Skip to content

Introduction

I am currently a tenured Professor and the Associate Thrust Head in the Data Science and Anaytics (数据科学与分析学域), Information Hub (信息枢纽), The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), and I am also an affiliated Professor at HKUST. Previously, I was a Redbird Visiting Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, HKUST, and a Professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Australia.

Contact

Research

My research areas include Databases, Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence and Cross-disciplinary Topics. I have published research papers in these areas, with a majority of them in prestigious international journal and conferences.

I have won several awards, including SIGSPATIAL Best Vision Paper, ICASSP 2023 Top 3% Paper, SIGCOMM 2022 Best Paper, ICMR 2021 Best Paper and DASFAA 2016 Best Student Paper awards. In addition, several pieces of my research have been deployed in industrial projects and products.

My current research interests are:

  • Integration of database and artificial intelligence technologies, including learned indexes, learned algorithms and optimizations, and intelligent data preprocess and postprocessing (e.g., data cleansing/integration and NLP interface for DB/applications).
  • Machine Learning and Deep Learning, including Large Language Models, Natural Language Processing, Knowledge graphs, Security issues of deep learning models (e.g, adversarial attacks and defense).
  • Understanding high-dimensional data, including its structure, properties, and algorithms (e.g., vector databases).
  • Cross-disciplinary research and applications, including Material Informatics (e.g., material property prediction, material design, physics-informed neural networks, sybmolic regression, etc.), AI for Science (e.g., neural operator learning for solving PDEs), and AI for Education.

Also see

Teaching

  • I am the Computer Science Coordinator of HKUST(GZ), in charge of all Computer Science-related courses in the first two years for our UG students.
  • I am also overseeing teaching related issues (including teaching innovation and teaching quality) in the DSA thrust, HKUST(GZ).
  • Currently, we are building AI4Edu systems based on Large Language Models, with the aim to explore new learning paradigms.

Service

I am an Associate Editor of IEEE TKDE, Journal of Material Informatics, and Data Science and Engineering. I also served as PC Co-chairs of IEEE BigData 2023 and APWeb 2012, PC Vice-chairs of ICDE 2014 and 2018. I also served in other organizational roles in many conferences and workshops, as well as reviewers and PC members for major journals and conferences.

I am the Vice Directors of Guangzhou Municipal Key Laboratory of Materials Informatics, Guangzhou Municipal Key Laboratory of Electronic Design Automation, Guangzhou Municipal Key Laboratory of Big Data and Intelligence. I am the Council Member of Guangzhou Intelligent Networking and New Energy Automobile Industry Talent Federation.

Prospective Student

I am always looking for curious and motivated PhD/MPhil/RA/Visiting student to join our lab at HKUST(GZ). Please read this post for the current vacancy (2025).