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Anthony Man-Cho So is a Professor in the Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He currently serves as Dean of the Graduate School and Deputy Master of Morningside College . With a BSE from Princeton University and a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University, his career at CUHK began in 2007. Academic Leadership: Dean, Graduate School (2023–present); Deputy Master, Morningside College (2019–present) Education: BSE (Princeton), MSc/PhD (Stanford) His research focuses on optimization theory and its interdisciplinary applications in computational geometry, machine learning, signal processing, and statistics. Key projects include non-convex optimization for wireless networks, robust graph learning, and decentralized learning algorithms. His publications span high-impact journals like Mathematical Programming , SIAM Journal on Optimization , and conferences such as NeurIPS and ICML . Recent work emphasizes dynamic regret analysis , low-rank matrix recovery , and stochastic beamforming . He has authored over 50 refereed papers and a monograph on semidefinite programming. Awards include IEEE Fellow (2023), CUHK Research Excellence Award (2016–17), and multiple IEEE/INFORMS best paper and teaching accolades. He has served on editorial boards of journals like Mathematical Programming and SIAM Journal on Optimization , and as Lead Guest Editor for IEEE Signal Processing Magazine . Teaching roles include courses on optimization, discrete mathematics, and machine learning. Scientific Awards IEEE Fellow (2023) CUHK Outstanding Fellow (2019) Multiple IEEE/INFORMS Best Paper Awards (2010–2022) IEEE/UGC Teaching Awards (2008–2022) His methodology integrates theoretical rigor with practical applications, particularly in wireless communication systems, sensor networks, and financial engineering. Collaborations span institutions in Hong Kong, mainland China, and the U.S., reflecting a global academic influence.

• Optimization
• Algorithm Design
• Data Analytics
• +7 more

Professor Reynold Cheng is a faculty member at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), specifically within the Department of Computer Science in the School of Computing and Data Science (CDS). He currently serves as the Division Head of the AI & Data Science Division at CDS and is part of the Steering Committee of the Musketers Foundation Institute of Data Science. His academic journey includes a BEng and MPhil from HKU (1998–2000) and an MSc and PhD from Purdue University (2003–2005). Prior to HKU, he was an Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HKPU) from 2005 to 2008. Cheng’s research focuses on data science, big graph analytics, and uncertain data management. He has received numerous awards, including the SIGMOD Research Highlights Reward 2020, HKICT Awards 2021, and HKU Knowledge Exchange Award (Engineering) 2021. His work has been recognized through grants such as the HKU-TCL Joint Research Centre for AI-funded project (HKD 1M, 2020–2022) and a CRF-funded project for real-time monitoring of infectious diseases (HKD 6.5M, 2021–2022). Cheng actively contributes to academic service, including serving as PC co-chair for IEEE ICDE 2021 and editorial roles in journals like IS and DAPD. His publications span top venues like SIGMOD, VLDB, and KDD, emphasizing algorithm design for large graphs and probabilistic data systems.

• Data Science
• Big Graph Analytics
• Uncertain Data Management
• +3 more

Hailiang Chen serves as Professor in Innovation and Information Management, Assistant Dean (Taught Postgraduate), and Director of the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute at HKU Business School, The University of Hong Kong. His academic journey includes a PhD and MS from Purdue University and a BM from Tsinghua University. Doctoral Degree: Management Information Systems, Purdue University Master Degree: Economics, Purdue University Bachelor Degree: Information Management and Information Systems, Tsinghua University Professor Chen's research spans artificial intelligence, FinTech, social media analytics, and platform economics, with significant contributions to understanding how digital interactions shape financial markets and consumer behavior. His work frequently examines the intersection of technology adoption and economic outcomes, particularly in cryptocurrency markets, live-stream commerce, and venture capital decision-making. His research methodology combines large-scale data analysis with experimental designs to uncover causal relationships in digital ecosystems. His publications in elite journals like Journal of Financial Economics and Management Science demonstrate consistent impact, with multiple ESI Highly Cited Papers. Current projects include Gov-RAG for e-government services and comparative studies of AI search tools. His research has received continuous funding from Hong Kong's Research Grants Council for five consecutive years (2019-2023). Faculty Outstanding Researcher Award, HKU Business School (2022-23) INFORMS ISS Sandra A. Slaughter Early Career Award (2022) Association for Information Systems Early Career Award (2019) Three ESI Highly Cited Papers (Top 1% in field) Professor Chen actively contributes to academic service as Associate Editor for Journal of Management Information Systems and MIS Quarterly , and serves as Program Chair for the International Conference on Smart Finance. His industry collaborations include Alibaba, HSBC, and China Construction Bank, bridging academic research with real-world business applications in AI implementation and digital transformation.

