Heming Cui

Professor Heming Cui is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Hong Kong and the leader of the HKU Systems Software Lab. His research focuses on building high-performance, reliable, and secure parallel and distributed systems, including blockchain systems, distributed AI training and serving systems, big-data platforms, and cloud computing infrastructures. A central theme of Professor Cui’s work is improving system reliability, security, and performance at scale. His research spans operating systems, distributed systems, networking, and security, with publications in top-tier venues such as SOSP, NSDI, ASPLOS, ATC, EuroSys, DSN, TPDS, and TDSC. His work has led to real-world impact through technology transfer to industry; for example, his research on trusted execution environments has been adopted as a core component of Huawei’s Trusted and Intelligent Cloud Services, and his blockchain and distributed AI systems research has influenced commercial deployments in major IT companies. Professor Cui received his Ph.D. from Columbia University under the supervision of Professor Junfeng Yang, and his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Tsinghua University. He joined HKU in 2015. His research has been supported by highly competitive grants, including a Croucher Innovation Award, multiple Huawei flagship research grants, a National Key R&D Program of China (2030) project on large-scale AI training systems, and the RGC Research Impact Fund, with total competitive funding reaching approximately HK $90 million. He actively serves on program committees and as a reviewer for leading systems, networking, and security conferences and journals.