Yuan Tian

Yuan Tian

Ph.D. Candidate

Computer Science

Purdue University

About Me

Hi 👋, I am Yuan Tian. I'm currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University, advised by Professor Tianyi Zhang.

My research involves machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), and human-computer interaction (HCI). In particular, my research aims to provide more fine-grained control in AI generation, with an emphasis on coding __

I'm broadly interested in advancing AI across all dimensions, such as designing effective architecture & reasoning pipeline, creating high-quality training & evaluation data, or soliciting human feedback via efficient interaction design.
My ultimate objective is to increase the earth intelligence (humanity + machine) as a whole.

Publications

VLDB 2026 (Coming soon)

EvoSchema: Towards Text-to-SQL Robustness Against Schema Evolution

Tianshu Zhang, Kun Qian, Siddhartha Sahai, Yuan Tian, Shaddy Garg, Huan Sun, Yunyao Li

Proceedings of International Conference on Very Large Data Bases

Schema Evolution Preview
TEXT-TO-SQL SCHEMA EVOLUTION
ICML 2025

Selective Prompt Anchoring for Code Generation

Yuan Tian, Tianyi Zhang

Proceedings of International Conference on Machine Learning

Selective Prompt Anchoring Preview
IUI 2025

Text-to-SQL Domain Adaptation via Human-LLM Collaborative Data Annotation

Yuan Tian, Daniel Lee, Fei Wu, Tung Mai, Kun Qian, Siddhartha Sahai, Tianyi Zhang, Yunyao Li

Proceedings of ACM Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces

Text-to-SQL Domain Adaptation Preview
UIST 2024

SQLucid: Grounding Natural Language Database Queries with Interactive Explanations

Yuan Tian, Jonathan K. Kummerfeld, Toby Jia-Jun Li, Tianyi Zhang

Proceedings of ACM User Interface Software and Technology Symposium

SQLucid Preview
TiiS 2024

Insights into Natural Language Database Query Errors: From Attention Misalignment to User Handling Strategies

Zheng Ning*, Yuan Tian*, Zheng Zhang, Tianyi Zhang, Toby Jia-Jun Li

* Equal Contribution

ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems

TiiS Paper Preview
EMPIRICAL ATTENTION TEXT-TO-SQL
EMNLP 2023

Interactive Text-to-SQL Generation via Editable Step-by-Step Explanations

Yuan Tian, Zheng Zhang, Zheng Ning, Toby Jia-Jun Li, Jonathan K. Kummerfeld, Tianyi Zhang

Proceedings of Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing

STEPS Paper Preview
GRAMMAR TEXT-TO-SQL
IUI 2023

An Empirical Study of Model Errors and User Error Discovery and Repair Strategies in Natural Language Database Queries

Zheng Ning*, Zheng Zhang*, Tianyi Sun, Yuan Tian, Tianyi Zhang, and Toby Jia-Jun Li

Proceedings of ACM Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces

IUI 2023 Paper Preview
EMPIRICAL TAXONOMY TEXT-TO-SQL