Xuan (Winny) Li

Xuan (Winny) Li

The University of New South Wales (UNSW)

I’m Xuan (Winny) Li, a PhD candidate in Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW. I studied Business Analytics and Accounting at the University of Sydney, where I discovered my passion for data analysis. I was fascinated by how data can tell stories, and that curiosity drove me to pursue a PhD to sharpen my skills and push boundaries. My research now focuses on NLP and document analysis, aiming to develop smarter AI for understanding unstructured text.

I see myself as someone curious and passionate about life — I enjoy exploring new things and never see challenges as scary. To me, solving problems feels like building LEGO: I love the process, and the joy that comes with making things work 😊.

Feel free to reach out if you’d like to discuss research or explore potential collaboration!

AI Researcher

  • Research focus on LLMs
  • Internships at top institutions
  • Publications at ECAI, ICDAR

Educator

  • Teaching at UNSW & USYD
  • Both Business and CS courses
  • From statistics to info retrieval

Life Explorer

  • Barista, Bartender & Tea Master
  • Documenting life and food
  • Visited 8 countries worldwide

Educations

  • 2023.09 - 2027.09 (expected):  Ph.D. in Computer Science, The University of New South Wales (UNSW). Research area: Application of Large Language Models (LLMs) in Business.
  • 2018.03 - 2021.12:  Bachelor of Commerce (Honours), Professional Accounting & Business Analytics, The University of Sydney. Vice Chancellor’s Global Mobility Scholarship.
  • 2019.07 - 2019.08:  Summer School in International Business, Harvard Business School.

Publications

  1. Xuan Li, Mengfei Xiao, Jingtian Wei, Jialiang Dong, Raymond Wong. "Meaning Lies in Structure: Fine-Grained Table-Centric Document Semantic Parsing." Accepted at the 19th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR 2026), 2026.
  2. Jingtian Wei, Xuan Li, Hongen Lu. "Heuristic Conductance-Aware Local Clustering for Heterogeneous Hypergraphs." Algorithms, 19(1), 2026. MDPI.
  3. Xuan Li, Jialiang Dong, Raymond Wong. "From Surface to Semantics: Semantic Structure Parsing for Table-Centric Document Analysis." In Proceedings of the 28th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2025), pp. 3234–3241. IOS Press, 2025.
  4. Suxin Yu, Xuan Li, Boris S. Choy. "A new inverse extended Weibull distribution for modelling insurance loss data." International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-Based Systems, 31(supp02): 307–322, 2023.

Featured Publications

ICDAR 2026
AITabler Framework Overview

Meaning Lies in Structure: Fine-Grained Table-Centric Document Semantic Parsing

Xuan Li, Mengfei Xiao, Jingtian Wei, Jialiang Dong, Raymond Wong
Accepted at the 19th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR 2026)
Project Paper PDF Poster Code
ECAI 2025
DoTabler Framework Overview

From Surface to Semantics: Semantic Structure Parsing for Table-Centric Document Analysis

Xuan Li, Jialiang Dong, Raymond Wong
In Proceedings of the 28th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2025)
Project Paper PDF Poster Code

Work Experience

UNSW Sydney, Australia
Research Assistant, Business School June 2024 – Present
  • Automatic annual report analysis with LLMs.
  • Employee tenure and career path prediction with machine learning techniques such as neural networks and Markov chain.
Academic Tutor October 2023 – Present
  • Tutor for COMP6714 Information Retrieval and Web Search; COMM5007 Coding for Business.
USYD Sydney, Australia
Academic Tutor, Business School October 2023 – Present
  • Tutor for QBUS5001 Foundation in Data Analysis for Business; BUSS6002 Data Science in Business.
Lapam Capital Beijing, China
Intern in Medical Group, Venture Capital Department July 2022 – February 2023
  • Evaluated biotechnology companies' core technologies and translated technical findings into investment insights, helping the team assess feasibility, scalability, and commercial potential.
The University of Sydney Finance Team Sydney, Australia
Finance Officer July 2019 – December 2020
  • Supported the deployment of a cloud-based procurement system, contributing to improved data privacy, smoother procurement workflows, and greater operational efficiency.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Beijing, China
Auditing Internship December 2018 – February 2019
  • Conducted audit procedures including internal control testing, cyber risk assessment, and financial verification, helping improve audit reliability and risk identification for enterprise clients.

Blogs

Latest Posts

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October, 2025
From Surface to Semantics: Presenting DoTabler at ECAI 2025
From Surface to Semantics: Presenting DoTabler at ECAI 2025
Three days at ECAI 2025 in Bologna — presenting our paper, learning from scholars across the AI spectrum, and the con...
May, 2025
Notes from the Tutorial Room: Teaching Continuous Distributions at USYD
Notes from the Tutorial Room: Teaching Continuous Distributions at USYD
A small reflection from this week's tutorial — continuous distributions, the moment things click for a student, and t...