He is also the director of the big data lab and the undergraduate program leader of the department. He has twice ranked as the best teacher in the department. He started his PhD study at ETH Zurich in 2006 and obtained his PhD degree in 2007. Before he returned to Hong Kong, he was an engineer of Google and a visiting scientist of Microsoft. His research belongs to the area of large scale software systems and architecture in big data analytics, with recent focuses on big data analytics for the long tail and building architecture-conscious data-intensive systems. He has also served as program committee members for all the major world-class data management conferences. His research projects have been supported by fundings from Hong Kong Research Grant Council, Hong Kong Innovation & Technology Fund, and industrial partners like Microsoft, HP, and Amazon.