YOUR NAME Portfolio

Xuan Zhou

Xuan Zhou is a Professor and a Vice Dean of the School of Data Science and Engineering at East China Normal University. Prior to joining ECNU in 2017, he was an associate professor at Renmin University of China, a scientist at CSIRO ICT Center (now renamed to Data61) of Australia, and a researcher at L3S Research Center of Germany. He obtained his Ph.D. from National University of Singapore in 2005 and his B.Sc. from Fudan University in 2001. Xuan Zhou's research interest lies in data management systems. He has extensive research and engineering experience on database, data processing and data interaction systems.

Since early 2026, I have been serving as the Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Data Science and Engineering.

Contacts: email:xzhou@dase.ecnu.edu.cn, wechat:zhouxuan79

Address: 3663 Zhongshan North Road, Putuo District, Shanghai, China

This is what I look like.

Publications

I have little time to maintain my publication list. Please refer to my DBLP page.

My personal view on academic publishing: Academics publish too much, more than we can handle. One probable reason is that we (intentionally or unintentionally) measure academic performance using the number of publications. I believe that this idea will be revolutionized, sooner or later. In the future, research results might be more accessible on some open project platforms, such as GitHub, where data and programs are readily available. It will have a profound impact on the way we conduct and evaluate research.

My views on data management technologies have been summarized in several of my recent talks, especially the following one on OLTP systems (slides) in 2026 and another on hardware (slides) in 2024. Quite a few years ago, I also gave a talk at Meituan Top Talk (link), and another at Gauss Squirrel Club (link).

Teaching

I love teaching.

Course I: Contemporary Data Management System. Data management systems nowadays are not limited to RDBMS (SQL). A variety of systems are widely adopted in contemporary applications, including various NoSQL and data analytics systems. The landscape of data technologies is rapidly evolving. Traditional introductory courses on databases need to be reformed accordingly. This course is a step in this direction. My lectures (in Chinese) are avaible at Shuishan Online. I have composed a textbook an online textbook (in Chinese) too. You are welcome to use it for free and provide any comments.

Course II: Data Ethics. I chose to teach this course simply because I like reading philosophy and the humanities. Data ethics is becoming increasingly important as our societies found it necessary to regulate the use of data. The slides of my lectures (in Chinese) can be found at Shuishan Online.

I am partly responsible for designing and developing the Curriculum of the Data Science and Engineering Program at ECNU. Our curriculum on Data Science and Engineering is one of the first in the world. It has had a considerable influence on the development of the data science majors in China. Here is a news report about it.

Research Projects

National Scientific Projects:

"AI Oriented Data Management Methods and Holistic Systems", 3M RMB, sponsored by NSFC, 2023-2026.
"Customizable Database System on New Hardware", 630K RMB, sponsored by NSFC, 2018-2021.
"Database Interaction Techniques based on Semantic Ananlysis", 800K RMB, sponsored by NSFC, 2012-2017.
"Living Knowledge", European Union FP7 Project, 2009-2011.
"COOPER", European Union FP6 Project, 2005-2007.

Industrial Research Projects:

"ECNU-Oceanbase Joint Lab on Distributed Database", 9M RMB, sponsored by Oceanbase, 2021-2029.
"Key Technology on Cloud Native Database Systems", 2M RMB, sponsored by Alibaba, 2021-2023.
"Construction and Evaluation of AI Storage System", 2.59M RMB, sponsored by CCB FinTech Co., Ltd., 2021-2022.
"Distributed Shared Database Cache based on NVM and RDMA", 500K RMB, sponsored by Huawei, 2019.
"OLTP Optimization on Multiple Isolation Levels", 500K RMB, sponsored by Alibaba, 2018.
"Intra-query Fault Tolerance on MPP Database", 1.14M RMB, sponsored by Huawei, 2016-2017.
"Database Appliance Technology", 2.16M RMB, sponsored by Huawei, 2014-2015.
"Multi-core Optimization for OLTP Database", 750K RMB, sponsored by Huawei, 2013.
"Query Processing on Memory Cloud", 430K RMB, sponsored by NEC, 2012.
"Web Service Management System", sponsored by Centrelink Australia, 2009-2010.

Systems

The systems I (co-)developed:

In May 2026, I spent a month in my spare time implementing a database storage kernel using AI (OpenCode and DeepSeek). My original intention was to experience how AI coding works in practice. The system turned out to be remarkably close to an industry-standard implementation. I became convinced that AI coding will revolutionize how we develop complex systems, though I still believe human experts remain essential in the process. This project is now available on GitHub.
Cedar - a distributed database system (website), 2013-2019.
KingbaseMM - an in-memory transactional database system, 2012.
WSMS - a web service management system, 2009.
SUITS/IQ^P - an interative system on knowledge base, 2007-2011.
StegFS - a steganographic file system on Linux, 2002.