Zhengyi Yang

Profile

I am an ARC Early Career Industry Fellow in the School of Computer Science at the University of Sydney (USYD), where I lead the Responsible and Intelligent Data Systems (RAIDS) Lab. I am also an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). Prior to joining USYD, I worked at UNSW for nearly four years. I am the Founder of Euler AI, and have served as a Visiting Database Systems Scientist at Enmotech Data AU.

I received my PhD in Computer Science from UNSW, supervised by Prof. Xuemin Lin (Member of the Academia Europaea, IEEE Fellow) and Prof. Wenjie Zhang (ARC Future Fellow, ACS Fellow), within the Data and Knowledge Research Group. Prior to this, I completed my undergraduate studies (First Class Honours) at University College London (UCL), where I received the IBM Sponsorship for the Best Undergraduate Final Year Project (First Place). I received Best Student Paper Awards at ADMA 2024, ADC 2022, and KSEM 2020, and the Best Paper Award at KDExLLM 2026. In 2018 and 2021, I interned at Alibaba DAMO Academy and Google, respectively.

University profiles: University of Sydney / UNSW

Research

My expertise lies in developing efficient and responsible algorithms and systems for managing and processing large-scale data, including graph data, relational data, spatio-temporal data, and high-dimensional data. My research also spans information retrieval, distributed systems, machine learning, AI for databases (AI4DB/DB4AI), and AI for social good (AI4SG).

• Graph Data Management

  • Graph Analytics
  • Graph Query Processing
  • Graph Databases

• High-Performance Data Systems

  • Scalable Data Systems
  • Query Optimization
  • Hardware Acceleration

• AI for Data Management

  • AI4DB / DB4AI
  • Data Intelligence
  • Data-Centric AI

• Responsible and Trustworthy AI

  • Reliable LLM Systems
  • Fairness-Aware AI
  • Industrial AI Applications

Selected Publications

Full List, Google Scholar, DBLP, ResearchGate, ORCID

• Nucleus Decomposition Revisited: An Efficient Counting-Based Approach (SIGMOD 2026)
• CMANNS: GPU-Accelerated Graph Index Construction for ANNS via Compute-Memory Disaggregation (SIGMOD 2026)
• Gem: Scalable Monotonic Graph Processing Beyond Billion-Scale on a Single Machine (SIGMOD 2026)
• Efficient Partition-Based Approaches for Diversified Top-k Subgraph Matching (VLDB 2026) [code] [arXiv]
• Efficient Hypergraph Pattern Matching via Match-and-Filter and Intersection Constraint (ICDE 2026) [code] [arXiv]
• C2TC: A Training-Free Framework for Efficient Tabular Data Condensation (ICDE 2026) [code] [arXiv]
• CLGNN: A Contrastive Learning-Based GNN for Temporal Betweenness Prediction under Extreme Value Imbalance (WWW 2026) [arXiv]
• BCCE: Block-Centric GPU Co-Design for Real-Time Range-Top-k Query at Scale (HPDC 2026)
• Efficient Indexing and Searching of Constrained Core in Hypergraphs (VLDBJ 2025)
• Accelerating Core Decomposition in Billion-Scale Hypergraphs (SIGMOD 2025) [code]
• Graphy'our Data: Towards End-to-End Modeling, Exploring and Generating Report from Raw Data (SIGMOD 2025) [video]
• Accelerating Shortest Path Counting on Road Networks (ICDE 2025)
• Learning from the Past: Adaptive Parallelism Tuning for Stream Processing Systems (ICDE 2025)
• Covering K-Cliques in Billion-Scale Graphs (WWW 2025)
• On the Cross-Type Homophily of Heterogeneous Graphs: Understanding and Unleashing (CIKM 2025) [arXiv]
• PhoebeDB: A Disk-Based RDBMS Kernel for High-Performance and Cost-Effective OLTP (EDBT 2025)
• Efficient Exact and Approximate Betweenness Centrality Computation for Temporal Graphs (WWW 2024) [code] [video]
• TATKC: A Temporal Graph Neural Network for Fast Approximate Temporal Katz Centrality Ranking (WWW 2024) [video] [code]
• Hierarchical Structure Construction on Hypergraphs (CIKM 2024)
• A Cluster-Based Approach to kNN Join over Batch-Dynamic High-Dimensional Data (ADMA 2024) Best Student Paper
• HGMatch: A Match-by-Hyperedge Approach for Subgraph Matching on Hypergraphs (ICDE 2023) [arXiv]
• Efficient kNN Join over Dynamic High-dimensional Data (ADC 2022) Best Student Paper
• HUGE: An Efficient and Scalable Subgraph Enumeration System (SIGMOD 2021) [arXiv]
• FAST: FPGA-based Subgraph Matching on Massive Graphs (ICDE 2021) [arXiv]
• An Empirical Study on Recent Graph Database Systems (KSEM 2020) Best Student Paper [code]
• Distributed Subgraph Matching on Timely Dataflow (VLDB 2019) [code] [arXiv]
• PatMat: A Distributed Pattern Matching Engine with Cypher (CIKM 2019)

Teaching & Supervision

Teaching

I am not currently teaching any courses at the University of Sydney.

