Former Postdoctoral Advisee(s)

• Amir Gilad. Co-advised with Ashwin Machanavajjhala and Sudeepa Roy. First employment: Assistant Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
• Xiao Hu. Co-advised with Pankaj K. Agarwal. First employment: Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo.

Current Ph.D. Student(s)

• Yihao Hu.
  • Ph.D. preliminary exam: Toward Efficient Debugging of SQL Semantics. Spring 2023.
  • Ph.D. research initiation project: Generating Hints for Debugging Wrong Queries. 2022.
• Yuxi Liu. Co-advised with Sudeepa Roy.
  • Ph.D. preliminary exam: Watcher: Strategies for Updating Cardinalitiy Estimators. Fall 2024.
  • Ph.D. research initiation project: Strategies for Updating Selectivity Estimators. 2023.
• Haibo Xiu. Co-advised with Sudeepa Roy.
  • Ph.D. preliminary exam: Penalty-Aware Robust Query Optimization. Spring 2024.
  • Ph.D. research initiation project: Robust Query Optimization by Understanding the Uncertainty of Selectivity Estimation. 2023.

Former Ph.D. Students

• Rickard Stureborg. Co-advised with Bhuwan Dhingra; first employment: Grammarly.
  • Ph.D. dissertation defense: Towards the Use of Language Models in Interventions of Vaccine Concerns. November 2024.
  • Ph.D. preliminary exam: Repurposing Human-Centered Resources to Improve Large Language Models. Spring 2023.
  • Ph.D. research initiation project: A Taxonomy for Vaccine Concerns. 2022.
• Junyang Gao. First employment: Google.
  • Ph.D. dissertation defense: Durability Queries on Temporal Data. June 2020.
  • Ph.D. preliminary exam: Durability Queries on Temporal Data. Fall 2018.
  • Ph.D. research initiation project: Durable Claims from Structured Data. 2016.
• Brett Walenz. First employment: Google.
  • Ph.D. dissertation defense: Perturbation Analysis of Database Queries. May 2019.
  • Ph.D. preliminary exam: Perturbation Analysis of Database Queries. Summer 2016.
  • Ph.D. research initiation project: Perturbation Analysis of SQL Queries. 2014.
• Mayuresh Kunjir. Co-advised with Shivnath Babu. First employment: Qatar Computing Research Institute.
  • Ph.D. dissertation defense: Automating Memory Management in Data Analytics. March 2019.
  • Ph.D. preliminary exam: Managing Heterogeneity in Multi-Tenant Data-Parallel Clusters. Spring 2015. (Served as committee member, not as primary advisor.)
  • Ph.D. research initiation project: Fair Cache Allocation for Multi-tenant Data-Parallel Workloads. 2013. (Served as committee member, not as primary advisor.)
• Botong Huang. Co-advised with Shivnath Babu. First employment: Microsoft.
  • Ph.D. dissertation defense: Cumulon: Simplified Matrix-Based Data Analytics in the Cloud. February 2016.
  • Ph.D. preliminary exam: Cumulon: Optimizing Statistical Analysis in the Cloud. Spring 2013.
  • Ph.D. research initiation project: Data Parallel Statistical Computing in the Cloud. 2012.
• Risi Thonangi (Rishi). First employment: VMware.
  • Ph.D. dissertation defense: Optimizing Database Algorithms for Random-Access Block Devices. July 2015.
  • Ph.D. preliminary exam: Searching, Sorting, Permuting and Beyond on Flash. Spring 2011.
  • Ph.D. research initiation project: Investigating Concurrency Control for Flash-Efficient Indexes. 2009.
• You Wu (Will). Co-advised with Pankaj K. Agarwal. First employment: Google Inc.
  • Ph.D. dissertation defense: Computational Journalism: from Answering Questions to Questioning Answers and Raising Good Questions. July 2015.
  • Ph.D. preliminary exam: Computational Journalism: From Answering Questions to Questioning Answers and Raising Good Questions. Spring 2013.
  • Ph.D. research initiation project: Extended Promotion Analysis and its Applications in Computational Journalism. 2012.
• Albert Yu. Co-advised with Pankaj K. Agarwal. First employment: Amazon.
  • Ph.D. dissertation defense: Algorithms for Continuous Queries: A Geometric Approach. May 2013.
  • Ph.D. preliminary exam: Algorithmic Challenges in Content-based Publish-Subscribe Systems. Spring 2010.
  • Ph.D. research initiation project: Network Design for Wide-Area Publish/Subscribe. 2008.
• Yi Zhang. First employment: Google Inc.
  • Ph.D. dissertation defense: Transparent and Efficient I/O for Statistical Computing. March 2012.
  • Ph.D. preliminary exam: RIOT: A Framework for Efficient Statistical Computing. Fall 2009.
  • Ph.D. research initiation project: Failure-Aware Spatial Suppression in Sensor Networks. 2007.
• Badrish Chandramouli. First employment: Microsoft Research.
  • Ph.D. dissertation defense: Unifying Databases and Internet-Scale Publish/Subscribe. July 2008.
  • Ph.D. preliminary exam: Supporting Better Scalability and Richer Subscription Models in Wide-Area Publish/Subscribe. Summer 2006.
  • Ph.D. research initiation project: Distributed Network Querying: Reducing Costs by Providing Approximate Answers. 2004. Duke CS Outstanding PhD Research Initiation Project Award.
• Junyi Xie. First employment: Oracle Corp.
  • Ph.D. dissertation defense: Handling Resource Constraints and Scalability in Continuous Query Processing. September 2007.
  • Ph.D. preliminary exam: Optimizing Continuous Queries Over Data Streams. Fall 2004.
  • Ph.D. research initiation project: Building DRAM-Based High Performance Intermediate Memory Systems. 2002. (Served as committee member, not as primary advisor.)
• Hao He. IBM Ph.D. Fellowship, 2006-2007; first employment: Google Inc.
  • Ph.D. dissertation defense: Query Processing and Indexing Techniques on Semi-Structured Data. July 2007.
  • Ph.D. preliminary exam: Query Processing and Indexing Techniques on Graph-Structured Data. Spring 2006.
  • Ph.D. research initiation project: A Workload-Aware Update-Efficient Index for XML. 2003.
• Adam Silberstein. First employment: Yahoo! Research.
  • Ph.D. dissertation defense: Query Processing Methods for Wireless Sensor Networks. February 2007.
  • Ph.D. preliminary exam: Query Processing and Optimization in Sensor Networks. Spring 2005.
  • Ph.D. research initiation project: Sorting XML in External Memory. 2004.

