The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), China

IEEE Fellow, ACM Fellow

Biography: Lei Chen is a Chair Professor in Data Science and Analytics at HKUST (Guangzhou) and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at HKUST, where he also serves as the Dean of the Information Hub and Director of the Big Data Institute. An elected Fellow of both the ACM and IEEE, Prof. Chen is a distinguished researcher whose expertise encompasses data-driven AI, spatiotemporal and probabilistic databases, crowdsourcing, and emerging technologies such as blockchain and the Metaverse. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo and has received numerous top-tier honors, including the 2015 SIGMOD Test-of-Time Award, the VLDB 2022 Best Research Paper Award, and a VLDB 2014 Excellent Demonstration Award. His leadership in the academic community is extensive; he is the current President of the VLDB Endowment and Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE), having previously served as Co-Editor-in-Chief of The VLDB Journal. Furthermore, his service to major international forums includes roles as General Co-Chair for VLDB 2024 and IJCAI China 2025, as well as Program Committee Co-Chair for VLDB 2019.