Cyrus Shahabi is a Professor of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Spatial Sciences at the University of Southern California and serves as Chair of its Computer Science Department. He directs USC’s Integrated Media Systems Center and the Informatics Program within the Viterbi School of Engineering, and co-founded the spin-off Geosemble Technologies (acquired 2012) as well as ClearPath (now TallyGo), which develops predictive path-planning for navigation systems. He earned a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 1989 and completed his M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science at USC in 1993 and 1996, respectively. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, an ACM Distinguished Scientist, a recipient of the PECASE and NSF CAREER awards, and has held leadership positions in ACM SIGSPATIAL and on the editorial boards of major journals.

Xiaokui Xiao is a Professor at the School of Computing, National University of Singapore. He earned his PhD in Computer Science from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2008 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University’s Department of Computer Science. Before joining NUS, he served as an Associate Professor at Nanyang Technological University’s School of Computer Science and Engineering. His research encompasses data management and analytics, with particular emphasis on algorithms for large-scale data processing, data privacy, and data mining. Dr Xiao’s contributions have been recognised with the 2024 ACM SIGMOD Test-of-Time Award, the 2022 ACM SIGMOD Research Highlight Award, and the VLDB 2021 Best Research Paper Award, and he is an IEEE Fellow, an ACM Distinguished Member, and a trustee of the VLDB Endowment.

Lei Chen is Chair Professor in Data Science and Analytics at HKUST (GZ), Dean of the Information Hub, and Director of the Big Data Institute and MOE/MSRA Information Technology Key Laboratory. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Distinguished Member of the ACM. He earned his B.S. from Tianjin University, his M.A. from the Asian Institute of Technology, and his Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo. His research spans data-driven AI, knowledge graphs, blockchains, data privacy, crowdsourcing, spatial and temporal databases, and query optimization for large and probabilistic graphs. Prof Chen’s work has been honoured with the SIGMOD Test-of-Time Award (2015), the VLDB Best Research Paper Award (2022), and an Excellent Demonstration Award at VLDB (2014); he is Editor-in-Chief of IEEE TKDE, executive member of the VLDB Endowment, and was PC Co-Chair for VLDB 2019.

Sebastian Link is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Auckland, where he is also the Director of Data Science in the birthplace of R, the world’s most used language for statistical analysis. As the Associate Dean International for Science, Sebastian has helped establish many transnational education programmes with leading universities in China and elsewhere. His contributions to data management earned Sebastian the 2013 Chris Wallace Award, the most prestigious research award for mid-career Computer Scientists in Australasia. He was also awarded a Doctor of Science by the University of Auckland in 2015. Sebastian’s research spans data dependency theory, data profiling for which he co-founded the company DataViadotto, conceptual and logical database design for a diverse range of data models. He has published in all top database conferences and journals, is currently on the editorial board of the VLDB Journal and Information Systems, and a regular member of Senior Programme Committees such as SIGMOD, CIKM, EDBT, and ER. Sebastian has led many prestigious research grants in New Zealand to successful outcomes.