Title: Similarity Query Processing Algorithms: 
       Use of Enumeration and Divide and Conquer Techniques

Speaker:  Wei Wang
         University of New South Wales, Australia

Abstract:

In this talk, I'll first give a brief overview of the research conducted
my group at UNSW, and then focus on recent advances on efficient
similarity query processing methods. 

A similarity query finds all the objects in the database that are
similar to the query object according to a given similarity/distance
function and a threshold. It plays a fundamental role in many areas such
as data integration, pattern recognition, and biological or chemical
informatics.

A key algorithmic challenge is how to execute similarity queries
efficiently, and decades of research has contributed many elegant
solutions. The objectives of this talk are to provide an introduction
and categorization to the similarity query algorithms based on the
enumeration and divide and conquer ideas, with an emphasis on Hamming
and edit distance functions.

Short Bio:

Dr. Wei Wang is an Associate Professor (Reader) in the School of
Computer Science and Engineering, The University of New South Wales,
Australia. His current research interests include keyword search on
(semi-)structured data, similarity query processing, high dimensional
indexing, and spatial databases. He has published over ninety research
papers in these areas, with many in premier database journals (TODS,
VLDB J, and TKDE) and conferences (SIGMOD, VLDB, ICDE, and WWW). He is
the PC Area Chair of ICDE 2014 for the track of "Strings, Texts and
Keyword Search".