Prof. Xu joined the Computer Science Department of Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) after he received his PhD degree in Computer Science from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2002. He obtained his BEng degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China in 1998. He is a senior member of IEEE and CCF, and a member of IEEE Technical Committee on Data Engineering and CCF Technical Committee on Databases. He has served as an executive committee member and vice chairman of ACM Hong Kong Chapter. He has been an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE) and Proceedings of VLDB Endowment (PVLDB). He serves as a director of the Blockchain and FinTech Lab and leads the Database Research Group at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Dr. Zhao is a Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Cleveland State University. He got his BS and MS degrees from the Physics Department in Peking University. He earned his Ph.D. at University of California, Santa Barbara in 2002. He has over 200 peer-reviewed publications and the author of the research monograph titled “From Traditional Fault Tolerance to Blockchain.” Dr. Zhao’s research spans from dependable distributed systems to human centered smart systems. His research has been funded by the US NSF, US Department of Transportation, Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation, Ohio Department of Higher Education, the Ohio Development Services Agency, and Woodruff Foundation. He is currently an IEEE Senior Member and serves on the executive committee of the IEEE Cleveland Section.