Chen Li
Professor
Department of Computer Science
2086 Donald Bren Hall, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-3435
chenli AT ics DOT uci DOT edu, Office: 949-824-9470
Chen Li is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at UC Irvine. He received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Stanford University, and his M.S. and B.S. in Computer Science from Tsinghua University, China, respectively. He was a recipient of an NSF CAREER award and several test-of-time publication awards, a part-time visiting research scientist at Google, PC co-chair of VLDB 2015, an ACM distinguished member, and an IEEE fellow. Since January 2020, he’s the treasurer and a board member of the VLDB Endowment. From July 2020 to June 2024, he was the Faculty Director of the ICS Master of Computer Science Program. He was a co-founder and CTO of a startup to commercialize his research.
Research
My research interests are in the field of data management, including data-intensive computing, databases, query processing and optimization, machine learning-based systems, data science, search, visualization. My current focus is building open-source systems for big data management, data science, and AI/ML. My PhD thesis at Stanford was on data integration, with an emphasis on both theoretical and practical aspects. My recent research, especially after spending a few quarters at Google and a few years doing a startup as its founder and CTO, has a strong preference on engineering and open source system building. I believe “Computer Science” is a “Science” to support great engineering, and we need to build systems to stay relevant in this fast-paced IT era. I was a co-PI of the Apache AsterixDB project. Since 2016, our team has been developing the Texera open-source system to support cloud-based collaborative data science, AI, and ML using workflows. Learn More …
Services
SIGMOD 2027 (General co-chair), VLDB Endowment 2020 – now (Treasurer and Board Member), ICDE Steering Committee (2024 – now), SIGMOD 2026 (PC member), SIGMOD 2025 (PC member), VLDB 2024 Reproducibility (PC member), VLDB 2023 (PC member), ICDE 2023 (General Chair), SIGMOD 2022 (PC member), VLDB 2021 (Associate Editor, Industrial co-Chair), ICDE 2021 (PC member), IEEE Big Data 2019 (Tutorial co-Chair), TKDE 2018-2022 (Associate Editor), VLDB 2015 (PC co-Chair).
News
- (7/21/2025 – 7/23/2025) Together with UCLA and UCSD colleagues, we used the Texera platform to teach 17 biology students data science, AI, and ML as part of a dkNet data science bootcamp. It’s the first we deployed the whole system on AWS with auto-scaling!
- (7/21/2025) Our team used the Texera platform to teach 32 middle school students data science, AI, and ML. Check the photos!
- (7/11/2025) Together with the team of Prof. Wei Wang from UCLA, we have successfully organized the Data Science For All 2025 program at UCI. 33 high-school and college students used Texera to learn data science, AI, and ML.
- (6/2025) Gave a talk at TU Berlin titled “Texera: An Open-Source System for Cloud-Based Collaborative Data Science and AI/ML Using Workflows” hosted by Prof. Odej Kao.
- (6/2025) Attended the UCI commencement to hood PhD students Yicong Huang and Shengquan Ni. Congratulations!
- (5/21/2025) My team gave a presentation at an ACM OC Meetup event.
- (5/6/2025) Our paper titled “Responsive State Retrieval in Pipelined Executions of Dataflows” was accepted by the HILDA workshop together with the ACM SIGMOD 2025 conference.
- (5/6/2025) Shengquan Ni successfully defended his PhD thesis. He will join Google after graduation. Congratulations!
- (4/2025) Yicong plans to join Databricks in 2025 then UMass Amherst as a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in 2027. Congratulations!
- (4/7/2025) Our team has a major Texera release 1.0.0 with the instructions to install the system on a single machine using Docker.
- (4/2/2025) Our Texera project has been officially accepted by the Apache Incubator!
- (4/1/2025) We plan to organize the “Data Science for All (DS4ALL)” summer program for the third year (together with UCLA) from July 7 to July 11, 2025. We will again use Texera to teach high-school students data science, AI, and ML.
- (3/24/2025) I will participate and teach in the 2025 dkNET Summer of Data Student Program.
