Chen, Yuanchen Bei, Zheng Yuan, Huachi Zhou, Zijin Hong, Junnan Dong, Hao Chen, Yi Chang, Xiao Huang

  arXiv Preprint

• Next-Generation Database Interfaces: A Survey of LLM-based Text-to-SQL

  Zijin Hong, Zheng Yuan, Qinggang Zhang, Hao Chen, Junnan Dong, Feiran Huang, Xiao Huang

  TKDE 2025

• Graph-based Agent Memory: Taxonomy, Techniques, and Applications

  Chang Yang, Chuang Zhou, Yilin Xiao, Su Dong, Luyao Zhuang, Yujing Zhang, Zhu Wang, Zijin Hong, Zheng Yuan, Zhishang Xiang, Shengyuan Chen, Huachi Zhou, Qinggang Zhang, Ninghao Liu, Jinsong Su, Xinrun Wang, Yi Chang, Xiao Huang

  arXiv Preprint

• Knowledge-to-SQL: Enhancing SQL Generation with Data Expert LLM

  Zijin Hong, Zheng Yuan, Hao Chen, Qinggang Zhang, Feiran Huang, Xiao Huang

  ACL 2024 Findings

• Multi-Behavior Collaborative Filtering with Partial Order Graph Convolutional Networks

  Yijie Zhang, Yuanchen Bei, Hao Chen, Qijie Shen, Zheng Yuan, Huan Gong, Senzhang Wang, Feiran Huang, Xiao Huang

  KDD 2024

• NineRec: A Benchmark Dataset Suite for Evaluating Transferable Recommendation

  Jiaqi Zhang, Yu Cheng, Yongxin Ni, Yunzhu Pan, Zheng Yuan, Junchen Fu, Youhua Li, Jie Wang, Fajie Yuan

  TPAMI 2024

• Exploring Adapter-based Transfer Learning for Recommender Systems: Empirical Studies and Practical Insights

  Junchen Fu, Fajie Yuan, Yu Song, Zheng Yuan, Mingyue Cheng, Shenghui Cheng, Jiaqi Zhang, Jie Wang, Yunzhu Pan

  WSDM 2024

• Exploring the Limits of Text-Based Collaborative Filtering Using LLMs: Discoveries and Insights

  Ruyu Li, Wenhao Deng, Yu Cheng, Zheng Yuan, Jiaqi Zhang, Fajie Yuan

  CIKM 2025

• Where to go next for recommender systems? id-vs. modality-based recommender models revisited

  Zheng Yuan, Fajie Yuan, Yu Song, Youhua Li, JunChen Fu, Fei Yang, Yunzhu Pan, YongXin Ni

  SIGIR 2023

• SQL-Rank++: A Novel Listwise Approach for Collaborative Ranking with Implicit Feedback

  Zheng Yuan, Dugang Liu, Weike Pan, Zhong Ming

  IJCNN 2022