Ken M. L. YiuView profile
Professor
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.