Current M.S. Student(s)

• Yang Li.
• Qianyu Yang (Ethan).

Former M.S. Students

• Kushagra Ghosh. A Graph-Based Approach to Structured Query Decomposition Using Language Models. Fall 2024.
• Sharan Sokhi. First employment: Amazon. Optimizing Paginated Result Access for Complex Queries with Bloom Filters. Fall 2024.
• Hanze Meng. First employment: PhD student at the University of British Columbia. Characterizing and Verifying Queries Via CINSGEN. Spring 2024.
• Lei Luo. Improving Fact-Checking Retrieval System using Language Models. Spring 2022.
• Chang Xu. Judgment Prediction based on Legal Text Analysis. Spring 2022.
• Qianqian Che. First employment: Tencent. A QA-based Approach to Classifying Vaccine-related Misinformation. Spring 2021.
• Qiulin Li. First employment: Amazon. Improving I-Rex: An Interactive Relational Query Explainer for SQL. Spring 2021.
• Qingying Luo. First employment: Amazon. An Iterative Procedure for Detecting Anti-Vaccinations Subreddits and Sources. Spring 2021.
• Dongfan Zhang. First employment: Amazon. Automating Collection of Anti-Vaccination Data on Facebook. Spring 2021.
• Tiangang Chen. First employment: Amazon. I-Rex: An Interactive Relational Query Explorer. Spring 2020.
• Xiaoming Liu. First employment: Google. Mining Semantic Patterns from Text. Spring 2020.
• Xiaoyu Yanglian (Liana). First employment: Amazon. Generating Interesting Streak-Based Claims from Sports Data. Spring 2020.
• Yanlin Yu. First employment: Facebook. Supporting Domain-Specific Complex Natural Language Queries. Spring 2020.
• Yuhao Wen. First employment: Oracle. Interactive Summarization and Exploration of Top Aggregate Query Answers. Summer 2019.
• Xinghao Cheng. First employment: Facebook. Infrastructure Options for Real-Time Fact-Checking. Spring 2019.
• Junbo Li. First employment: Indeed.com. Adapting the Transformer Model for Fact-Checking. Spring 2019.
• Wenqian Tong. First employment: Google. Parallelizing Factlet Mining from Duke Basketball Game Statistics using Apache Spark. Spring 2019.
• Qian Wang (Bruce). First employment: Salesforce. Optimization of Factlet Mining from Duke Basketball Game Statistics. Spring 2019.
• Sitong Che. First employment: Microsoft. Mining Interesting and Diverse Factlets from Data. Fall 2018.
• Rohit Paravastu. First employment: WealthGuard. Detecting Natural-Language Claims Checkable on Relational Databases. Fall 2012.
• Rozemary Scarlat. First employment: Microsoft. FirstPass: Crowdsourced Initial Document Analysis. Fall 2012.
• Yunjia Zhou. First employment: Salesforce.com. Exploring One-of-the-Few Claims from Data. Spring 2012.
• Pradeep K. Gunda. Scalable Lineage Tracking in Workflows. Fall 2007.
• Wenbin Pan. On Author Name Disambiguation in Citation Databases. Fall 2004.
• Zhihui Wang. Multiple-View Maintenance with Semantic Caching. Summer 2003.
• Jing Zhang. Implementing a File System on Top of a DBMS. Summer 2003.
• Junfei Geng. Automatic Extraction and Integration of Bibliographic Information on the Web Using Hidden Markov Models. Spring 2003.
• Xiao F. Huang (Andy). TupleRank and Implicit Relationship Discovery in Databases. Spring 2003.
• Parag G. Palekar. Analysis of an Incremental Algorithm for Mining Frequent Itemsets. Fall 2002.

