Xiaofang Zhou 

Otto Poon Professor of Engineering  and Chair Professor of Computer Science and Engineering

Professor Xiaofang Zhou is Otto Poon Chair Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at HKUST and Head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. His work covers database systems, data quality management, big data analytics, machine learning and AI. He served as Program Committee Chair for IEEE ICDE 2013, ACM CIKM 2016, and PVLDB 2020, and was General Chair for ICDE 2025 and ACM Multimedia 2015. Before joining HKUST in 2021, he was a Professor of Computer Science and Head of the Data Science discipline at the University of Queensland. He is a Global STEM Professor of Hong Kong and a Fellow of IEEE.

Title: Advanced Similarity Query Processing in Vector Databases

Abstract: AI-native databases emerge as a foundational database management infrastructure to meet the demands of AI applications. One of its key components is vector databases, which enable efficient storage, indexing, and retrieval of high-dimensional vector embeddings, to support Large Language Models (LLMs), retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems and agentic workflows. Unlike traditional relational databases designed for structured, tabular data, vector databases are optimized for handling complex and unstructured data representations. Efficient similarity search is essential for large vector databases. In this talk, we will explore data representations, indexing algorithms and search capabilities in vector databases and their applications.