Portrait of Luthfi Balaka

Luthfi Balaka

PhD Student in Computer Science • The University of Chicago

I am a first-year Computer Science PhD student and an Eckhardt Graduate Scholar at the University of Chicago. My research focuses on designing AI-agent-driven systems for accelerating value extraction from tabular data.


News


Publications

Pneuma-Seeker: Relational Reification of Information Needs for Agentic Data Discovery and Preparation

Luthfi Balaka, John Hillesland, Kemal Badur, Raul Castro Fernandez

Under Review at VLDB 2026

Demonstration of Pneuma-Seeker: Agentic System for Reifying and Fulfilling Information Needs on Tabular Data

Luthfi Balaka, Raul Castro Fernandez

CAIS 2026

The Pneuma Project: Reifying Information Needs as Relational Schemas to Automate Discovery, Guide Preparation, and Align Data with Intent

Luthfi Balaka, Raul Castro Fernandez

CIDR 2026

Pneuma: Leveraging LLMs for Tabular Data Representation and Retrieval in an End-to-End System

Luthfi Balaka, David Alexander, Qiming Wang, Yue Gong, Adila Krisnadhi, Raul Castro Fernandez

SIGMOD 2025