Hello! I am Yuheng Zhao (赵宇恒). I am an ELLIS Postdoctoral Fellow in the Computational Behavior Lab at Aalto University, working with Prof. Antti Oulasvirta. I received my Ph.D. in Statistics from the School of Data Science at Fudan University, supervised by Prof. Siming Chen in FDUVIS Lab. I also completed a research internship advised by Dr. Yu Zhang.

My research focuses on LLM-driven intelligent visual analytics, human-AI interaction and AI4Science. I combine methods from visualization, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction to build intelligent interfaces that help people understand complex data and coordinate with AI agents.

💬 News
🏆 Our paper LEVA won the Best Paper Runner-Up at IEEE TVCG 2025!
🎉 Our paper "InfoAlign" has been accepted to ACM CHI 2026!
🎉 Our paper "Intelligent Drill-Down" has been accepted to IEEE PacificVis 2026!
🎉 Our paper "ProactiveVA" and "SceneLoom" have been accepted to IEEE VIS '25. Also, "KinemaFX" has been accepted to ACM UIST '25!
🎉 Two papers were accepted to PacificVis 2025! "SmartMLVs" received a 🏆 Best Paper Honorable Mention!
🎉 Our paper "LightVA: Lightweight Visual Analytics with LLM Agent-Based Task Planning and Execution" has been accepted to IEEE TVCG 2024 — looking forward to sharing more soon!
🎉 Our paper "LEVA: Using Large Language Models to Enhance Visual Analytics" has been accepted to IEEE TVCG 2024.
👩🏻‍💻 Wrapped up an research internship at Huawei (2012 Lab) — grateful for the opportunity and mentorship.
🎉 Our paper "OldVisOnline" has been accepted to IEEE VIS 2023 — excited to contribute to historical visualization research!
🎉 Our paper "ContextWing" has been accepted to CSCW 2023.
Yuheng Zhao

📖 Publications

* denoted equal contribution

InfoAlign: A Human-AI Co-Creation System for Storytelling with Infographics figure

InfoAlign: A Human-AI Co-Creation System for Storytelling with Infographics

Jielin Feng, Xinwu Ye, Qianhui Li, Verena Prantl, Jun-Hsiang Yao, Yuheng Zhao, Yun Wang, Siming Chen
CHI Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2026
PDF Website Demo Slides
Intelligent Drill-Down: Large Language Model-Driven Drill-Down Technique for Human-AI Collaborative Visual Exploration figure

Intelligent Drill-Down: Large Language Model-Driven Drill-Down Technique for Human-AI Collaborative Visual Exploration

Zhijun Zheng, Tian Qiu, Yuheng Zhao, Siming Chen
PacificVis Proceedings of the 19th IEEE Pacific Visualization Conference, 2026
PDF Website
Language May Be All Omics Needs: Harmonizing Multimodal Data for Omics Understanding with CellHermes figure

Language May Be All Omics Needs: Harmonizing Multimodal Data for Omics Understanding with CellHermes

Yicheng Gao*, Weixu Wang*, Yuheng Zhao*, Kejing Dong*, Caihua Shan, Weizhong Zheng, Till Richter, Zekai Li, Siming Chen, Fabian J. Theis, Qi Liu
bioRxiv, 2025
PDF Website GitHub
KinemaFX: A Kinematic-Driven Interactive System for Particle Effect Exploration and Customization figure

KinemaFX: A Kinematic-Driven Interactive System for Particle Effect Exploration and Customization

Yifei Zhang, Lin-Ping Yuan, Yuheng Zhao, Jielin Feng, Siming Chen
UIST The ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, 2025
PDF Website Fast Forward Demo Slides
Position Paper: Validatory Visualization for Human-GenAI Co-Creation figure

Position Paper: Validatory Visualization for Human-GenAI Co-Creation

Yu Zhang, Yuheng Zhao, Yuhan Guo, Guozheng Li, Siming Chen, Xiaoru Yuan
VIS Proceedings of the IEEE VIS Workshop on GenAI, Agents, and the Future of VIS, 2025
PDF Slides
SceneLoom: Communicating Data with Scene Context figure

SceneLoom: Communicating Data with Scene Context

Lin Gao, Leixian Shen, Yuheng Zhao, Jiexiang Lan, Huamin Qu, Siming Chen
VIS TVCG IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (VIS'25), 2026
PDF Website Demo Appendix
SmartMLVs: LLM Enabled Multiple Linked Views Generation for Interactive Visualization figure

SmartMLVs: LLM Enabled Multiple Linked Views Generation for Interactive Visualization

Tian Qiu, Fen Wang, Shaohua Huang, Meng Guo, Yuheng Zhao, Jincheng Li, Siming Chen
PacificVis IEEE Pacific Visualization Conference, 2025
Best Paper Honorable Mention (3/100)
PDF Website
Social Media Island: Interactive User Profiling and Information Diffusion Exploration with 3D Visual Metaphors figure

Social Media Island: Interactive User Profiling and Information Diffusion Exploration with 3D Visual Metaphors

Jinjing Jiang*, Yuheng Zhao*, Jun-Hsiang Yao, Huiting Wang, Xuexi Wang, Lana Blue, Chen Guo, Xudong Li, Siming Chen
PacificVis IEEE Pacific Visualization Conference, 2025
PDF Website
LightVA: Lightweight Visual Analytics with LLM Agent-Based Task Planning and Execution figure

