Kian-Lee Tan

Kian-Lee Tan is a Tan Sri Runme Shaw Senior Professor and Professor of Computer Science at the School of Computing, National University of Singapore (NUS). He holds a Ph.D. (1994), M.S. (1992), and B.Sc. (1st Class Honours) from NUS. His academic career spans decades of contributions to database systems and data analytics.

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, National University of Singapore (1994)
• M.S. in Computer Science, National University of Singapore (1992)
• B.Sc. in Computer Science (1st Class Honours), National University of Singapore

As a leading researcher in database systems, Tan focuses on query processing and optimization in multiprocessor/distributed systems, database performance, security, and multimedia information retrieval. His work extends to computational biology applications like genome databases and real-time influence analysis on social streams.

His recent publications highlight trends in GPU-accelerated graph analytics, trajectory pattern mining, and computational journalism. These works emphasize parallel processing, performance optimization, and social/media data analysis.

• IEEE Technical Achievement Award (2013)
• President Science Awards, Singapore (2011)
• NUS Graduate School Excellent Mentor Award (2010/2011)
• Outstanding University Researchers Award (1997/1998)

Tan has supervised numerous research projects and mentored students contributing to database systems. He secured significant grants including a US$1 million Ripple Foundation grant (2024) for financial technology education. His editorial roles include ACM Transactions on Database Systems and IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.

He leads the FinTech Lab at NUS Computing and has served on the VLDB Endowment Board (2012-2017). His work bridges database foundations with emerging applications in AI, fintech, and computational journalism.