• Artificial Intelligence
• FinTech
• Social Media
• +8 more

Dr. YANG, Renchi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Hong Kong Baptist University, Faculty of Science. He earned his BEng in Software Engineering from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications and his PhD in Computer Science from Nanyang Technological University, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the National University of Singapore. His research is centered on developing efficient algorithms and systems for large-scale data management and analysis. His research interests include: Big Data Management and Analysis Graph Learning and Network Embedding Databases and Data Management (especially graph query processing and similarity search) The Web and Information Retrieval (search, ranking, recommendation, web mining) Data Mining and Machine Learning (social network analysis, text mining, large language models) Dr. Yang’s recent publications span top conferences such as KDD, SIGMOD, WWW, ICDE, and AAAI, focusing on scalable graph clustering, network embedding, GNNs, and LLM integration. His work emphasizes algorithmic efficiency, scalability, and practical applications in real-world graph data. Scientific honors include: VLDB 2021 Best Research Paper Award 2022 ACM SIGMOD Research Highlight Award Best Paper Award Nominee in WWW 2022 Honorable mention as best PC member in WWW 2022 Dr. Yang actively mentors PhD and research students, currently supervising several RPg students including LIN Xiaoyang, LAI Yurui, and ZHENG Haoran. He has secured research funding enabling PhD scholarships and research assistant positions. He serves on the program committees of major conferences like VLDB, KDD, WWW, and SIGIR, and reviews for journals including TKDE and VLDBJ. He is a key member of the Database Research Group at HKBU, which has published extensively in top venues, including 8 papers at SIGMOD 2023. His research lab, the LAGAS Group, focuses on large-scale graph analytics and systems. The team is actively working on projects involving graph clustering, embedding, GNNs, and integration with large language models. Dr. Yang is currently recruiting PhD students for 2026 and research assistants for 2025, indicating active and expanding research operations.

• Big Data Management
• Data Mining
• Graph Learning
• +9 more

Xin Huang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), Faculty of Science. He serves as Coordinator of Research Postgraduate Programme (PhD&MPhil) and Coordinator of Programming Contest Teams. His educational background includes: Ph.D. in Systems Engineering and Engineering Management from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (2014) B.Eng. in Computer Science from Xiamen University (2010) Huang's research focuses on innovative technologies for large-scale graph data management and analysis. His work spans graph data management including keyword search and graph indexing, graph mining techniques for summarization and decomposition, community search algorithms, and graph learning approaches including graph neural networks. His research integrates theoretical foundations with practical applications in social network analysis and privacy-aware computing. His publication record shows consistent output in top-tier venues with a clear evolution from foundational graph algorithms to more complex applications involving dynamic and uncertain graphs, reflecting the growing importance of graph analytics in real-world systems. Notable awards include: Best Student Paper Award at ACM/IEEE IWLS 2023 Best Faculty Article Award from Chinese Communication Association (2022) HKBU President's Award for Outstanding Performance as Young Researcher (2021) RGC Early Career Award (2020) Best Paper Award at WISE 2019 Huang actively mentors PhD students and postdoctoral fellows, currently supervising five PhD candidates and four postdocs. His research has been supported by competitive grants including the RGC Early Career Award. He serves as Associate Editor for Data Science and Engineering and World Wide Web Journal, and participates extensively in program committees for major conferences including VLDB, ICDE, and WWW. As part of HKBU's Database Research Group, Huang contributes to a vibrant research environment that has secured over $10 million in research funding and published more than 200 papers in top venues.

