----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management
                             The Chinese University of Hong Kong

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tuesday, 11:00am - 12:30pm, July 14, 2015

Title: Big Data Analytics for the Long Tail

Speaker: Prof. Eric LO, Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Abstract:

The growing prevalence of big data across all industries and sciences is causing a profound shift in the nature and scope of analytics. Current big data analytics frameworks (e.g., Hadoop MapReduce), however, are designed to meet the needs of giant companies; that is, they are built to process petabytes of data in a data centre consisting of thousands of machines. Yet non-tech companies like banks and retailers – or even the typical data scientists – seldom operate clusters of that size, instead preferring smaller clusters with more economical hardware. In fact, recent industry surveys reported that the median Hadoop cluster was fewer than 10 nodes, and over 65% of users operate clusters smaller than 50 nodes. My recent research direction is to build systems and software for those long-tail (e.g., non-tech companies, tech companies in small scale, scientists) so that they can enjoy the benefit of big data at low cost. In this talk, I will introduce some of my research projects under that direction. Next, I will give an overview of several big data research projects that I am collaborating with the industries and colleagues worldwide.

Biography:

Eric Lo is an associate professor of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Department of Computing. He is also the director of the big data lab and the undergraduate program leader of the department. He has twice ranked as the best teacher in the department. He started his PhD study at ETH Zurich in 2006 and obtained his PhD degree in 2007. Before he returned to Hong Kong, he was an engineer of Google and a visiting scientist of Microsoft. His research belongs to the area of large scale software systems and architecture in big data analytics, with recent focuses on big data analytics for the long tail and building architecture-conscious data-intensive systems. He has also served as program committee members for all the major world-class data management conferences. His research projects have been supported by fundings from Hong Kong Research Grant Council, Hong Kong Innovation & Technology Fund, and industrial partners like Microsoft, HP, and Amazon.

Everyone is welcome to attend the talk!

Venue: Room 513,
      William M.W. Mong Engineering Building (ERB),
      (Engineering Building Complex Phase 2)
      The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The talk will be hosted by:
Prof. Helen Meng,
Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management,
The Chinese University of Hong Kong,
E-mail: hmmeng@se.cuhk.edu.hk
Homepage: http://www.se.cuhk.edu.hk/hmmeng_web/

SEEM-5202 Website: http://seminar.se.cuhk.edu.hk
Email: seem5202@se.cuhk.edu.hk