Curriculum Vitae

cynthiahqy@gmail.com | cynthia.huang@lmu.de | cynthiahqy.com | github.com/cynthiahqy

Last updated June 1, 2026

Munich, Germany

cynthiahqy@gmail.com | cynthia.huang@lmu.de | cynthiahqy.com | github.com/cynthiahqy

Research Interests

I am an interdisciplinary researcher working across statistics, computer science and the social sciences to advance and improve data-driven research. I support the application of novel methods and data sources in the social sciences, and collaborate with leading researchers in computer science and statistics on conceptual frameworks and workflow tools which respect statistical, computational and domain-specific validity, efficiency and usability considerations. Currently, I work on transparent and trustworthy applications of LLMs for social data science, statistical properties of multi-source datasets, and domain specific languages for information visualisation and statistical graphics.

Education

Monash University, Melbourne, Australia 2021 – 2025

Ph.D. in Mathematics and Statistics

  • Thesis: Unified Principles and Tools for Complex Datasets and Data-Driven Workflows
  • Supervisors: Rob J. Hyndman, Simon D. Angus, Sarah Goodwin
  • Affiliations: Dep. Econometrics and Business Statistics (EBS), Non-Uniform Business Analytics Team (NUMBAT), SoDa Laboratories (SoDa Labs), Monash Data Futures Institute (MDFI), Embodied Visualisation Group (EmVis)

University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia 2016

B.Com Honours in Economics

University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia 2012 – 2014

B.Com in Economics and Management

Appointments and Research Experience

Ludwig-Maximillian University, Munich Jan 2026 – Present

Postdoctoral Researcher, Chair of Statistics and Social Data Science, Institute of Statistics

Working with Frauke Kreuter in the Social Data and AI Lab (SODA) on AI-Human collaboration in statistical reasoning and data science. Affiliate at Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML).

Monash University Mar 2025 – Dec 2025

Research Fellow, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics

Worked with Rob J. Hyndman on visualisation principles and software for time-series data.

University of British Columbia, Vancouver Jul 2024 – Nov 2024

Visiting Researcher, Department of Computer Science

Hosted by Tamara Munzner in the InfoVis group. Collaborated on reconciling visualisation and provenance approaches from HCI, InfoVis and Statistics.

Ludwig-Maximillian University, Munich Jun 2024

Visiting Researcher, Institute of Statistics

Hosted by Anna-Carolina Haensch in the Social Data and AI Lab (SODA). Collaborated on generating crosswalks for ex-post harmonisation with LLMs.

Monash Addiction Research Center 2023 – 2025

Research Assistant

Adaption of web-scraped price data from commercial partner for public health policy research. Exploratory analysis and visualisations for research outputs and grant applications. Worked with Tina Lam.

SoDa Labs, Monash Business School 2019 – 2023

Research Assistant

Supporting multiple empirical economics projects with dataset design, collection, and pre-processing, exploratory visualisation, and preliminary analysis tasks. Worked with Nathaniel Lane, Paul Raschky, Laura Puzzello, Simon D. Angus & Klaus Ackermann.

University of Melbourne 2016 – 2018

Research Assistant, Department of Economics

Data extraction and curation from archival sources such as microfiche and magazine scans, including selecting harmonised variables and coordinating data entry by other team members. Worked with David Byrne & Phillip McCalman.

Publications

  1. Lam, T., Huang, C. A., Torney, A., Callinan, S., Vandenberg, B., Xia, T., Angus, C., Room, R., Ogeil, R., Cowper, A., Pettigrew, S., Rowland, B., Keric, D., Lubman, D. I., & Nielsen, S. (2026). Leveraging web-scraped data to examine alcohol pricing: An Australian feasibility study with retail data. International Journal of Drug Policy, 148, 105115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2025.105115 (Journal Article)

  2. Nassar, J. B., Yio, Y. X., Athukorala, N., Simran, Fan, S., Huang, C. A., Bartram, L., Dwyer, T., & Goodwin, S. (2025). Out of the Loop: Enhancing Documentation and Transparency in Collaborative Causal Loop Diagrams to Capture Multiple Perspectives. 2025 IEEE Visualization and Visual Analytics (VIS), 111–115. https://doi.org/10.1109/VIS60296.2025.00028 (Conference Paper, Best Paper Honorable Mention)

  3. Xiong, K., Huang, C. A., Wybrow, M., & Wu, Y. (2025). TableCanoniser: Interactive Grammar-Powered Transformation of Messy, Non-Relational Tables to Canonical Tables. Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3714321 (Conference Paper, Best Paper Honorable Mention)