• Graph Data Management
• Big Graph Mining & Visualization
• Social Network Analysis
• +4 more

Zihao Fu is a Research Assistant Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), specializing in Large Language Models (LLMs) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) . His work bridges computational methods with social sciences, focusing on model instability, repetition, hallucination, and algorithmic fairness. He has held research positions at the Oxford Internet Institute and the Language Technology Lab at the University of Cambridge. Education Ph.D. in Systems Engineering and Engineering Management (2017–2021), CUHK M.Eng. in Aeronautics and Astronautics (2012–2015), Beihang University B.Eng. in Automation Science (2008–2012), Beihang University His research explores the theoretical foundations of LLMs, addressing challenges like repetition , instability , and hallucination . He integrates linguistics , cognitive science , and fairness frameworks to enhance both foundational understanding and real-world applications of language technologies. Recent work includes biomedical NLP applications ( BAND dataset ), parameter-efficient model adaptation, and fairness toolkits ( OxonFair ). Zihao leads projects like BioCaster (disease outbreak monitoring) and CAM-Tool (cloud task distribution). He is actively mentoring postdoctoral researchers at CUHK and CUHK (Shenzhen), with expertise in machine learning , knowledge base integration , and parallel computing systems . His industry experience includes developing distributed algorithms at Alibaba Cloud’s PAI platform.

• Large Language Models
• Natural Language Processing
• Machine Learning
• +7 more

Professor Shenghua Gao is an Associate Professor at the School of Computing and Data Science of the University of Hong Kong (HKU), concurrently serving as Assistant Director for Shanghai Initiatives. He holds a PhD from Nanyang Technological University. His research focuses on integrating machine learning, spatio-temporal data analysis, and database systems to address challenges in mobility prediction, traffic management, and geospatial representation learning. He has contributed significantly to trajectory modeling, indexing frameworks for multi-dimensional data, and the application of large language models (LLMs) in spatio-temporal contexts. Key research interests include: Spatio-Temporal Data Science: Developing frameworks for efficient processing and analysis of point cloud, trajectory, and traffic data. Machine Learning for Databases: Innovating indexing algorithms (e.g., BMTree, MAST) and query optimization techniques leveraging ML. Trajectory and Mobility Prediction: Creating personalized models for next-location prediction and transfer learning across regions. Geographic AI (GeoAI): Enhancing road network representation and urban function inference using physics-guided and foundation models. Recent work highlights include the ST-LLM+ framework for traffic prediction, the MAST system for point cloud analytics, and the exploration of City Foundation Models for urban challenges. His publications span top venues in databases (SIGMOD, VLDB) and AI/data science (ICML, NeurIPS). While no awards are explicitly mentioned, his prolific output and leadership roles indicate significant academic contributions. He is actively involved in teaching and supervising research in the School’s undergraduate and postgraduate programs, including MSc(AI) and MPhil/PhD tracks.

• Spatio-temporal Data Analysis
• Machine Learning
• Database Systems
• +4 more

Ken M. L. Yiu is a Professor in the Department of Computing at Hong Kong Polytechnic University , Faculty of Engineering. He received his PhD and Bachelor's degree from the University of Hong Kong in 2006 and 2002, respectively, and was previously affiliated with Aalborg University (2006–2009). He is a leading researcher in databases, with a focus on spatiotemporal data, query processing, and multidimensional data management. PhD, University of Hong Kong (2006) Bachelor of Computer Engineering, University of Hong Kong (2002) His research interests lie at the intersection of database systems and spatial analytics. He investigates efficient indexing, query optimization, and privacy-preserving techniques for large-scale spatial and temporal datasets. His recent work explores learned index structures, GPU-accelerated query processing, and high-dimensional data retrieval. He has made significant contributions to spatial query processing, trajectory analytics, and location-based services. The trends in his recent publications (2021–2025) reflect a strong focus on high-performance database systems, including GPU acceleration (GHive), perfect hashing on GPUs (GPH), and learned cardinality estimation. His work increasingly integrates machine learning with traditional database techniques, as seen in AlayaDB for LLM inference and learning-based query optimization. He also continues to advance core database problems such as spatial indexing, trajectory analysis, and similarity search. SSTD 2025 10-Year Impact Award Ken Yiu has successfully led multiple competitive research projects funded by the Hong Kong GRF, including grants on learned index structures (2024–2026), smart memory for vector data mining (2021–2023), and efficient spatial data management (2017–2019). He has supervised numerous PhD and MPhil students, many of whom now hold academic positions (e.g., Bo Tang at SUSTech, Yu Li at HDU) or work in top tech companies (e.g., Huawei, Alibaba). His professional service is extensive, including roles as PI for major grants, area chair (ICDE 2024), and program committee member for top conferences like SIGMOD, VLDB, and ICDE. He is actively involved in research groups and projects related to database systems, particularly in spatiotemporal data management and efficient query processing. His lab collaborates closely with students and co-supervisors like Bo Tang on topics such as trajectory mining, spatial indexing, and learned databases. The research group maintains strong ties with international institutions and contributes to major open problems in database performance and scalability.

