😝 I'm looking for postdoc or job roles starting from 2025. Please drop me an email if you think I would be a good fit for your team. Thanks!

🥳 I’m honored to co-organize the LLM + Vector Data Workshop at ICDE 2025 with Prof. Arijit Khan, Prof. M. Tamer Özsu, etc. We welcome your contributions and support! 

I am currently a 4th-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), supervised by Prof. Xiaofang Zhou. I was a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania working with Prof. Ryan Marcus and Prof. Zachary Ives. My research interests include vector databases (e.g., approximate nearest neighbor search, hybrid search, multi-modal search, RAG) and machine learning for databases (e.g., learned index, learned filter, learned optimizer).

Prior to HKUST, I earned my Master's and Bachelor's degrees in Mathematics at the School of Mathematical Science from Zhejiang University (ZJU) in 2020, and from Sichuan University (SCU) in 2017. During this time, I was honored to receive the National Scholarship and the first prize in the Chinese Mathematics Competition.

# 2025

13. Zixuan Yi, Yao Tian, Zachary G. Ives, Ryan Marcus, "Low Rank Learning for Offline Query Optimization", SIGMOD 2025.

12. Xi Zhao, Yao Tian, Kai Huang, Zhonghan Chen, Ruiyuan Zhang, Xiaofang Zhou, "MARIA: Towards Effciecnt Approximate Maximum Inner Product Search on Large-Scale Vector Databases", Submitted to VLDB 2025.

11. He Huang, Yang Du, Jia Liu, Hanwen Zhang, Zhongjun Qiu, Yu-E Sun, Yao Tian, Xiaofang Zhou, "From Insertion to Deletion: A Generic Erasable Sketch for Efficient Cardinality Estimation",  Submitted to VLDB 2025.

# 2024

10. Yao Tian, Tingyun Yan, Ruiyuan Zhang, Kai Huang, Bolong Zheng, Xiaofang Zhou, "A Learned Cuckoo Filter for Approximate Membership Queries over Variable-sized Sliding Windows on Data Streams", SIGMOD 2024. [link]

9. Zixuan  Yi, Yao Tian, Zachary G. Ives, Ryan Marcus, "Low Rank Approximation for Learned Query Optimization", aiDM@SIGMOD 2024. [link] 

8. Kai Huang, Yunqi Li, Qingqing Ye, Yao Tian, Xi Zhao, Yue Cui, Haibo Hu, Xiaofang Zhou, "FRESH: Towards Efficient Graph Queries in an Outsourced Graph", ICDE 2024. [link]

# 2023

7. Yao Tian, Xi Zhao, Xiaofang Zhou, "DB-LSH 2.0: Locality-Sensitive Hashing with Query-based Dynamic Bucketing", TKDE 2023. [link]

6. YaoTian, Ziyang Yue, Ruiyuan Zhang, Xi Zhao, Bolong Zheng, Xiaofang Zhou, "Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search in High Dimensional Vector Databases: Current Research and Future Directions", IEEE Data Eng. Bull. 2023. [link]

5. Xi Zhao, Yao Tian, Kai Huang, Bolong Zheng, Xiaofang Zhou, "Towards Efficient Index Construction and Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search in High-Dimensional Spaces", VLDB 2023. [link]

4. Kai Huang, Yue Cui, Qingqing Ye, Yan Zhao, Xi Zhao, Yao Tian, Kai Zheng, Haibo Hu, Xiaofang Zhou, "TED+:Towards Discovering Top-k Edge-Diversified Patterns in a Graph Database", TKDE 2023. [link]

3. Kai Huang, Houdong Liang, Chongchong Yao, Xi Zhao, Yue Cui, Yao Tian, Ruiyuan Zhang, Xiaofang Zhou, "VisualNeo: Bridging the Gap between Visual Query Interfaces and Graph Query Engines", VLDB 2023 Demo. [link]

# 2022

2. Yao Tian, Xi Zhao, Xiaofang Zhou, "DB-LSH: Locality-Sensitive Hashing with Query-based Dynamic Bucketing", ICDE 2022.  [link]

1. Yao Tian, Tingyun Yan, Xi Zhao, Kai Huang, Xiaofang Zhou, "A Learned Index for Exact Similarity Search in Metric Spaces", TKDE 2022. [link]

Teaching Assistant

1. C Programming Bridging Course, HKUST, Fall 2023  

2. Java Programming Bridging Course, HKUST, Spring 2023

3. Spatial and Multimedia Databases, HKUST, Spring 2023

4.  Database Management Systems, HKUST, Spring 2022

5.  Honors Object-Oriented Programming and Data Structures, HKUST, Fall 2021

6.  Probability and Statistics, ZJU, Fall 2018

7.  Calculus, ZJU, Spring 2018

8.  Linear Algebra, ZJU, Fall 2017

Research Intern

1.  Alibaba DAMO Academy,  Winter 2020

• Conduct research on neural ordinary differential equations at the Decision Intelligence Lab, advised by Dr. Qingsong Wen.

1. HKUST RedBird Academic Excellence Award, 2024

2. HKUST Overseas Research Award, 2024

3. National Scholarship (the highest honor for students in China), 2019

4. The 1st Prize in the Chinese Mathematics Competition (the highest honor for math major students), 2016

5. ZJU Outstanding Graduated Student, 2020

6. ZJU Outstanding Student Leader, 2018

7. ZJU Outstanding Student, 2018

8. SCU Outstanding Graduated Student, 2017

9. SCU Outstanding Student Leader, 2014

10. SCU Outstanding Student, 2015

11. The 2nd place in the 1st and 2nd MSSS Table Tennis Tournaments🏓, 2023

12. The 32nd Hangzhou Marathon🏃🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️, 2018