  4. Ma, B., Huang, C. A., & Haensch, A.-C. (2025). Can Large Language Models Advance Crosswalks? The Case of Danish Occupation Codes. Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 4: Student Research Workshop), 392–399. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2025.naacl-srw.38 (Workshop Paper)

  5. Huang, C. A. (2023, October 23). Visualising category recoding and numeric redistributions. 1st IEEE Workshop on Visualization and Provenance Across Domains. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2308.06535 (Workshop Paper)

Preprints and Manuscripts Under Review

  1. Huang, C. A., O’Hara-Wild, M., Hyndman, R. J., & Kay, M. (2025). ggtime: A Grammar of Temporal Graphics (arXiv:2510.25656). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2510.25656 (Preprint)

  2. Huang, C. A., & Lam, T. (2025). PRITES: An integrative framework for investigating and assessing web-scraped HTTP-response datasets for research applications. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.13773 (Preprint, under review at Harvard Data Science Review)

  3. Huang, C. A. (2024). Crossmaps: A Unified Statistical And Computational Framework For Ex-Post Harmonisation Of Aggregate Statistics. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2406.14163 (Preprint, R&R at ACM/IMS Journal of Data Science)

Presentations

Invited Talks and Panels

  • ‘The Past, Present, and Future of ggplot2 Extension Packages’, 2026 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM), Boston, MA, USA, Aug 2026 (Invited Panel, forthcoming)
  • ‘Semantics and Composition in Grammar of Graphics Inspired Systems’, Vienna International Workshop on Visualization in Statistics and Data Analysis (vistda 2026), Vienna, Austria, Apr 2026 (Invited Talk)
  • ‘The Challenges and Opportunities of AI for Unstructured Data’, Data Quality Workshop: Unstructured Data and the Need for Quality Metrics, Munich, Germany, Jan 2026 (Invited Panel)
  • ‘Improving ex-post data harmonisation with xmap’, Making Data Work: Tools for Better Statistical Practice, LMU-NYU Workshop, Munich, Germany, Jun 2025 (Invited Talk)
  • ‘Webscraping in FinEco Research: Risks and Opportunities’, Department of Banking and Finance, Annual Retreat, Inverlock, VIC, Australia, Apr 2024 (Invited Talk)
  • ‘Web-scraping for Health Policy Research’, Monash Econometrics and Business Statistics Industry Engagement Workshop, Melbourne, Australia, Aug 2023 (Invited Talk)

Guest Seminars and Lectures

  • ‘An integrative framework for investigating and assessing web-scraped datasets for research applications’, Institute of Service Science, National Tsinghua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, Apr 2025
  • ‘Visualising Category Recoding Graphs in Data Harmonisation’, Department of Computer Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, Oct 2024
  • ‘LLMs for Preparing Data in R’, Guest Lecture for Wild-Caught Data (ETC5512), Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, May 2025

Contributed Talks and Posters

  • ‘Scalable self-paced e-learning of statistical programming with fine-grained feedback and assessment’, 2024 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM), Portland, OR, USA, Aug 2024
  • ‘Xmap: Unified Tools for Ex-Post Data Harmonisation’, useR! Conference, Salzburg, Austria, Jul 2024
  • ‘Leveraging web-scraped retail prices with an industry data partner’, Workshop on Advanced Analytical Methods Using Big Data, Monash Business School and Monash Data Futures Institute, Melbourne, Australia, Apr 2024
  • ‘Visualising Category Recoding and Redistributions’, 12th conference of the Asian Regional Section of the International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC-ARS), Sydney, Australia, Dec 2023
  • ‘Crossmaps: A principled approach to ex-post data harmonisation and dataset integration’, 2023 Australian Statistical Conference (ASC), Wollongong, Australia, Dec 2023 (Best Rapid Poster Award)
  • ‘Advances in Ex-Post Harmonisation using Graph Representations of Cross-Taxonomy Transformations’, Monash EBS PhD Contest, International Day of Women in Statistics and Data Science, Online, Oct 2023 (Best Talk Award)

Awards, Honours and Funding

Di Cook Award Honorable Mention, Statistical Society of Australia 2025

Awarded for R package ‘xmap’

LMU Mentoring Program, LMU Munich 2026

€1,500 EUR research funds

LMU Postdoc Support Fund, LMU Munich 2026

€3,900 EUR relocation and start-up grant

Best Short Paper Honorable Mention, IEEE VIS 2025 2025

Awarded for “Out of the Loop: Enhancing Documentation and Transparency in Collaborative Causal Loop Diagrams…”