• Databases
• Query Processing
• Spatiotemporal Data
• +7 more

Professor David Wai-lok Cheung is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and Director of the Center for E-commerce Infrastructure Development (CECID). He holds a BSc in Mathematics from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and MSc/PhD in Computer Science from Simon Fraser University, Canada. His research focuses on database systems, data mining, e-commerce technologies, and secure computation. Key contributions include pioneering work on privacy-preserving data mining, XML schema design, and e-commerce infrastructure development. He has led numerous prestigious grants totaling over HK$60M and developed widely adopted open-source tools like the ebXML gateway. Professor Cheung has received awards such as the HKU Outstanding Researcher Award (1999) and the Distinguished Contribution Award (2009 PAKDD). He actively contributes to academia through leadership roles in conferences like PAKDD and CIKM. His research spans secure computation, data interoperability, and bioinformatics, with over 150 publications in top venues like SIGMOD, VLDB, and KDD. **Grants & Funding**: Highlighted grants include HK$6.6M for eLogistics Appliance (2007-2008) and HK$9.198M for a service-oriented e-transaction platform (2006-2008). **Publications**: Over 150 papers in areas like privacy-preserving data mining, XML query processing, and spatiotemporal data analysis. **Service**: Member of RGC Engineering Panel, Hong Kong Deposit Protection Scheme board, and Certification Board for IT Professional Certification.

• Database Systems
• Data Mining
• E-commerce Technologies
• +5 more

Dr. Paolo Mengoni is a Lecturer I at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), specializing in Artificial Intelligence and Complex Network Analysis. Originally from Italy, he brings over 20 years of experience as an IT consultant and researcher. His work focuses on AI applications in education, natural language processing, emotion recognition, and autonomous agents. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Florence and MSc/BSc degrees from the University of Perugia (Italy). Teaching responsibilities include courses like AI and Digital Communication , Basic Programming for Data Science , and Recommender Systems for Digital Media . His research explores topics such as learning analytics, sentiment analysis in social networks, and community detection in collaborative environments. He actively contributes to academic activities, including organizing international workshops like the 2020 Global Virtual Hack and Design Challenge and the HKBU-University of Perugia exchange program. His publications span journals and conferences including IEEE/WIC/ACM Web Intelligence, Future Generation Computer Systems, and IEEE International Symposia. He serves as a reviewer for venues such as IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation and the International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications.

• Artificial Intelligence
• Complex Network Analysis
• Natural Language Processing
• +3 more

Dr. Edith Cheuk Han Ngai is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), where she has been since 2020. Previously, she held an Associate Professor position at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research focuses on Internet-of-Things (IoT), edge intelligence, data analytics, machine learning, network security, smart cities, and health informatics. She is an ACM Senior Member, IEEE Senior Member, and IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer (2023-2024). Her research contributions include the Green IoT project in Sweden (2014–2017), recognized in IVA’s 100-list (2020). She has led interdisciplinary projects like the Smart Water Auditing initiative, combining IoT and machine learning to address water conservation. Ngai has received awards such as the VINNMER Fellowship (2009) and a Meta Policy Research Award (2022). Her work on energy-aware edge computing and federated learning has been widely cited, ranking her in the top 1% globally by Clarivate Analytics (2021–2023). Ngai serves as an Associate Editor for multiple prestigious journals, including IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing and IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics. She has organized conferences like IEEE GreenCom 2022 and IEEE IWQoS 2024. Her lab, the HKU IoT Lab, explores AI-driven smart systems, edge general intelligence, and healthcare applications. Recent work includes Radio2Text (mmWave-based speech recognition) and HealthPrism (multimodal health analytics). Ngai advises a dynamic research group with postdocs and PhD students focused on federated learning, edge computing, and wearable health sensing. Notable students include Zhihan Jiang (HKU Foundation PhD Award 2024) and Sukanya Jewsakul (BuildSys 2024 Best Paper Candidate). She collaborates with institutions like the HKU Center for Water Technology and Policy on projects like smart water auditing and health informatics.

• Internet-of-Things
• Edge Intelligence
• Data Analytics
• +5 more