Wook-Shin Han

Wook-Shin Han

Full Professor, Leader of BK21 project for AI @ POSTECH

About me

I lead the data system group at POSTECH. I am currently a team leader (단장) for the Brain Korea 21 Program for Leading Universities & Students (BK 21) project for AI and a Full Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at POSTECH. I obtained my Ph.D degree from KAIST in 2001. My primary research efforts have been devoted to developing new techniques in DBMS “engine research.” I has developed an object-relational DBMS supporting multiple language bindings. I has also developed the tight coupling technology of DBMS with IR features during my Ph.D. study. At the IBM Almaden Research Center, I has developed progressive query optimization in the parallel DB2 as a postdoc, which was adopted as adaptive query optimization by distributed DBMSs, including Spark. I also invented the new concept of “parallelizing query optimization” for faster query compilation by exploiting multi-core architecture. Our group recently developed three systems called TurboGraph++ (SIGMOD2018), iTurboGraph (SIGMOD2021) and TurboFlux (SIGMOD2018) for trillion-scale, incremental graph analytics. I regularly serve as a PC member for SIGMOD, VLDB, and ICDE. I also serve/served as an associate editor of several international journals including the VLDB Journal, IEEE TKDE, and SIGMOD Record.

Professional Experience

  • 2020.9 - present, Team Leader, the BK21 center for AI, POSTECH
  • 2013.7 - present, Full Professor, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering/Dept. of Creative IT Engineering, POSTECH
  • 2021.9 - 2023.8, Vice President of Office of Academic Information Affairs, POSTECH
  • 2003.3 - 2013.7, Associate Professor (Tenured), Computer Engineering Department, Kyungpook National University.
  • 2008.1 - 2012.8, Director, Institute of IT-Gifted Youth, Kyungpook National University.
  • 2005.8 - 2006.8, Post-Doctoral Fellow, IBM Almaden Research Center (worked on progressive optimization in the parallel DB2 DBMS).
  • 2002.9 - 2003.2, Research Professor, Advanced Information Technology Research Center, KAIST.
  • 2002.7, Visiting Scholar, Software Technology Lab, HP Labs.
  • 2001.9 - 2002.8, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Advanced Information Technology Research Center, KAIST.
  • 2001.7 - 2001.8, Visiting Student, Software Technology Lab, HP Labs.
  • 2000.7 - 2000.8, Visiting Student, Dept. Computer Science, Stanford University, California, U.S.A.
  • 1999.7 - 1999.8, Visiting Student, Dept. Computer Science, Stanford University, California, U.S.A.
  • 1997.7 - 1997.8, Visiting Student, Dept. Computer Science, Stanford University, California, U.S.A.

Professional Activities

Endowment/Steering Members

  • Trustee: The VLDB Endowment, 2022-2028

Journal Editors

  • Associate Editor, PVLDB 2023, 2022.4 - 2023.3
  • Associate Editor, SIGMOD RECORD, 2021.7 - Present
  • Associate Editor, PVLDB 2022, 2021.4 - 2022.3
  • Associate Editor, VLDB Journal, 2015.9 - 2022.9
  • Associate Editor, PVLDB 2018, 2017.4 - 2018.7
  • Associate Editor, Information Sciences, 2013 - 2023.9
  • Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 2009 - 2013
  • Associate Editor, Journal of Computing Science and Engineering (JCSE), 2007 - Present
  • Associate Editor, IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems, 2007 - 2011.5
  • Special Guest Editor, Distributed and Parallel Databases, 2016.7 - 2017.4
  • Editorial Board Member, International Journal for Infonomics, 2003 – Present
  • Editorial Board Member, KIISE Computing Practices and Letters, 2011 - Present

