About

I am a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Florida State University. I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Riverside, in 2022, and a B.S. in Computer Science from Peking University in 2014.

My research is broadly in high-performance computing, with a focus on scientific data management, efficiency, and machine learning systems. I lead the development of SZ3, an R&D 100 Award-winning error-bounded lossy compression framework, and my work is supported by NSF and DOE/Argonne National Laboratory.

Positions are available in my lab. Please refer to the Hiring page for more information.

FSU is among the top 30 universities in the world in the field of HPC.

Research Interests

  • High Performance Computing
    Scalable algorithms and systems for supercomputers.
  • Scientific Data Management
    Reducing, storing, and analyzing data at extreme scale.
  • AI for Science
    Machine learning for scientific data and system design.
  • Systems for Machine Learning
    Efficient and scalable training and inference.

News

  • 2026Kai received the prestigious NSF CAREER Award. Thanks to NSF for supporting our research.
  • 2026Two papers were accepted to SC'26.
  • 2026Two papers were accepted to VLDB'26. Congratulations to Longtao and Ruoyu!
  • 2026Three papers were accepted to HPDC'26. Congratulations to Zhuoxun, Longtao, and Ruoyu!
  • 2026One paper was accepted to ICS'26. Congratulations to Ruoyu, Longtao, and Zhuoxun!
  • 2026One paper was accepted to ICDE'26.
  • 2026Our project on AI-assisted lossy compression design was funded by Argonne National Laboratory. Thanks to Argonne for the support.
  • 2025Three papers were accepted to SC'25.
  • 2025IPComp was accepted to HPDC'25 and selected as a Best Paper Nominee. Congratulations to Zhuoxun, Longtao, and Ruoyu!
  • 2025LCP was accepted to SIGMOD'25. Congratulations to Longtao and Ruoyu!
  • 2025QPET was accepted to VLDB'25.
  • 2025Our survey on error-bounded lossy compression appeared in ACM Computing Surveys.
  • 2025Longtao and Ruoyu were visiting students at Argonne National Laboratory for Summer 2025.
  • 2024Three papers were accepted to SC'24.
  • 2024One paper was accepted to SIGMOD'24.
  • 2024One paper was accepted to ICDE'24.
  • 2024Two papers were accepted to IPDPS'24.
  • 2024One paper was accepted to ICS'24.
  • 2024SZ3 received the 2023 Best Paper Award from IEEE Transactions on Big Data.
  • 2024Kai received the First Year Assistant Professor Award from Florida State University.
  • 2024Our research was supported by Argonne National Laboratory for streaming lossy compression. Thanks to Argonne for the support.
  • 2023Our NSF CSSI project on a fine-tunable cyberinfrastructure framework for specialized lossy compression development was funded. Thanks to NSF for the support.
  • 2023One paper was accepted to SC'23.
  • 2023One paper was accepted to VLDB'23.
  • 2023Two papers were accepted to BigData'23.
  • 2023FAZ was accepted to ICS'23 and selected as a Best Paper Nominee.
  • 2023Kai joined the Department of Computer Science at Florida State University.