Undergraduate Theses Supervised

• Felicia Chen. Understanding the Landscape of Vaccine Misinformation. Spring 2020. Graduated with High Distinction.
• Tyler Brock. Amboseli Baboon Research Ranker. Spring 2007. Graduated with Distinction.
• Christopher N. Bond. Query Suspend and Resume. Spring 2005. Graduated with High Distinction.

Undergraduate Research Internship

• Aayushi Patel, Christopher Li, Qinyu Zhu (Chloe), and Tingnan Hu. Using Large Language Models to Generate Vaccine Interventions. Summer 2023.
• Aakash Kothapally, Dev Seth, Isa Mellody, and Shuaichen Liao. Identifying Vaccine Misinformation in Text. Summer 2021.
• James Lin, Allen Pan, and Zachary Zheng. Helping Novices Debug Relational Queries (HNRQ). Summer 2021.
• Alexander Bendeck, Kevin Day, and Jeffrey Luo. Helping Novices Debug Relational Queries. Summer 2020.
• Jianchao Geng (Frank), Javan Jiang (JJ), Min Soo Kim, Sanha Lim, and Jackson Proudfout. Scaling Up Live Pop-Up Fact Checking. Summer 2019.
• Wenqin Wang. Data and Technology for Fact-Checking. Fall 2018.
• Caroline Wang, Ethan Holland, and Lucas Fagan. Data and Technology for Fact-Checking. Summer 2018.
• Tim Overeem. iCheck: Computational Fact-Checking. Fall 2017.
• Aditya Srinivasan. iCheck: Computational Fact-Checking. Fall 2017.
• Yuxiang He. iCheck: Computational Fact-Checking. Fall 2016 - Spring 2017.
• Emre Sonmez. iCheck: Computational Fact-Checking. Summer 2014 - Spring 2017.
• Yuansong Feng. iCheck: Computational Fact-Checking. Spring 2017.
• Dhrumil Patel. iCheck: Computational Fact-Checking. Spring 2017.
• Seokhyun Song (Alex). iCheck: Computational Fact-Checking. Summer 2014.
• Jiaqi Yan. RIOT: Statistical Computing with Efficient, Transparent I/O. Summer 2010 - Spring 2012. Duke CSURF Fellow.
• Weiping Zhang. RIOT: Statistical Computing with Efficient, Transparent I/O. Summer 2009 - Spring 2011.
• Gregory Filpus. Suppression Schemes for Sensor Data Collection. Summer 2006.
• Congyi Wu. Tracking Lineage for Computational Workflows. Summer 2006.

Internships for High School Students

• Zian Chen (Stephen). Scaling up I-Rex: An Interactive Relational Query Explainer for SQL. Summer 2023. East Chapel Hill High School, Chapel Hill, NC.
• Aakash Kothapally. Scaling Up Live Pop-Up Fact Checking. Summer 2019. NC School of Science & Math, Durham, NC.
• Andrew Mu. Scaling Up Live Pop-Up Fact Checking. Summer 2019. East Chapel Hill High School, Chapel Hill, NC.
• Jonathan Xu. Scaling Up Live Pop-Up Fact Checking. Summer 2019. East Chapel Hill High School, Chapel Hill, NC.
• Dylan Dsouza. Evaluating radb, a Relational Algebra Interpreter. Summer 2017. Rising senior at Enloe Magnet High School, Raleigh, NC.
• Brandon Wu. Evaluating radb, a Relational Algebra Interpreter. Summer 2017. Rising senior at Enloe Magnet High School, Raleigh, NC.