Visualization Agents
Building visualization agents around user intent, data definitions, and chart semantics, connecting planning, generation, structural and semantic validation, rendering checks, and interactive refinement.
About
Data Visualization Lead · Visualization Agents & Harness Engineering
I'm Leo Zhou (Changju Zhou)
Making AI tell the truth with data
I lead data visualization in the AI department at Hithink RoyalFlush. Over the past 15 years, I have built financial web products for individual investors and company-wide visualization infrastructure. In recent years, I have focused more on AI-generated visualizations: whether models understand the question, choose the right metrics and algorithms, and produce genuinely useful visuals. I also explore how interaction helps people understand, check, and refine the results of visualization agents.
HiVis, Standard Chart, and Financial Narrative Visualization are projects my team and I have built and used in company products. Our HiVis research was published in the Journal of Visualization; visualization work I co-authored has also received a contest award and poster acceptances at PacificVis.
PublicationsGoogle ScholarORCID
- Certified System Architect
- Hangzhou Category E High-Level Talent
- Associate Senior Engineer professional title
01
Current focus
AI Engineering · Agent Loop
Bringing requirements, context, tools, constraints, evaluation, and feedback into the agent loop so agents deliver inspectable results through implementation, verification, and refinement.
Visualization Libraries for the AI Era
Designing components, configuration contracts, and rendering interfaces for AI chart generation, giving agents composable, verifiable financial visualization capabilities shared across frameworks, HiVis, and Standard Chart.
02
Research & recognition
Paper
HiVis: A Web-Based Library for Financial Data Visualizations
Journal of Visualization · 2026 · Published
Co-author · Core system architecture. A web-based financial visualization library supporting reusable charts, interactions, and cross-device adaptation.
Related conference records: ChinaVis 2025 paper and PacificVis 2025 poster, both concerning the HiVis system.
Poster
PictorVis: Automatic Pictorial Chart Generation with Context-aware Asset Selection and Style Control
PacificVis · 2026 · Poster accepted
Co-author · Exploring automatic pictorial chart generation through context-aware asset selection and style control.
Contest
The Lighthouse: Shining a Light on the Gender Gap in Economic Engagement
PacificVis 2025 Visual Data Storytelling Contest · Winner
Team award · Co-author. A data story examining the gender gap in economic engagement.
Patent
Data Visualization Narrative Generation Based on Narration
Granted · Co-inventor · May 2026 · ZL 2025 1 1138659.8 / CN 121071134 B
Co-inventor · Generating data visualization narratives based on narration.
03
Selected work
Viz Platform
A visualization platform I lead. It brings the renderer for AI-generated charts and Standard Chart into one repository: components work on their own, and business systems and upstream agents call them through one protocol.
AI Workflow
Several AI coding tools claim, implement, review, and integrate tasks, resuming from checkpoints after quota limits or interruptions. Viz Platform is built this way.
Financial Narrative Visualization
Explaining financial content through visuals and narration, including script planning, timing, and retries when generation fails.
HiVis / Financial Visualization Infrastructure
I designed the core HiVis architecture and maintain chart components, interactions, and configuration interfaces shared across financial products. The related research was published in the Journal of Visualization.
AgentInfra / AI Engineering Infrastructure
My shared AI coding rules and skills, with generators for the files each client needs.
Visualization Agent
Turns analysis results into interactive chart pages. The model emits a shared chart specification and code checks its structure, meaning, and rendering before anything is drawn.
Vis Agent Bench
Gives agents the same visualization task and records result quality, time spent, and how much help a person had to give.
04
Career path
Technical Lead · Data Visualization
Hithink RoyalFlush, AI Department · Dec 2018 – Present
- I work on charts in financial products and the libraries they share, including data definitions, aggregation, and visual choices in AI-generated charts.
- I designed the core HiVis architecture and work on chart components, configuration, and integration with different products.
Team Lead · B2C Web Applications
Hithink RoyalFlush, B2C Department · May 2016 – Dec 2018
- Owned front-end architecture and performance stability for large consumer-facing financial products and their high-concurrency web paths.
Senior Software Engineer / Core R&D Member
Hithink RoyalFlush, B2C Department · Feb 2011 – May 2016
- Grew from intern to technical lead while building early B2C financial products and web infrastructure, spanning implementation, module design, and system architecture.
05
Education
Spring 2027 · Enrollment pending
Admitted to the M.S. in Computer Science program (Artificial Intelligence)
College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
Sep 2007 – Jun 2011
B.Eng. in Electronic Information Technology and Instruments
Hangzhou Dianzi University, China
06
Life journeys
Three dedicated stories about TOEFL preparation, the system architect exam, and applying to OMSCS.
07
Beyond work
Outside work, I enjoy 3D technology, gaming, reading, and travel.