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Overview
My research centres around the making of database systems in the context of modern hardware, new programming language features, and new applications. The goal of my work is to build systems that both run fast and are easy to implement. My work also extends to related areas such as operating systems, parallel programming and distributed systems.
Most of our work is open-source and some has been adopted by real products, such as Amazon Redshift which uses the Serial Safety Net, and DragonflyDB which adopts Dash. My lab is part of the Data Science Research Group and Systems Group at SFU.
What I'm up to
- Latency/scheduling optimizations in database systems: PreemptDB [SIGMOD '25], MosaicDB [VLDB '24], CoroBase [VLDB '21]
- Indexing on disaggregated memory: DEX [VLDB '24]
- Systems aspects of online schema evolution Tesseract [VLDB '23]
- Synchronization primitives OptiQL [SIGMOD '24]
- Spring 2025 Teaching: CMPT 454, CMPT 984
Awards and Honours
- VLDB Distinguished Reviewer, 2024, 2023
- ACM SIGMOD Research Highlight Award, 2023 (Skeena), 2021 (Dash)
- ACM TODS "Bests of SIGMOD" Invitation, 2022
- ACM SIGMOD Distinguished Reviewer, 2022, 2021
- IEEE TCSC Award for Excellence in Scalable Computing (Early Career Researchers), 2019
Prospective Students
- For PhD studies: Please apply to the SFU CS PhD program and list me as a potential advisor.
- SFU undergrads: If you liked CMPT 201/295/300/454 and are interested in graduate studies or research (CMPT 415/416/Capstone), feel free to email me.
- Non-SFU undergrads: We only host research interns through the Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRA) or Mitacs Globlink Internship.
- Highschool students: Make sure you have good grasp of topics covered in SFU CMPT 201 and CMPT 295 before contacting.