Best Full Paper Honorable Mention, ACM CHI 2025 2025

Awarded for “TableCanoniser: Interactive Grammar-Powered Transformation…”

Speaker Support, Posit PBC 2024

$1,800 USD accommodation and travel grant to attend posit::conf(2024)

Enhanced International Research Experience Award, Monash Business School 2023

$8,000 AUD for research visit to UBC, Vancouver

PhD Top-Up Scholarship, Statistical Society of Australia 2023

$2,500 AUD sponsored by Australian Bureau of Statistics

PhD Top-Up Scholarship, Monash Data Futures Institute 2021 – 2025

$8,000 AUD stipend top-up and $3,000 AUD travel grant per year

Monash Graduate Scholarship, Monash University 2021 – 2025

Full doctoral scholarship covering tuition and living stipend

Teaching and Supervision

Teaching Associate, Monash Business School, Monash University 2020 – 2023

Led weekly tutorials for undergraduate and masters courses. Received teaching excellence awards for ECC2800 and ETC5512 based on student evaluations.

  • ETC5523: Communicating with data (2023)
  • ETC1010: Introduction to data analysis (2022)
  • ECC2800: Prosperity, poverty and sustainability in a globalised world (2022)
  • BEX2421: Harnessing big data for business and society (2022)
  • ETX2250/ETF5922: Data visualisation & analytics (2022)
  • ETC5512: Wild-caught data (2020)

Academic Tutor, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Melbourne 2014 – 2019

Led weekly tutorials for undergraduate courses in Economics and Management. Developed assignments and marking rubrics. Preparation and delivery of subject review lectures.

  • ECON10005: Quantitative Methods (2019)
  • ECON10004: Introductory Microeconomics (2017)
  • ECON10003: Introductory Macroeconomics (2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019)
  • ECON20002: Intermediate Microeconomics (2019)
  • ECON20001: Intermediate Macroeconomics (2018)
  • ECON20005: Competition and Strategy (2017, 2018)
  • ECON30025: Computational Economics and Business (2019)
  • ECON40002: Advanced Macroeconomics (2017)
  • MGMT20012: Business Case Analysis (2019)

Supervision and Mentoring

Research Internship Supervisor, Monash University 2025

Supervised 2 Masters of Business Analytics students working on LLMs for data cleaning

Peer Mentor, Williams Centre for Learning Advancement, University of Melbourne 2018 – 2019

Peer support for new tutors in the Faculty of Business and Economics

Service, Outreach and Public Engagement

Open-Source Software Contributions

  • Contributor, R Dev Day, Melbourne, Australia, Nov 2025
  • Contributor, Tidy Dev Day, Seattle, WA, USA, Aug 2024
  • R package maintainer: xmap, ggtilecal

Service

  • Organising Committee Member, NUMBAT Hackathon, Melbourne, Australia, Nov 2025
  • Co-Chair, WOMBAT2025 Conference, Melbourne, Australia, Sep 2025
  • Organiser, Monash NUMBATs Research Software Study Group, Monash University, 2023-2024

Research Skills Workshops

Delivered to graduate students and faculty at Monash Business School:

  • Reproduciblity in Economics Research (May 2024, Sep 2025)
  • Meeting AEA replication standards using Quarto (Aug 2023)
  • Designing R Packages (Oct 2022)
  • Quarto websites as research compendiums (Aug 2022)
  • Writing academic papers with Rmarkdown and friends (Aug 2022)

Public Talks and Meetups

  • ‘Reusing ggplot2 code: how to design better plot helper functions’, Statistical Society of Australia (SSA) Vic & Tas Branch and R Users of Melbourne Network (MelbURN) Meetup, Melbourne, Australia, Aug 2025
  • ‘Quarto for Knowledge Management’, posit::conf(2024), Seattle, WA, USA, Aug 2024
  • ‘Silver Linings: How a Data Harmonisation Mishap Turned into a PhD Thesis’, Data Mishaps Night, Online, Mar 2024
  • ‘Australia’s Rising WiDS Stars!’, WiDS @ Australian Data Science Network, Online, Mar 2023
  • ‘Misadventures with Reproducibility in R’, R Ladies Melbourne Meetup, Melbourne, Australia, Nov 2022

Science Communication

  • Presenter, 3 Minute Thesis Competition, Monash University, Jun 2023 (2nd Place in Faculty Heat)
  • Podcast Interview Host, The Random Sample, 2022-2025

Media Appearances