😝 I'm always happy to collaborate. If you're interested in DB4AI or AI4DB, I'd love to hear from you!  

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

I am currently a Research Scientist at ByteDance. My research interests include vector databases (e.g., approximate nearest neighbor search, hybrid search, multi-modal search, RAG) and AI for databases (e.g., learned index, learned filter, learned optimizer).

I received my Ph.D. in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 2025, and was fortunate to be advised by Prof. Xiaofang Zhou. During my doctoral study, I was a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, working with Prof. Ryan Marcus and Prof. Zachary Ives. Before HKUST, I earned my Master's and Bachelor's degrees in Mathematics at Zhejiang University (ZJU) and Sichuan University (SCU). During this time, I was honored to receive the National Scholarship and the first prize in the Chinese Mathematics Competition.

# 2026

17. Yao Tian, Zhoujin Tian, Xi Zhao, Ruiyuan Zhang, Xiaofang Zhou, "GEM: A Native Graph-based Index for Multi-Vector Retrieval",  Submitted to SIGMOD 2026. 

16. Xi Zhao, Yao Tian, Kai Huang, Zhonghan Chen, Bolong Zheng, Ruiyuan Zhang, Xiaofang Zhou, "Norm-Aware Proximity Graph Structure and Locality-Sensitive Quantization for Large-Scale Inner Product Search",  Submitted to SIGMOD 2026. 

15. Weichen Zhao, Yuncheng Lu, Yao Tian, Jiehui Li, Minghao Zhao, Yakun Li, Weining Qian, "Taming Storage Stalls in Out-of-Memory Graph-based Vector Search",  Submitted to VLDB 2026. 

14. Xi Zhao,  Zhoujin Tian, Kai Huang, Yao Tian, Xiaokui Xiao, Bolong Zheng, Xiaofang Zhou, "Enhancing Graph-based Approximate Maximum Inner Product Search via Norm-Adaptive Partitioning",  Submitted to SIGMOD 2026. 

13. He Huang, Yang Du, Jia Liu, Hanwen Zhang, Zhongjun Qiu, Yu-E Sun, Yao Tian, Xiaofang Zhou, Fu Xiao, "LifeSketch: Lifecycle-aware Active Flow Counting on Programmable Switches",  Submitted to NSDI 2026.

# 2025

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

11. Sheng Wang, Yao Tian, Xiaodong Mei, Ge Sun, Jie Cheng, Fulong Ma, Pedro V. Sander, Junwei Liang, "LHPF: Look back the History and Plan for the Future in Autonomous Driving", Arxiv. [link]

# 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]

👀 Include "[Dove]" in the subject line if you'd like me to see your email faster. 

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.

2. ByteDance, Summer 2025

   • Conduct research on large-scale distributed vector database systems.

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