[CV] [Publications] [Programming team]

Research Interests

Algorithms on big data; databases; data summarization; algorithms on distributed data; data streams; external memory algorithms; data structures; computational geometry.

Exploiting the rich interdependence between theory and practice is the main theme of my research. I always strive to design algorithms with nice theoretical guarantees that also work well in practice. I like simple algorithms with nontrivial and elegant analyses. I like theories that bring insights to how things should be done in practice (this includes lower bounds!).

I belong to both the Theoretical Computer Science group and the Database group at HKUST.

I am the coordinator of the theory seminar. If you are interested in giving a talk, please drop me a line.

Overview slides on some topics of my recent interests

Tracking Distributed Data
Computing Statistical Summaries over Massive Distributed Data
Dynamic Indexability and the Optimality of B-trees and Hash Tables

An overview article in Chinese: 大数据算法

Students and Postdocs

I am currently working with the following great students and postdocs:

• Dr. Konstantinos Tsakalidis (Postdoc, since Fall 2012)
• Zengfeng Huang (PhD, since Fall 2008)
• Lu Wang (PhD, since Fall 2009)
• Ge Luo (PhD, since Spring 2010)
• Bin Wu (PhD, since Fall 2012)
• Hao Liu (MPhil, since Fall 2012)

Former students:

• Zhewei Wei (PhD, 2012; now postdoc at MADALGO, University of Aarhus)
• Qin Zhang (PhD, 2010; now at IBM Almaden, joining Indiana University Bloomington as Assistant Professor)
• Ching-Hin Lau (MPhil, 2009; now at Thomson Reuters)
• Wenqi Zhu (MPhil, 2008; now at Morgan Stanley)

Awards and Grants

• HKUST School of Engineering Young Investigtor Research Award, 2012.
• HKUST Research Project Competition, "Communication-Efficient Algorithms for Tracking Distributed Data Streams", 2011.
  
• Google Faculty Research Award, "Computing Statistical Summaries with MapReduce", 2010.

Teaching

Now: COMP3721: Theory of Computation
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Courses taught in the past:
COMP3711: Design and Analysis of Algorithms
COMP3721: Theory of Computation
COMP573: Computational Geometry
COMP670S: Data Stream Algorithms
COMP670R: Hashing
COMP670Q: I/O-Efficient Algorithms and Data Structures

Programming Team

I am the coach of the HKUST programming team. Contact me if you are interested in solving challenging algorithmic problems (and traveling to places for free!).

Contact

Email: user name in the url@cse.ust.hk

Phone: +852-2358 8770
Fax: +852-2358 1477