Biography

    I am a tenure-track assistant professor of the Department of Computer Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). I received my Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2014, and I received my B.S. degree in Computer Science from Fudan University in Shanghai in 2009. My research interests include distributed systems for big data analytics, graph data management, geo-spatial data management, uncertain data management, data mining and machine learning.

    I am currently looking for Ph.D. students interested in database and data mining research. Please feel free to contact me, and please include your CV and transcripts for all degrees.

Selected Projects

    •  G-thinker: A User-Friendly Think-Like-a-Subgraph Parallel Graph Mining System [LINK]

    •  Pregel+: A Distributed Graph Computing Framework with Effective Message Reduction [LINK]

    •  Blogel: Thinking Beyond the Perspective of a Vertex [LINK]

    •  Quegel: Query-Centric Pregel-Style Big Graph Querying [LINK]

    •  GraphD: Fast Out-Of-Core Pregel-Like Graph Processing [LINK]

    •  LWCP: Lightweight Fault Tolerance in Distributed Graph Processing [LINK]

Awards and Grants

    •  NSF CRII Award #1755464

    •  Hong Kong 2015 Young Scientist Award in Physical/Mathematical Science (Sole Winner)

    •  NSF OAC-Core Award #2106461, PI [news]

    •  Alabama Research and Development Enhancement Fund (ARDEF) 2020 Round (to Improve Alabama’s Mobility Planning), PI [news]

    •  NSF SaTC EDU Award #1723250, Co-PI

    •  Senior Member of ACM

    •  Senior Member of IEEE

    •  South BD Hub Azure for Research Award

    •  Kevin and Joann Reilly Faculty Award (2020@UAB)

    •  Google Cloud COVID-19 Research Credit (2020)

    •  ICDE 2013 Student Travel Award

    •  DASFAA 2011 Best Paper Award

    •  SCSK Corporation Scholarship

    •  Fudan Excellent Graduate

    •  Fudan Excellent Student

Conference Review

    •  SIGMOD 2019, 2020, 2021

    •  VLDB 2018 Research Track, VLDB 2021 Demonstration Track

    •  SIGKDD 2020, 2021

    •  ICDE 2020, 2021, 2022

    •  AAAI 2021

    •  IJCAI 2017, 2021 (Senior PC), 2022

    •  SSTD 2021, Webmaster

    •  International Workshop on Data Mining in Bioinformatics (BIOKDD) 2018, 2019, 2020 [video] with SIGKDD, Leading Program Co-Chair

    •  SDM 2022

    •  PAKDD 2020, 2021

    •  IEEE Big Data 2021

    •  32nd IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI 2020)

    •  16th Annual MidSouth Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society Conference (MCBIOS 2019), Poster Chair

    •  Workshop on Data Mining in Biomedical Informatics and Healthcare (DMBIH) 2019 (Co-Organizer), 2020 with ICDM

    •  International Workshop on Big Data Tools, Methods, and Use Cases for Innovative Scientific Discovery (BTSD) 2019, 2020 with IEEE BigData

    •  IEEE Big Data Congress 2018, 2019

    •  ICPP 2018, 2022

    •  IEEE International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration for Data Science (IRI) 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021

    •  17th International Conference on Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing (ICA3PP 2017)

    •  4th International Workshop on Big Data Management and Service (BDMS 2017) with DASFAA

    •  2nd Annual International Conference on Information System and Artificial Intelligence (ISAI 2017)

    •  8th International Conference on Database Management Systems (DMS 2017)

    •  IEEE 22nd International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems (ICPADS 2016)

    •  1st International Workshop on Graph Analytics and Query Processing (GAP 2016) with APWeb

Journal Review

    •  IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (TCBB), Guest Editor for BIOKDD SI [2018-2021]

    •  BMC Bioinformatics, Guest Editor for MCBIOS 2019 SI [2019-2020]

    •  ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS) [2017-2020]

    •  The VLDB Journal [2017-2022]

    •  IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS) [2016-2020]

    •  IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE) [2014-2021]

    •  ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) [2020]

