Lei Chen

Lei Chen is a Chair Professor and Director of HKUST Big Data Institute at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where he has served since 2005. His research spans data-driven machine learning, crowdsourcing systems, and uncertain database processing, with notable contributions in privacy-preserving spatial queries and graph neural networks.

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Waterloo (2004)
• MS in Computer Science, Asian Institute of Technology (1997)
• BS in Computer Science, Tianjin University (1994)

His work focuses on:

• Spatial Crowdsourcing - Efficient task assignment and privacy frameworks
• Graph Processing - Novel indexing for heterogeneous networks
• Explainable AI - Human-centric model interpretation techniques
• Uncertain Data - Probabilistic query processing with crowdsourcing

Recent publications cluster around secure data federation, distributed graph training, and privacy-preserving mobility systems, reflecting his leadership in ACM and IEEE communities. Students include 15 active Ph.D. candidates and 20+ graduated researchers now at institutions like BeiHang University and Huawei Noah's Ark Lab. Awards: ACM Fellow (2024), VLDB Best Paper (2022), SIGMOD Test-of-Time Award (2015).