Organizers

  • General Co-Chair, the 54th ACM International Conference on Management of Data (SIGMOD), Seoul, Korea, June 2028
  • Ph.D Workshop Chair, the 50th International Conference on Very Large Databases (VLDB), Guangzhou, China, August 2024
  • PC Co-Chair, the 28th International Conference on Database System for Advanced Applications (DASFAA), China, April 2023
  • Area Chair, the 39th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE), Ottawa, Canada, July 2023
  • Tutorial Co-Chair, the 39th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE), Ottawa, Canada, July 2023
  • Vice Program Chair, the 2022 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (BigData), Osaka, Japan, December 2022
  • Demo Co-Chair, the 26th International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications (DASFAA), Taiwan, April 2021
  • Senior Program Committee Member, the 28th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), Beijing, China, November 2019
  • PC Area Vice Chair, the 35th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE), Macau SAR, China, April 2019
  • Senior Program Committee Member, the 2018 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (BigData), Seattle, USA, December 2018
  • Senior Program Committee Member, the 27th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), Turin, Italy, October 2018
  • Senior Program Committee Member, the Asia Pacific Web and Web-Age Information Management Joint Conference on Web and Big Data (APWeb-WAIM), Macau, China, July 2018
  • Senior Program Committee Member, the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (BigData), Boston, USA, December 2017
  • Senior Program Committee Member, the 26th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), Singapore, Singapore, November 2017
  • Senior Program Committee Member, the Asia Pacific Web and Web-Age Information Management Joint Conference on Web and Big Data (APWeb-WAIM), Beijing, China, July 2017
  • Tutorial Co-Chair, the 18th International Asia-Pacific Web Conference (APWeb), Suzhou, China, September 2016
  • Senior Program Committee Member, the 24th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), Melbourne, Australia, October 2015
  • Demo Co-Chair, International Conference on Web-Age Information Management (WAIM), Shandong, China, June 2015
  • Program Committee Co-chair, International Conference on Big Data and Smart Computing (BigComp), Jeju Island, Korea, February 2015
  • Industrial Program Committee Co-chair, the 31st International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE), April 2015
  • Workshop Co-chair, the 19th International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications (DASFAA), Bali, Indonesia, April 2014
  • Poster chair, the 29th International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE), Brisbane, Australia, April 2013
  • Demo Co-Chair, the 15th International Asia-Pacific Web Conference (APWeb), Sydney, Australia, April 2013
  • Tutorial Co-chair, the 17th International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications (DASFAA), Busan, Korea, April 2012
  • Workshop Co-chair, the 13th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Web Conference (APWeb), Beijing, China, April 2011
  • Program Committee Co-chair, the 12th International Asia-Pacific Web Conference (APWeb), Busan, Korea, April 2010
  • Workshop Co-chair, ACM 18th Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (ACM CIKM), Hong Kong, October 2009

Selected PC Memberships

  • SIGMOD: 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2018, 2016, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2010 (demo)
  • VLDB: 2025, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2010, 2010 (demo), 2009
  • KDD: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014
  • ICDE: 2022, 2021, 2019 (industrial), 2014, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2003
  • EDBT: 2018, 2017
  • WWW: 2019, 2013, 2012, 2011
  • CIKM: 2016, 2013 (demo), 2012, 2011,2009

Keynote Speeches

  • Natural Language Exploration with Relational Databases in Chatbot, the 47th ACM International Conference on Management of Data (ACM SIGMOD 2021), Shannxi, China, June 24, 2021 (mini keynote)
  • Big Graph Data Processing, the 19th International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications (DASFAA), Bali, Indonesia, April 21, 2014

Research Interests

  1. Distributed Graph Databases
  2. Natural Language to SQL (NL2SQL)
  3. Self-Driving DBMSs
  4. Big (Graph) Data Management and Analytics
  5. Data Mining
  6. Cloud Databases
  7. Advanced Query Optimization
  8. Semantic Web
  9. Object Relational Databases
  10. Spatial Databases
  11. Subsequence/Pattern Matching
  12. Text Databases

