Yicong Huang, PhD

Title & Contact

Software Engineer @ Databricks

Adjunct Assistant Professor @ UMass Amherst

Contributor @ Apache Spark

PPMC @ Apache Texera

351 E Evelyn Ave, Mountain View, CA 94041

Pronouns: he/him

Cited by

All Since 2021

Citations

334

333

h-index

i10-index

2021

2022

2023

2024

114

2025

2026

News

Feb 12, 2026 New!	I am honored to receive a 2025 UCI CS Best Dissertation Honorable Mention award!
Nov 9, 2025 New!	Glad to attend PyData Seattle 2025. Thanks for Databricks for sponsoring!
Sep 4, 2025 New!	Our Tutorial titled “ML-Asset Management: Curation, Discovery, and Utilization” was presented at the VLDB, 2025 in London. Thanks for all the great effort from Mengying Wang, Moming Duan, Chen Li, Bingsheng He and Yinghui Wu, we did a successful presentation!
Aug 18, 2025	Today is my first day joining Databricks Inc., as a Software Engineer in the Spark Core team. I am excited to start this new journey and contribute to the development of Apache Spark, one of the fastest and most scalable data engines in the world! Looking forward to the challenges and opportunities ahead!
Aug 7, 2025	I have successfully defended my Ph.D. thesis titled “UDF-Centric Dataflow Systems for Supporting User-Defined Functions in Collaborative Data Science, AI, and ML”. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Chen Li, for his unwavering support and guidance throughout my Ph.D. journey. I am officially a Dr. now!
Aug 6, 2025	The Texera codebase has been officially donated to the Apache Software Foundation. The project name becomes “Apache Texera (Incubating)”. The repository has changed from Texera/texera to Apache/texera. Our team will continue the development and graduate from the incubator!
Jul 3, 2025	I received a UC Irvine 2025 Most Promising Future Faculty Award! I will attend the 33rd Annual Celebration of Teaching during UCI Teach Day on September 18, 2025 to celebrate this achievement. See you there!
Jun 4, 2025	I attended the 26th Conference on Mobile Data Management (IEEE MDM 2025) and presented a demonstration for Texera.
Jun 3, 2025	I gave a talk at DECADE event 2025, titled “From 100 Applications to 9 Offers: Lessons from the Academic and Industry Job Market”. I also attended a panel to share insights about academic job market this year.
May 31, 2025	I’m honored to be featured in a UCI Graduate Division spotlight: Grad Hooding Q&A – Yicong Huang. Grateful to UCI for the incredible journey and support over the years!
May 30, 2025	Our tutorial titled “ML-Asset Management: Curation, Discovery, and Utilization” was accepted at the VLDB, 2025. It’s a joint work with Case Western Reserve University and National University of Singapore. The tutorial will be held at London, UK in September, 2025. Thanks Mengying Wang for leading the effort!
Apr 1, 2025	I received two fellowships: Beall Family Foundation Graduate Student Entrepreneur Award in Computer Science for $5,000 and Joseph & Dorothy Fischer Memorial Endowed Fellowship for $3,000. Thanks for the support!
Apr 1, 2025	I will serve as the Web/Publicity Chair for SIGMOD 2027. Let’s make SIGMOD 2027 a great success!
Mar 14, 2025	I gave an invited talk at the University at Buffalo.
Mar 11, 2025	I gave an invited talk at Lehigh University.
Mar 8, 2025	I gave an invited talk at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Mar 4, 2025	I gave an invited talk at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Feb 26, 2025	I gave an invited talk at Purdue University.
Feb 22, 2025	I gave an invited talk at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Feb 19, 2025	I gave an invited talk at Amazon Web Services.
Feb 18, 2025	I gave an invited talk at Arizona State University.
Feb 14, 2025	I gave an invited talk at Santa Clara University.
Nov 24, 2024	As the main instructor, together with the Texera team from UCI and Prof. Phuong Nguyen from Cerritos College, I hosted a workshop called Data Science for Everyone.
Nov 15, 2024	Our paper “IcedTea: Efficient and Responsive Time-Travel Debugging in Dataflow Systems” is accepted by VLDB 2025!
Oct 29, 2024	Our paper “DS4ALL: Teaching High-School Students Data Science and AI/ML Using the Texera Workflow Platform as a Service” is accepted by Data Science Education K-12: Research to Practice Conference (DSE-K12’25)!
Sep 26, 2024	I gave a tech talk at Databricks Inc. titled “Texera and Interactive Debugging in Distributed Data Processing Systems”.
Aug 31, 2024	I attended VLDB 2024 in Guangzhou, China, presenting the research paper for Texera, the system we have been building for the past 8 years!
Aug 6, 2024	Our paper “Pasta: A Cost-Based Optimizer for Generating Pipelining Schedules for Dataflow DAGs”, is accepted by SIGMOD 2025!
Jun 13, 2024	I attended SIGMOD 2024 in Santiago, Chile, presenting a research paper and a demo for Udon, the line-by-line UDF debugger on big data systems. Our demonstration won the Best Demo Runner Up Award!
May 24, 2024	I was honored to attend ISG Reunion 2024, and presented our team’s work! Check out the news and the talk here!
Apr 26, 2024	I received UCI Graduate Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship for 2024!
Mar 17, 2024	Our paper “Demonstration of Udon: Line-by-line Debugging of User-Defined Functions in Data Workflows” is accepted by SIGMOD 2024, demonstration track!
Feb 27, 2024	Our paper “Data Science Tasks Implemented with Scripts versus GUI-Based Workflows: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” is accepted by ICDE 2024, Workshop of Data Platform Design, Management, and Optimization (DataPlat’24)!
Dec 6, 2023	I received the 2023-2024 Public Impact Fellowship.
Nov 9, 2023	Our paper “Wording Matters: the Effect of Linguistic Characteristics and Political Ideology on Resharing of COVID-19 Vaccine Tweets” is accepted by TOCHI, 2023!
Nov 2, 2023	Our paper “The marketing and perceptions of non-tobacco blunt wraps on Twitter” is accepted by Substance Use and Misuse, 2023!
Sep 4, 2023	I have attended VLDB 2023 and presented a demo paper with title “Demo of QueryBooster: Supporting Middleware-Based SQL Query Rewriting as a Service” as a guest presenter. Great work, Qiushi Bai! Our group also had presentations for two research papers and a tutorial.
Aug 22, 2023	I have attended CNCM 2023 and presented a poster with title “Efficient Mouse Brain Image Processing Using Collaborative Data Workflows on Texera”.
Aug 12, 2023	I have attended KDD 2023 and presented a poster with title “Using Texera to Characterize Climate Change Discussions on Twitter During Wildfires”.
Aug 11, 2023	Our paper “Udon: Efficient Debugging of User-Defined Functions in Big Data Systems with Line-by-Line Control” is accepted by SIGMOD, 2024!
Aug 7, 2023	I posted a new blog “Enhancing the UDF Editor by Adding Language Server Support” at Texera blogs.
Jun 27, 2023	I posted a new blog “Using Texera to Perform Single-cell RNA Sequencing Analysis with R Language” at Texera blogs.

Current Services (All)

Media & Press (All)

Jun 2025 Talk

UDF-Centric Dataflow Systems for Supporting User-Defined Functions in Collaborative Data Science, AI, and ML
2025 Talk

Building a Collaborative and Interactive Data System to Broaden Access to Data Science, AI, and ML
2024 Blog

Suggesting Python Code Type Annotations with LLM - A Language Server Enhancement