Jian Pei is a professor in the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University, Canada. He received his Ph.D. degree from the same school in 2002, under Dr. Jiawei Han's supervision. His expertise is on developing effective and efficient data analytics techniques for novel data intensive (also known as big data) applications. He is currently interested in developing various techniques of data mining, Web search, information retrieval, data warehousing, online analytical processing, and database systems, as well as their applications in social networks, network security informatics, healthcare-informatics, and business intelligence. His research outcomes have been adopted by industry and popular open source software suites. His research has been extensively supported in part by government agencies and industry partners. Since 2000, he has published one textbook, two monographs and over 200 research papers in refereed journals and conferences, which have been cited tens of thousands of times. He is a fellow of IEEE and a senior member of ACM.
We are in the era of Big Data, where data management and data mining is at the core of the stage. We cannot overemphasize the importance and challenges in research and development of data management and mining. To echo the emerging trend, the Journal of Computer Science and Technology made a strategic decision to organize a special section on the topic. I am very honored to coordinate the selection process. ......