LightVA: Lightweight Visual Analytics with LLM Agent-Based Task Planning and Execution

Yuheng Zhao, Junjie Wang, Linbing Xiang, Xiaowen Zhang, Zifei Guo, Cagatay Turkay, Yu Zhang, Siming Chen
TVCG IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2024
PDF Website Demo Slides Appendix
PCLVis: Visual Analytics of Process Communication Latency in Large-Scale Simulation figure

PCLVis: Visual Analytics of Process Communication Latency in Large-Scale Simulation

Chongke Bi, Xin Gao, Baofeng Fu, Yuheng Zhao, Siming Chen, Ying Zhao, Yunhai Wang
arXiv arXiv, 2024
PDF Website
OldVisOnline: Curating a Dataset of Historical Visualizations figure

OldVisOnline: Curating a Dataset of Historical Visualizations

Yu Zhang, Ruike Jiang, Liwenhan Xie, Yuheng Zhao, Can Liu, Tianhong Ding, Siming Chen, Xiaoru Yuan
VIS TVCG IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (VIS'23), 2024
PDF Website GitHub Fast Forward Talk
Visual Exploration of the Reading Comprehension Question Answering Model for Improving the Interpretability figure

Visual Exploration of the Reading Comprehension Question Answering Model for Improving the Interpretability

Zekai Shao, Shuran Sun, Yuheng Zhao, Siyuan Wang, Zhongyu Wei, Cagatay Turkay, Siming Chen
TVCG IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), 2023
PDF Website
ContextWing: Pair-wise Visual Comparison for Evolving Sequential Patterns of Contexts in Social Media Data Streams figure

ContextWing: Pair-wise Visual Comparison for Evolving Sequential Patterns of Contexts in Social Media Data Streams

Yuheng Zhao, Xinyu Wang, Chen Guo, Min Lu, Siming Chen
CSCW Proceedings of ACM SIGCHI Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 2023
PDF Website Demo Slides
Metaverse: Perspectives from graphics, interactions and visualization figure

Metaverse: Perspectives from graphics, interactions and visualization

Yuheng Zhao, Jinjing Jiang, Yi Chen, Richen Liu, Yalong Yang, Xiangyang Xue, Siming Chen
VI Visual Informatics, 2022
Top Cited & Most Downloaded Paper in 2023
PDF Website
Mixed-Initiative Visual Exploration of Social Media Text and Events figure

Mixed-Initiative Visual Exploration of Social Media Text and Events

Lei Peng, Yuheng Zhao, Yijie Hou, Qinghong Wang, Siqi Shen, Xingui Lai, Junting Gao, Jiaqi Dong, Ziyue Lin, Siming Chen
VIS Proceedings of IEEE VIS (VAST Challenge), 2021
Award for Strong Human-in-the-Loop Analysis Methodology
PDF Website
A Visualization System for Spatio-temporal Situation Awareness figure

A Visualization System for Spatio-temporal Situation Awareness

Junting Gao, Siqi Shen, Xingui Lai, Qinghong Wang, Ziyue Lin, Lei Peng, Yijie Hou, Yuheng Zhao, Jiaqi Dong, Siming Chen
VIS Proceedings of IEEE VIS (VAST Challenge), 2021
Outstanding Comprehensive Solution Award
PDF Website

🏆 Award

Scholarships & Honors
  • 2026 Outstanding Graduate in Shanghai
  • 2026 Outstanding Student in Fudan University
  • 2022-2026 First-Class Academic Scholarship for Outstanding PhD Students in Fudan University
  • 2025 Outstanding Student of Fudan University "Shede" Named Scholarship
  • 2024 China Scholarship Council Joint PhD Program
  • 2024 Outstanding Student of Fudan University "Guotai Junan" Named Scholarship
  • 2020 Outstanding Postgraduate Scholarship in HKUST
Research & Competitions
  • 2026 IEEE TVCG 2025 Best Paper Runner-Up (top 0.7%)
  • 2025 IEEE PacificVis Best Paper Honorable Mention (3/100)
  • 2024 The 10th China International College Students' Innovation Competition, Gold Award
  • 2024 Fudan-Tsinghua Joint PhD Forum, Third Prize
  • 2021 IEEE VAST Challenge, Award for Strong Human-in-the-Loop Analysis Methodology
  • 2021 IEEE VAST Challenge, Outstanding Comprehensive Solution Award
  • 2019 The 9th China MathorCup College Mathematical Modeling Challenge, First Prize

✨ Service

Program Committee

- IEEE VIS Posters (2026), VISxGenAI Workshop (2026), IEEE PacificVis Papers (2026), EuroVis Posters and Demos (2026), ChinaVis Papers (2026), ICHEC Papers (2026),VINCI (2024-2026).

Reviewer

- Journals: IEEE TVCG, IEEE CG&A, Computers & Graphics, Computer Graphics and Forum, Visual Informatics, Visual Computer.

- Conferences and Workshops: IEEE VIS / VISxGenAI Workshop, ACM UIST, ACM CHI / Late-Breaking Work, ACM CSCW, IEEE PacificVis / VisNotes, EuroVis, ChinaVis, VINCI.

Session Chair

- China-R Conference, AI+VIS Session, 2023.

- ChinaVis, AI and Visualization, 2026.