Zhijian Zhou
2026
SQL-ASTRA: Alleviating Sparse Feedback in Agentic SQL via Column-Set Matching and Trajectory Aggregation
Long Li | Zhijian Zhou | Jiangxuan Long | Peiyang Liu | Weidi Xu | Zhe Wang | Shirui Pan | Chao Qu
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
Long Li | Zhijian Zhou | Jiangxuan Long | Peiyang Liu | Weidi Xu | Zhe Wang | Shirui Pan | Chao Qu
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
Agentic Reinforcement Learning (RL) shows promise for complex tasks, but Text-to-SQL remains mostly restricted to single-turn paradigms. A primary bottleneck is the credit assignment problem. In traditional paradigms, rewards are determined solely by the final-turn feedback, which ignores the intermediate process and leads to ambiguous credit evaluation. To address this, we propose Agentic SQL, a framework featuring a universal two-tiered reward mechanism designed to provide effective trajectory-level evaluation and dense step-level signals. First, we introduce Aggregated Trajectory Reward (ATR) to resolve multi-turn credit assignment. Using an asymmetric transition matrix, ATR aggregates process-oriented scores to incentivize continuous improvement. Leveraging Lyapunov stability theory, we prove ATR acts as an energy dissipation operator, guaranteeing a cycle-free policy and monotonic convergence. Second, Column-Set Matching Reward (CSMR) provides immediate step-level rewards to mitigate sparsity. By executing queries at each turn, CSMR converts binary (0/1) feedback into dense [0,1] signals based on partial correctness. Evaluations on BIRD show a 5% gain over binary-reward GRPO. Notably, our approach outperforms SOTA Arctic-Text2SQL-R1-7B on BIRD and Spider 2.0 using identical models, propelling Text-to-SQL toward a robust multi-turn agent paradigm.
ChemAmp: Amplified Chemistry Tools via Composable Agents
Zhucong Li | Powei Chang | Jin Xiao | Zhijian Zhou | Qianyu He | Jiaqing Liang | Fenglei Cao | Xu Yinghui | Yuan Qi
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
Zhucong Li | Powei Chang | Jin Xiao | Zhijian Zhou | Qianyu He | Jiaqing Liang | Fenglei Cao | Xu Yinghui | Yuan Qi
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
Although LLM-based agents are proven to master tool orchestration in scientific fields, particularly chemistry, their single-task performance remains limited by underlying tool constraints. To this end, we propose tool amplification, a novel paradigm that enhances the collective capabilities of specialized tools through optimized, dynamic coordination within individual tasks. Instantiating this paradigm, we introduce ChemAmp, a computationally lightweight framework that dynamically treats chemistry tools (e.g., UniMol2, Chemformer) as composable building-block agents. It constructs task-specialized super-agents that transcend atomic tool constraints with limited data (≤10 samples). Our evaluations across four core chemistry tasks molecular design, molecule captioning, reaction prediction, and property prediction demonstrate that ChemAmp outperforms chemistry-specialized models, generalist LLMs, and agent systems with tool orchestration. Critically, this bottom-up construction strategy enables 94% inference token cost reductions versus vanilla multi-agent systems.
2025
From Implicit Exploration to Structured Reasoning: Guideline and Refinement for LLMs
Jiaxiang Chen | Zhuo Wang | Mingxi Zou | Zhucong Li | Zhijian Zhou | Song Wang | Zenglin Xu
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2025
Jiaxiang Chen | Zhuo Wang | Mingxi Zou | Zhucong Li | Zhijian Zhou | Song Wang | Zenglin Xu
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2025
Large language models (LLMs) have advanced general-purpose reasoning, showing strong performance across diverse tasks. However, existing methods often rely on implicit exploration, where the model follows stochastic and unguided reasoning paths—like walking without a map. This leads to unstable reasoning paths, lack of error correction, and limited learning from past experience. To address these issues, we propose a framework that shifts from implicit exploration to structured reasoning through guideline and refinement. First, we extract structured reasoning patterns from successful trajectories and reflective signals from failures. During inference, the model follows these guidelines step-by-step, with refinement applied after each step to correct errors and stabilize the reasoning process. Experiments on the Big-Bench Hard (BBH) benchmark show that our method consistently outperforms strong baselines across diverse reasoning tasks. Analysis reveals that stepwise execution, refinement, and experience-based learning improve stability and generalization. We further explore model collaboration during refinement, offering insights into cross-model interactions. Notably, structured reasoning guided by learned instructions matches or even surpasses knowledge distilled through SFT, highlighting its scalability and effectiveness.