- (3/16/2025) Here’s our Texera incubation proposal to the Apache Software Foundation currently under community review.
- (2/25) Jiadong and I attended the DSE-K12 conference from February 17-19 in San Antonio, TX, and presented the paper titled: “DS4ALL: Teaching High-School Students Data Science and AI/ML Using the Texera Workflow Platform as a Service.” Here’s a photo at the conference.
- (1/25) Please check our new texera.io web site! 🙂
- (1/25) In this quarter, for the first time, I am teaching two courses, CS 122B “Projects in Databases and Web Applications” and CS 122C/222 “Principles of Data Management”.
- (11/20/24) I will give a Texera seminar in the Math department at UCI on Dec. 2.
- (11/16/24) Here’s the video with slides for the first session of the workshop of “Data Science for Everyone” at Cerritos College.
- (11/15/24) Our paper “IcedTea: Efficient and Responsive Time-Travel Debugging in Dataflow Systems” by Shengquan Ni, Yicong Huang, Zuozhi Wang, and Chen Li has been accepted by VLDB 2025.
- (11/6/24) Our team (led by Shengquan and Yicong) gave a lecture of data science using Texera for the “Data Science with Bioengineering Application” program at UCI. Here’s the video.
- (10/2024) Our team is organizing a two-Saturday workshop called “Workshop of Data Science for Everyone” on Nov. 16 and 23 at Cerritos College, in which we will use the Texera system to teach students and teachers data science and AI/ML.
- (10/31/2024) Attended the NIH/NIDDK workshop about Artificial Intelligence in Precision Medicine for Diabetes and Other Chronic Diseases and gave a talk about dkNet and its new computational core powered by Texera.
- (10/12/2024) Gave a talk about our Texera work at the CAST-USA’s 32nd Anniversary event in San Diego.
- (10/6/2024) I did my 9th half marathon in Long Beach today. Great to feel the energy and excitement at the event!
- (9/24) Welcome our new PhD students, Sarah Asad, Matthew George Ball, and Ali Risheh!
- (9/24) For the first time I am teaching CS 224P “Big Data Management.”
- (8/24) Check this blog about how Texera supports R UDF!
- (8/24) Invited by Prof. Yinghui Wu of Case Western Reserve University, I attended the 10th Annual Data Science in Engineering and Life Sciences Symposium. I gave a talk titled “Texera: A Computing Infrastructure for Workflow-Based Data Analyses and AI”.
- (8/24) Our paper titled “Pasta: A Cost-Based Optimizer for Generating Pipelining Schedules for Dataflow DAGs” has been accepted by SIGMOD 2025.
- (7/24) We successfully finished the second “Data Science for All” program to use Texera to teach high-school students data science and AI/ML. Check some nice photos!
- (7/24) Our paper titled “Texera: A System for Collaborative and Interactive Data Analytics Using Workflows [Scalable Data Science]” by Zuozhi Wang, Yicong Huang, Shengquan Ni, Avinash Kumar, Sadeem Alsudais, Xiaozhen Liu, Xinyuan Lin, Yunyan Ding, and Chen Li has been accepted by VLDB 2024 (“Scalable Data Science” track).
- (6/24) Our team received an ACM SIGMOD Best Demo Runner Up Award for the paper “Demonstration of Udon: Line-by-line Debugging of User-Defined Functions in Data Workflows” by Yicong Huang, Zuozhi Wang, and Chen Li.
- (6/24) Together with Prof. Cyrus Shahabi of USC, we will organize SIGMOD 2027 in Los Angeles as the General Chairs.
- (6/24) Honored to receive the 2024 ICS Dean’s Award for Graduate Student Education and Mentoring.
- (6/24) Together with colleagues from Cornell, UCLA, and UCSD, we received a 5-year award ($10M total) from NIH NIDDK titled “dkNET Coordinating Unit: Harnessing the Power of AI and Data Science forCollaborative Discovery and Sharing in the DK Community“.
- Past News