Dr. Reynold Cheng, Associate Professor

Institution: University of Hong Kong

Title:
Meta Paths and Meta Structures:
Analysing Large Heterogeneous Information Networks

Abstract

A heterogeneous information network (HIN), such as YAGO and DBLP, is a graph model in which objects and edges are annotated with types. A fundamental problem in HINs is the computation of closeness, or relevance, between two HIN objects. Relevance measures can be used in various applications, including information retrieval, entity resolution, and product recommendation. These metrics are based on the use of meta paths, essentially a sequence of node classes and edge types between two nodes in a HIN. In this talk, we will give a detailed review of meta paths, as well as how they are used to define relevance. In a large and complex HIN, retrieving meta paths manually can be complex, expensive, and error-prone. Hence, we will explore systematic methods for finding meta paths. In particular, we will study a solution based on the Query-by-Example (QBE) paradigm, which allows us to discover meta paths in an effective and efficient manner.  We further generalise the notion of a meta path to “meta structure”, which is a directed acyclic graph of object types with edge types connecting them. We will also discuss how HIN technologies are used in our recent project about elderly care.

Bio:

Dr. Reynold Cheng is an Associate Professor of the Department of Computer Science in the University of Hong Kong. He received his BEng ( Computer Engineering ) in 1998, and MPhil ( Computer Science and Information Systems ) in 2000. He then obtained his MSc and PhD from Department of Computer Science of Purdue University in 2003 and 2005 respectively. Dr. Cheng was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computing of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University during 2005-08.  Dr. Cheng was granted an Outstanding Young Researcher Award 2011-12 by HKU. He was the recipient of the 2010 Research Output Prize in the Department of Computer Science of HKU. He also received the U21 Fellowship in 2011. He received the Performance Reward in years 2006 and 2007 awarded by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He was the Vice Chairperson of the ACM ( Hong Kong Chapter ) in 2013. He is a member of the IEEE, the ACM, the Special Interest Group on Management of Data ( ACM SIGMOD ), and the UPE (Upsilon Pi Epsilon Honor Society). He is an editorial board member of TKDE, DAPD and IS, and was a guest editor for TKDE, DAPD, and Geoinformatica. He is the lead PC chair of WISE 2019, an area chair of ICDE 2017, PC co-chair of APWeb 2015, area chair for CIKM 2014, PC co-chair of SSTD 2013, and a workshop co-chair of ICDE 2014. He received an Outstanding Service Award in CIKM 2009. He has served as PC members and reviewer for top conferences (e.g., SIGMOD, VLDB, ICDE, EDBT, KDD, ICDM, and CIKM) and journals (e.g., TODS, TKDE, VLDBJ, IS, and TMC).