Wenfei Fan () is a Chinese-British

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

and professor of web data management at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

. 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 (computing), data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, Application software, applications, and ...

Education

Fan was educated at

Peking University Peking University (PKU) is a Public university, public Types of universities and colleges in China#By designated academic emphasis, university in Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education of the Peop ...

(BS, MS) and the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

where he was awarded a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

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 studyin ...

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, it is the practice of managing an organization's data so it can be analyzed for decision making. Concept The concept of data management emerged alongsi ...

. He has both formalised the problems of querying

big data Big data primarily refers to data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data processing, data-processing application software, software. Data with many entries (rows) offer greater statistical power, while data with ...

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 elem ...

Awards and honors

Fan won the

Roger Needham Award The Roger Needham award is a prize given scientists who are recognised for important contributions made to computer science research The British Computer Society established an annual Roger Needham Award in honour of Roger Needham in 2004. It is a ...

in 2008 and is a

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

Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) is an award and Scholarship, fellowship for engineers who are recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering as being the best and brightest engineers, inventors and technologists in United K ...

, 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 Literature, letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". ...

, a Foreign member of the

Chinese Academy of Sciences The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS; ) is the national academy for natural sciences and the highest consultancy for science and technology of the People's Republic of China. It is the world's largest research organization, with 106 research i ...

, a

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

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 membe ...

(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 Europe ...

(MAE). *

(FREng), 2023. * Foreign member of the

, 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 Fellowship is an award and fellowship that recognises outstanding members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The title of ACM Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals ...

, 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

, 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 2012 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