    •  ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization (TACO) [2020]

    •  Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing (JPDC) [2020]

    •  IEEE Transactions on Big Data (TBD) [2020]

    •  ACM/IEEE Transactions on Networking (TON) [2020]

    •  IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering (TNSE) [2018-2019]

    •  IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing (TCC) [2018]

    •  World Wide Web Journal (WWWJ) [2015-2016]

    •  Knowledge and Information Systems (KAIS) [2015-2017]

    •  Information Systems (IS) [2018]

    •  Frontiers of Computer Science (FCS) [2016-2017]

    •  Information Sciences [2018-2021]

    •  Future Generation Computer Systems (FGCS) [2017]

    •  Distributed and Parallel Databases (DAPD) [2016]

    •  Computational Intelligence [2016]

Students

    •  Guimu Guo [PhD, 2017-now], Alabama EPSCoR Graduate Research Scholar Program (GRSP) Awardee

    •  Jalal Khalil [PhD, 2019-now]

    •  Mirza Tanzim Sami (Sami) [PhD, 2020-now]

    •  Abdullateef Almudaifer (Lateef) [PhD, 2020-now]

    •  Saugat Adhikari [PhD, 2021-now], UAB Blazer Fellowship Awardee

    •  Lyuheng Yuan [PhD, 2021-now], UAB Blazer Fellowship Awardee

    •  Bhadhan Joy [MSDS, 2020-now]

    •  Md Mashiur Rahman Chowdhury [MSCS, 2017-2019], UAB Blazer Fellowship Awardee

    •  Wenwen Qu [Summer Intern in 2019, from ECNU]

    •  Tianyi Miao [Summer Intern in 2018, from Indian Springs School, now at UPenn]

    •  Weida Tan [MSCS, RA in 2016-2017, now at Fledging (Founder)]

Invited Talks

    •  Topic: Some Insights on Curriculum Design in Data Science and Big Data Related Courses
        Venue: Data Science Education and Workforce Working Group Webinar Series, South Big Data Hub (Virtual).
        Date: Oct 01, 2021

    •  Keynote II: Parallel Mining of Frequent Subtree Patterns
        Venue: The 2nd International Workshop on Large Scale Graph Data Analytics in Conjunction with VLDB 2020 (Virtual).
        Date: Sep 04, 2020

    •  Topic: User-Friendly Distributed Frameworks for Processing Big Data
        Venue: Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey.
        Date: Dec 23, 2019

    •  Topic: A Task-Centric Approach to Revolutionize Big Graph Systems Research
        Venue: Dagstuhl Seminar 19491: Big Graph Processing Systems, Schloss Dagstuhl, Germany.
        Date: Dec 2, 2019

    •  Topic: Big Data Systems: Combining Ease of Programming with Performance
        Venue: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN.
        Date: Aug 20, 2019

    •  Topic: Big Data Systems: Combining Ease of Programming with Performance
        Venue: East China Normal University (ECNU), Shanghai, China.
        Date: May 22, 2019

    •  Topic: Expert Panel
        Venue: The 16th Annual MidSouth Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society Conference (MCBIOS 2019), Birmingham, AL.
        Date: Mar 30, 2019

    •  Topic: Mining Subgraphs from a Big Graph: Solution and Challenges
        Venue: Dagstuhl Seminar 19051: Data Structures for the Cloud and External Memory Data, Schloss Dagstuhl, Germany.
        Date: Jan 30, 2019

    •  Topic: Python for Data Science
        Venue: BHAM QUANTS, Birmingham, AL.
        Date: Nov 14, 2018

    •  Topic: User-Friendly Distributed Frameworks for Processing Big Data
        Venue: Queen's University Belfast (QUB), Belfast, Northern Ireland.
        Date: Aug 17, 2018

    •  Poster: T-thinker: A Task-Centric Framework to Revolutionize Big Data Systems Research [LINK]
        Video: Link, Acknowledgement
        Venue: Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Early Career Researcher Symposium, Washington, D.C.
        Date: Aug 1, 2018

