Recent progress on selected topics in database research - A report by nine young Chinese researchers working in the United States

The study on database technologies, or more generally, the technologies of data and information management, is an important and active research field. Recently, many exciting results have been reported. In this fast growing field, Chinese researchers play more and more active roles. Research papers from Chinese scholars, both in China and abroad, appear in prestigious academic forums. In this paper, we, nine young Chinese researchers working in the United States, present concise surveys and report our recent progress on the selected fields that we are working on. Although the paper covers only a small number of topics and the selection of the topics is far from balanced, we hope that such an effort would attract more and more researchers, especially those in China, to enter the frontiers of database research and promote collaborations. For the obvious reason, the authors are listed alphabetically, while the sections are arranged in the order of the author list.