• Lecturer-in-Charge: COMP9311 Database Systems @UNSW (22T2, 23T2, 24T2, 24T3, 25T2)
• Lecturer: COMP9311 Database Systems @UNSW (23T3); DATA1001 Introduction to Data Science and Decisions @UNSW (23T2, 24T2, 25T2)
• Guest Lecturer: COMP9313 Big Data Management @UNSW (23T3); 42913 Social and Information Network Analysis @UTS (24S1); COMP6210 Big Data @Macquarie University (24S2)

Supervision

I am seeking self-motivated research students (MPhil/PhD) and thesis students (Honours, research pathway, and related projects). For detailed information, including current opportunities and my team, please visit the RAIDS Lab website. Supervision is based at USYD, while at UNSW I have limited capacity as a visiting staff member and supervise selected project students only. A list of students I supervised prior to joining USYD can be found at the past students list.

Awards & Grants

Awards

• Best Paper Award, KDExLLM - 2026
• Best Student Paper, ADMA - 2024
• Excellence Service Award, APWeb-WAIM - 2024
• Best Student Paper, ADC - 2022
• Best Student Paper, KSEM - 2020
• IBM sponsorship of Best Undergraduate Final Year Project (First Place), UCL - 2018
• Computer Science App Award, UCL - 2014

Grants

• Jan 2026 - Dec 2028 Australian Research Council, "ARC Early Career Industry Fellowship". AU$478,161 plus an additional AU$150,000 in industry funding. Sole CI. Awarded at UNSW and transferred to USYD; first awardee in the UNSW School of Computer Science and Engineering.
• Oct 2024 - Oct 2026 CSIRO, "ESG-based Responsible AI: Toward Green, Secure, and Compliant LLM Utilisation for Digital Service Development Processes". AU$248,400 + SGD$249,500 with Singapore Management University. Partner Investigator.
• Feb 2024 - Feb 2027 Venus Intelligence Technology (via UNSW Torch Program), "Data-Driven AI in Business Intelligence". AU$74,964. Lead CI.
• Feb 2024 - Feb 2025 Sigma Trading Management, "AI-Powered Fraud Detection in Financial Markets". AU$150,000. Lead CI.
• Oct 2023 - Oct 2024 Google Cloud, "An Experimental Comparison of Distributed RDF Systems on GCP". US$7,840. Sole CI.
• Jun 2023 - Dec 2025 Enmotech Data AU, "Just-in-Time Compilation for High-Performance RDBMS Runtime". AU$527,260. Lead CI.

Service & Talks

Professional Services

Organisation

• Program Committee Chair: LSGDA@VLDB2024, LSGDA@VLDB2025, D2AI@ICDM2026
• Publication Chair: APWeb-WAIM 2024
• Proceedings Chair: ADC 2023
• Local Chair: ADC 2022, ADC 2025

Program Committee Member

• ICDE 2025
• WWW 2025
• KDD 2025, 2026
• CIKM 2021, 2022, 2024, 2025
• DASFAA 2023, 2024, 2025
• APWeb-WAIM 2024, 2025
• WISE 2021
• ADMA 2023, 2024
• BigData 2026
• ADC 2022, 2023

Editorial Board

• Guest Editor: Applied Sciences ( SI1, SI2, SI3 )
• Reviewer: Nature Communications, TKDE, VLDB Journal, World Wide Web Journal, Transactions on Social Computing, Transactions on Spatial Algorithms and Systems, Theoretical Computer Science, Frontiers of Computer Science, Entropy

Talks

• "Graph Pattern Matching: Algorithms and Applications", Hunan University, Sep 2024; Southeast University, Dec 2024; Nanjing University, April 2025
• "Graph Computation in the Big Data Era - Applications and Algorithms", Research Cloud Frontiers of Science Online Lectures, Jun 2021 (in Simplified Chinese/Mandarin) [Bilibili] [YouTube]
• "Building a Distributed Graph Database in Rust", Rust Meetup Sydney @ Atlassian, Feb 2020