    •  Topic: User-Friendly Distributed Frameworks for Processing Big Data
        International Forum on Artificial Intelligence and Trustworthy Software
        Venue: East China Normal University (ECNU), Shanghai, China.
        Date: July 13, 2018

    •  Topic: User-Friendly Distributed Frameworks for Processing Big Data [LINK]
        Venue: Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama.
        Date: May 22, 2018

    •  Featured Panel: Future of Convergence: An International Perspective [LINK]
        Venue: Anniversary of the Society for Design and Process Science (SDPS), 2017
        Date: Nov 7, 2017

    •  Poster: Bridging High Performance of HPC Community with Programming Friendliness of Data Science Community [LINK]
        Video: Link, Acknowledgement
        Venue: The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Symposium on Computing Research 2017, Washington, D.C.
        Date: Oct 23, 2017

    •  Topic: Systems for Big Data Analytics
        Venue: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts
        Date: Sep 25, 2017

    •  Topic: Systems for Big Graph Analytics
        Alabama IEEE Computer Society Talk
        Venue: The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
        Date: Oct 21, 2016

    •  Topic: Systems for Big Graph Analytics [LINK]
        Venue: City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
        Date: Jun 2, 2016

    •  Topic: Systems and Algorithms for Big Data Analytics [LINK]
        Venue: University of California, Riverside (UCR), California
        Date: Feb 29, 2016

    •  Topic: Systems and Algorithms for Big Data Analytics [LINK]
        Venue: Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan
        Date: Feb 22, 2016

    •  Topic: Systems and Algorithms for Big Data Analytics [LINK]
        Venue: University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana
        Date: Feb 9, 2016

    •  Topic: Systems and Algorithms for Big Data Analytics [LINK]
        Venue: Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
        Date: Jan 21, 2016

    •  Topic: Systems and Algorithms for Big Data Analytics [LINK]
        Venue: Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
        Date: Nov 25, 2015

    •  Topic: Distributed Graph Computing: Algorithms and Systems
        Venue: Sun Yat-Sen University (SYSU), Guangzhou, China
        Date: Nov 14, 2014

    •  Topic: Distributed Graph Computing Beyond Pregel
        Venue: Alibaba Xixi Park (Taobao City), Hangzhou, China
        Date: May 23, 2014

    •  Topic: Distributed Graph Computing: Algorithms and Systems
        Venue: National Institute of Informatics (NII), Tokyo, Japan
        Date: May 8, 2014

    •  Topic: Query Processing in Spatial Databases
        Venue: East China Normal University (ECNU), Shanghai, China
        Date: Dec, 2012

Blogs

A Great Video Tutorial to Variational Autoencoder (ELBO, Reparameterization Trick). Be patient to the accent, content is good :-)

A Great Introductory Course to GPU (CUDA) Programming

A Great Introductory Video to DJI Air 2S Drone

Error "Acrobat version is less than 5.0" Reported by IEEE PDF eXpress? Convert Your PDF File Using This Tool!

Best Video Tutorial on Hyperbolic Embedding

Great Video Tutorial on Self-Attention and Transformer (4 Videos)

A Comprehensive Walkthrough of TensorFlow Functions

A Quick Introduction to D3.js

Great Video Tutorial on (Deep) Reinforcement Learning (RL) (Q-Learning Only) (Chinese Tutorial Including Policy Graident)

Great Video Tutorial on Deep Learning (DL) via Computer Vision (Shortcut for Learning DL)

How to Mount a Network File System?

How to Use UAB's Cheaha GPU Servers for Deep Learning?

Video on Python: the Language for Data Science (My Talk at BhamQuants)

The MPI Pitfall: How to Use MPI for Distributed Systems Research?

All-Pairs Communication: How to Ensure High Network Bandwidth Utilization?

How to make Apache Giraph run?

Introductory Tutorial on How to Commit Your Project to GitHub [LINK]

Concepts in Kubernetes (K8s): a Clear/Quick Tutorial [LINK]

My Advice to New CS Students (along with many others') [LINK]