Yufei Tao



Professor

Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Sha Tin, New Territories
Hong Kong, China

Office: Room 1019, Ho Sin-Hang Engineering Building
Tel: +852-39438437
Email: taoyf@cse.cuhk.edu.hk

Publications (my favorite selection)

General Information

Research Interests
Yufei Tao's research aims to develop "small-and-sweet" algorithms: (i) small: easy to implement for deployment in practice, and (ii) sweet: having non-trivial theoretical guarantees. He particularly enjoys working on problems that arise at the cross-intersection of databases, machine learning, and theoretical computer science.

Short Bio

Major Awards
GEMS of PODS 2022
ACM Fellow (Awarded in 2020)
SIGMOD Research Highlight Award 2018
PODS Best Paper Award 2018
Google Faculty Research Award (2016)
ACM Distinguished Scientist (Awarded in 2016)
SIGMOD Best Paper Award 2015
SIGMOD Best Paper Award 2013
Hong Kong Young Scientist Award 2002

Notes to Collaboration Requests
I value healthy collaborations and take authorships very seriously. Every coauthor in my papers needs to make a substantial amount of contributions. Students are reminded that their advisors, if without major contributions, will be left out from the author list. The same applies to company collaborators concerning their supervisors.

Professional Services

Keynote Speaker of ICDT 2016 (full list)

Selected Program Chairmanships (full list)
PC chair of PODS 2020
PC co-chair of ICDE 2014

Selected Program Committee Memberships (full list)
SIGMOD: 2007-2009, 2012, 2015, 2017 (group leader), 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023 (associate editor)
VLDB: 2005, 2009, 2010, 2012-2015, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021 (associate editor), 2022, 2023
PODS: 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020 (PC chair), 2022
ICDT: 2015, 2018, 2022
ICDE: 2005, 2007-2010, 2011 (area chair), 2012, 2013, 2014 (PC co-chair), 2016 (area chair), 2017, 2019-2022
KDD: 2010-2018, senior PC member 2019-2022

Associate Editorships
ACM Transactions on Spatial Algorithms and Systems (TSAS) (2022-now)
Computer Science Review (CSR) (2021-now)
ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS) (2008-2015)
IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE) (2012-2014)

Teaching

Awards
Vice-Chancellor's Exemplary Teaching Award 2021
Dean's Exemplary Teaching Award 2018, 2021

Current
CSCI3160 Design and Analysis of Algorithms.

Past Courses at CUHK
ENGG1410 Linear Algebra and Vector Calculus.
CSCI2100/ESTR2102 Data Structures.
BMEG3120 Database and Security for Biomedical Engineering.
CSCI5010 Computational Geometry.
CSCI5020 External Memory Data Structures.
CSCI5610 Advanced Data Structures.
CMSC5724 Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery.

To CUHK students: I would consider writing you a recommendation letter for graduate schools only if you meet these conditions.

Graduate Supervision

Currently, there is a PhD opening under my supervision. Applications can be sent in by email, and are accepted until the position is filled. Each application must include a detailed transcript (of the applicant's undergraduate study) and a CV that lists the applicant's awards (since high school) and publications. Applicants with background in math or theoretical algorithms are especially welcome. The accepted student is expected to research on both practical and theoretical algorithms.

Ongoing
Ru Wang (PhD student since 2021)
Shiyuan Deng (PhD student since 2020)
Hao Wu (PhD student since 2020)
Shangqi Lu (PhD student since 2018, passed defense in 2022)

In memory of my student Yu Wang

Graduated
Dr. Junhao Gan (PhD 2017, now Lecturer at the Uni of Melbourne)
    Winner of the Australasian Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation Award (John Makepeace Bennett Award) 2018.
Dr. Xiaocheng Hu (PhD 2015, now at Google Moutain View)
Dr. Cheng Sheng (PhD 2012, now at Google Switzerland)
Prof. Xiaokui Xiao (PhD 2008, now Associate Professor at the National Uni of Singapore)
    Winner of the Hong Kong Young Scientist Award 2009
    Winner of the ACM-HK Prof. Francis Chin Research Award 2009

I also had the pleasure of working with master students Jiexing Li, Ling Ding, Xiaobing Wu, and Sze Man Yuen.