Honors

  • Proud Postechchian Award in Research (Best Resercher Award) in POSTECH, 2021
  • Excellent Research Achievement Awards from POSTECH (2019, 2017)
  • Sigmod 2021 Distinguished PC member, 2021
  • VLDB Distinguished Associate Editor Award, 2018
  • Oracle External Research Office Award (unrestricted gift: $100,000), 2018
  • Oracle External Research Office Award (unrestricted gift: $100,000), 2017
  • Scientist of the Month Award, Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning, August 2016
  • Oracle External Research Office Award (unrestricted gift: $100,000), 2016
  • Oracle External Research Office Award (unrestricted gift: $90,000), 2015
  • Oracle External Research Office Award (unrestricted gift: $90,000), 2014
  • Best paper award, The Fifth International Conference on Emerging
  • Databases-Technologies,Applications, and Theory (EDB 2013), August 2013
  • 논문공헌상 SILVER, The Korean Institute of Information Scentists and Engineers, June 2012
  • VLDB 2010, selected as best of VLDB 2010 (iGraph paper)
  • ACM CIKM Distinguished Service Award, 2009
  • Best Demostration Award: IEEE Int’l Conf. on Data Engineering (ICDE), Tokyo, Japan, Apr. 2005
  • Supervision for Samsung Human Tech Thesis Awards
    • JaeHwa Kim, 2005 (Silver Medal, Ranked 1st in Computer Science)
    • Jinsoo Lee, 2007 (Silver Medal, Ranked 1st in Computer Science)
  • The Marquis’ Who’s Who in the World

Invited Talks

  • Towards Scalable and Incremental Graph Processing Engines, Ebay, USA, Sept. 8, 2021
  • DualSim: Parallel Subgraph Enumeration in a Massive Graph on a Single Machine, Korea University, Korea, June 30 - July 1, 2017
  • DualSim: Parallel Subgraph Enumeration in a Massive Graph on a Single Machine, Kyung Hee University, Korea, March 3, 2017
  • DualSim: Parallel Subgraph Enumeration in a Massive Graph on a Single Machine, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea, March 2, 2017
  • Big Graph Data Processing Techniques, the Software Convergence Symposium 2017 (SWCS 2017), Seoul, Korea, January 19, 2017
  • Big Graph Data Processing, Apache CouchDB, USA, January 6, 2017
  • Recent Research Progress in Databases, Korea University, Korea, April 28, 2016
  • Data Processing Techniques, Samsung Electronics, Korea, January 28, 2016
  • Taming Subgraph Isomorphism for RDF Query Processing, Korea University, Korea, December 14, 2015
  • Taming Subgraph Isomorphism for RDF Query Processing, Hong Kong Baptist University, China, August 7, 2015
  • Big Graph Data Processing, Facebook, USA, July 20, 2015
  • Big Graph Data Processing, Sookmyung Women’s University, May 29, 2015
  • Big Graph Data Processing, Kyungpook National University, Korea, January 27, 2015
  • Big Graph Data Processing, SAP Labs Korea, Korea, January 14, 2015
  • Big Graph Data Processing, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Korea, December 2, 2014
  • Big Graph Data Processing, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Korea, December 1, 2014
  • Big Graph Data Processing, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, July 25, 2014
  • Big Graph Data Processing, the University of Hong Kong, China, July 24, 2014
  • Big Graph Data Processing, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, July 23, 2014
  • Big Graph Data Processing, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA, March 31, 2014
  • Big Graph Data Processing, Google, USA, November 1, 2013
  • Big Graph Data Processing, IBM, USA, October 31, 2013
  • Big Graph Data Processing, Hewlett Packard, USA, October 30, 2013
  • Big Graph Data Processing, Facebook, USA, October 29, 2013
  • Big Graph Data Processing, Oracle, USA, October 28, 2013
  • Big Graph Data Processing, Distinguished Seminar, KT, Korea, October 2, 2013
  • Big Graph Data Processing, Data Streams, Korea, September 6, 2013
  • Big Graph Data Processing, Samsung Electronics, Korea, August 6, 2013
  • New Approach for Processing Ranked Subsequence Matching Based on Ranked Union, the 4th Int’l Workshop with Mentors on Databases (iDB), Web and Information Management for Young Researchers, Nagoya, Japan, July 31, 2012
  • Advanced Query Optimization Techniques in a Parallel Computing Environment, the 1st Int’l Workshop with Mentors on Databases (iDB), Web and Information Management for Young Researchers, Fukushima, Japan, September 21, 2008
  • Efficient Evaluation of Partial Match Queries for XML Documents Using Information Retrieval Techniques IBM Almaden Research Center, USA, April 2006
  • Prefetching Based on the Type-Level Access Pattern in Object-Relational DBMSs IBM Almaden Research Lab., USA, July 2001