Sara Allawati presents research on LLM query generation at CIKM in South Korea
Author ADM+S Centre
Date 18 December 2025
Sara Allawati, an ADM+S researcher and PhD student at RMIT, recently visited Seoul, South Korea to attend The 34th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM). Sara met and collaborated with researchers from around the world, while also presenting a full paper for the first time.
CIKM provides an international forum for discussion on research information and knowledge management, as well as recent advances on data and knowledge bases. The goal of the conference is to shape future directions of research by encouraging high quality, applied and theoretical research findings.
While at CIKM, Sara presented the long paper titled: A Comparative Analysis of Linguistic and Retrieval Diversity in LLM-Generated Search Queries. The paper, co-authored with ADM+S researchers Oleg Zendel, Falk Scholer and Mark Sanderson, with Lida Rashidi from RMIT, compares human-written query datasets, collected five years apart, with queries generated by large language models (LLMs) in the context of search engines. A ‘query’ is what users type into a search engine, such as Google, when searching for information.
Sara, along with her fellow researchers applied different methodologies to generate queries using LLMs. Their findings show that while LLMs can generate diverse queries, their patterns still differ from human queries. Sara explained in her presentation that LLMs show promise for query generation, but should be used with caution in future.
Sara also highlighted the importance of preparing a presentation that can be understood across disciplines.
“This was my first time presenting a full paper, and I learned the importance of putting effort into both your slides and your talk,” Sara said.
“I learned that keeping a paper presentation simple and digestible is what makes it stand out.”
“When people listen to presentations all day, delivering content that is both engaging and digestible for different audiences goes a long way,” Sara explained.
After the paper presentation, Sara received several follow up questions, indicating a high level of audience engagement. From there, she had discussions with other attendees from Seoul, Germany and New Zealand, all of whom expressed interest in future collaborations.
Sara plans to submit follow-up papers in February 2026 and intends to reach out to some of these contacts for potential collaboration.
This research trip was funded by the ADM+S RMIT node and ADM+S HDR funding.
