Guanli Liu

Guanli Liu

AI4DB · Spatial indexing · Learned query optimization

About Me

I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, working on AI for databases—including spatial indexing, reinforcement learning-based query optimization, and LLM applications. My recent research explores the use of space-filling curves for efficient spatial data organization and cost modeling.

Previously, I was a Senior Software Engineer at Baidu, and received my M.S. and B.Eng. degrees from Northeastern University in China.

CV

📬 Contact

📄 Publications

  • Guanli Liu, Renata Borovica-Gajic, Hai Lan, Zhifeng Bao. Benchmarking RL-Enhanced Spatial Indices Against Traditional, Advanced, and Learned Counterparts. ICDE 2026 (to appear).
  • Lankadinee Rathuwadu, Guanli Liu, Christopher Leckie, Renata Borovica-Gajic. CoLSE: A Lightweight and Robust Hybrid Learned Model for Single-Table Cardinality Estimation using Joint CDF. ICDE 2026 (to appear).
  • Kaan Gocmen, Guanli Liu, Renata Borovica-Gajic. Advancing Spatial Keyword Queries: From Filters to Unified Vector Embeddings. ADC 2025.
  • Ruiyi Hao, Guanli Liu, Renata Borovica-Gajic. LLM-Enhanced Processing of Complex Spatial Queries. ADC 2025.
  • Guanli Liu, Lars Kulik, Christian S. Jensen, Tianyi Li, Renata Borovica-Gajic, Jianzhong Qi. Efficient Cost Modeling of Space-filling Curves. PVLDB 2024.
  • Guanli Liu, Jianzhong Qi, Lars Kulik, Kazuya Soga, Renata Borovica-Gajic, Benjamin I. P. Rubinstein. Efficient Index Learning via Model Reuse and Fine-tuning. ICDEW 2023.
  • Guanli Liu, Jianzhong Qi, Christian S. Jensen, James Bailey, Lars Kulik. Efficiently Learning Spatial Indices. ICDE 2023.
  • Jianzhong Qi, Guanli Liu, Christian S. Jensen, Lars Kulik. Effectively Learning Spatial Indices. PVLDB 2020.
  • Yu Gu, Guanli Liu, Jianzhong Qi, Hongfei Xu, Ge Yu, Rui Zhang. The Moving K Diversified Nearest Neighbor Query. IEEE TKDE 2016.

👨‍💻 Work Experience

  1. Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Melbourne, 2024–present
  2. Data Scientist, nftDb, 2023–2024
  3. Senior Software Engineer, Baidu, 2015–2017
  4. Software Engineer, Neusoft Inc., 2012

🛠 Skills & Expertise

  • Programming & Systems: Python (data analysis, ML pipelines), C++ (indexing & storage engines), Java (backend systems)
  • Databases & Query Engines: PostgreSQL (extensions, optimizer internals), MySQL, MongoDB, BigQuery
  • Machine Learning & AI: PyTorch, TensorFlow, Scikit-learn
  • Large Language Models: OpenAI GPT-4/5, Llama, Mistral
  • Cloud & Infrastructure: Docker, Kubernetes, Google Cloud Platform