Abstract

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) is well established for modalities such as text, images, audio, and even video. An important yet understudied modality is structured table-like data, such as relational tables or spreadsheet tables, which dominates in many high-value applications in organizations, from enterprises to healthcare. Recent works attempt to use this modality as part of, or in combination with, AI models. This workshop hosts a program focused on AI for tabular data with key topics such as representation learning, generative AI, and foundation models. The workshop also targets researchers focusing on the intersection of learning over structured data and information retrieval, for example, in retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and question answering (QA) systems.

The goal of the workshop is to connect researchers working on tabular data and surface novel research ideas and collaboration opportunities by bringing views from the NLP, ML, DB, and IR disciplines together.

Important dates

• Submission deadline: 20 October, 2025 (11:59pm, AoE)

• Notifications: 31 October, 2025 (11:59pm, AoE)

• Workshop: 6/7 December 2025 

Scope

The distinguishing focus of this workshop is tabular data. Breakthroughs from the "tabular" community are poised to impact applications in enterprises, governmental organizations, healthcare, and beyond. 

We understand tabular data as any table-like (semi-)structured data, including but not limited to: spreadsheets, (multi-)tables, relational databases, or time-series data.

We invite submissions related to AI for tabular data and any of the subsequent topics.

• Methods & Benchmarks: table representation learning; pretraining/foundation models for tables; generative modeling and synthesis; multimodal fusion (tables + text); evaluation protocols, datasets, and metrics.

• Applications: table-centered question answering and retrieval; NL interfaces to databases (e.g. text-to-SQL); entity matching and record linkage; table understanding (type/semantic inference, schema matching); predictive machine learning (i.e. tabular classification and regression), time-series as tables, synthetic data generation, data wrangling, and new applications!

• Systems & Data Management: table retrieval and indexing; open source software for the tabular community; scalable training/inference pipelines; cleaning, wrangling, and quality estimation; governance, privacy, and fairness for tabular ML.

• Interdisciplinary Perspectives: bridges between ML, DB, IR, and NLP communities; lessons from practice and deployed systems; or any applications, methods, or benchmarks for multimodal data that joins tabular data with other modalities such as text, images, and code. 

Submission Guidelines

We invite submissions in the following form:

1) Short papers: up to 4 pages excluding references, in NeurIPS format. A small group of reviewers will perform a single-round assessment based on relevance, clarity, and potential for discussion. Submission template: NeurIPS paper template.

2) Recent published work: peer-reviewed and accepted in 2025 at a premier ML, DB, IR, or NLP venues. Submission goes through a link to the paper, plus a brief statement of relevance for our workshop.

This workshop is non-archival. Submissions are managed through openreview, and the link will be added soon. All accepted papers will be presented as posters, and a few selected ones will be presented as spotlight talks.

Program (TBC)

Schedule

The workshop will start at 9:00 am and last until 5:30 pm. Activities include:

• Invited talks

• Spotlight talks 

• Poster sessions

• Reception (likely including free drinks🍸)

(Detailed schedule will follow.)

Invited Speakers (TBC)

The other speakers will be announced soon!

Organizers

Sponsors (tbc)