Bio/Personal

AnHai Doan is the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor and Gurindar S. Sohi Professor of Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research goal is to make messy data usable at scale. He works on data integration, data science, and machine learning, building end-to-end systems that are deployed in real-world settings.

He has received the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award, NSF CAREER Award, and Sloan Fellowship, and co-authored Principles of Data Integration, a widely used textbook.

AnHai has worked extensively at the intersection of academia and industry. He served on the advisory board of Transformic (acquired by Google), was Chief Scientist at Kosmix (acquired by Walmart), and co-founded GreenBay Technologies (acquired by Informatica). He has also served on the SIGMOD Advisory and Executive Committees, and was Co-Chair of SIGMOD 2020.

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Some Personal Notes

I grew up in Vietnam. I attended high school in Vinh, Nghe An (1983–1986), then spent two years studying Hungarian (1986–1988), before going to university in Debrecen, Hungary (1988–1993). I came to the United States in 1993 and have been here ever since.

My life has taken a number of interesting turns:

• At age two, I remember sitting in a bomb shelter with my mother during the Vietnam War, hearing explosions in the distance.
• I grew up in rural central Vietnam without electricity; I did not see a cassette player until I was 17.
• I often walked barefoot to school in near-freezing weather and did not always have enough to eat. (It was a very trying time in post-war Vietnam for pretty much everyone.)
• In Hungary, I didn't study much, mostly partied, and ran a successful side business. I had my own car, own rental apartment, and in general living large (probably making up for my high-school time).
• In the US, I have been a graduate student, professor, startup employee, and big-company employee. My memory of startup is that people played ping pong non-stop right next to my ear.

And a lot more. There have definitely been many twists and turns. Who knows what will come next.

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Interests

Outside of work, I enjoy architecture, history, art, and interior design. I like traveling, especially long-distance hiking. Here are a few photos from my recent trips.

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An Old Bio

Written when I finished my Ph.D.:

AnHai Doan grew up in a small fishing village in rural North-Central Vietnam. Even at an early age, he already showed an exceptional ability to move west. After high school in Vinh, Nghe An, he moved to Hungary, where he earned a B.S. degree from Kossuth Lajos University in 1993. Next, he landed in Wisconsin, where he drank beer, listened to (too) much jazz and blues, and earned a M.S. from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee in 1996. Then he moved again, this time going as far west as he could, finally ending up in Seattle. There, he switched to coffee (lots of it!), salmon, hiking, and partying. He fell in love, broke up, got married, had a baby, founded a global mailing list, had fun working on several research projects, irritated his advisors, published a few papers, and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 2002. All of his hard-earned degrees are in Computer Science.

P.S. In Fall 2002, he moved east to become a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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Quotes

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Random (in Vietnamese)

Hoa Lông Chông Trên Cát

— Đăng trên diễn đàn VNSA, 1997