Wenfei Fan () is a Chinese-British

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

and professor of web data management at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

. His research investigates

database theory Database theory encapsulates a broad range of topics related to the study and research of the theoretical realm of databases and database management systems. Theoretical aspects of data management include, among other areas, the foundations of q ...

and

database systems In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases span ...

Education

Fan was educated at

Peking University Peking University (PKU; ) is a public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education. Peking University was established as the Imperial University of Peking in 1898 when it received its royal charter ...

(BS, MS) and the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

where he was awarded a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

in Computer Science for research supervised by

Peter Buneman Oscar Peter Buneman, (born 1943) is a British computer scientist who works in the areas of database systems and database theory. Education Buneman was educated at the University of Cambridge, where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts while study ...

and Scott Weinstein in 1999.

Career and research

After his Ph.D. in 1999, he remained in the USA but joined University of Edinburgh in 2004 as a Reader. In 2006, he became Professor of Web Data Management at the university. Fan has made fundamental contributions to both theory and practice of

data management Data management comprises all disciplines related to handling data as a valuable resource. Concept The concept of data management arose in the 1980s as technology moved from sequential processing (first punched cards, then magnetic tape) to r ...

. He has both formalised the problems of querying

big data Though used sometimes loosely partly because of a lack of formal definition, the interpretation that seems to best describe Big data is the one associated with large body of information that we could not comprehend when used only in smaller am ...

and has developed radically new techniques that overcome the limits associated with conventional database systems. His work has been adopted in the telecommunications industry for analyzing massive data sets that defied their current technology. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: In addition, Fan has made seminal contributions to data quality, in which he devised new techniques for data cleaning that have found wide commercial adoption. He has also contributed to our understanding of

semi-structured data Semi-structured data is a form of structured data that does not obey the tabular structure of data models associated with relational databases or other forms of data tables, but nonetheless contains tags or other markers to separate semantic eleme ...

Awards and honors

Fan won the Roger Needham Award in 2008 and is a

Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...

and a

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

(ACM)., and a member of

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of Humanities, Letters, Law, and Sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europea ...

(MAE). and was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

(FRS) in May 2018. * Foreign member of the

Chinese Academy of Sciences The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); ), known by Academia Sinica in English until the 1980s, is the national academy of the People's Republic of China for natural sciences. It has historical origins in the Academia Sinica during the Republ ...

, 2019. *

(FRS), 2018 * Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award (2018) * 2017 SIGMOD Research Highlight Award (2018) * Best Paper Award for SIGMOD 2017 *

VLDB conference International Conference on Very Large Data Bases or VLDB conference is an annual conference held by the non-profit ''Very Large Data Base Endowment Inc.'' While named after very large databases, the conference covers the research and development ...

2017 Best Demo Award *

European Research Council The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientific ...

(ERC) Advanced Fellowship, 2015 * Alberto O. Mendelzon Test-of-Time Award for ACM PODS 2015 *

ACM Fellow ACM or A.C.M. may refer to: Aviation * AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile * Air chief marshal * Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting * Air cycle machine * Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia Computing ...

, 2012 *

(FRSE), 2011 * National Professor of the Thousand-Talent Program, 2010, China * Alberto O. Mendelzon Test-of-Time Award for ACM PODS 2010 * Best Paper Award at the

2010 * The Roger Needham Award, 2008, UK * Best Paper Award for ICDE 2007 * Changjiang Scholar, 2007, China * Best Paper of the Year Award for Computer Networks, 2002 * The Career Award, 2001, USA

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fan, Wenfei Living people Academics of the University of Edinburgh Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellows of the Royal Society Year of birth missing (living people) Foreign members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Chinese computer scientists British computer scientists Chinese emigrants to the United Kingdom Peking University alumni University of Pennsylvania alumni Academic staff of Beihang University