As the new director of HP Labs China in Beijing, Min Wang, a Duke CS alumnus, was on the lookout for new research projects for her team. Little did she know, across an ocean, Duke Professor Jun Yang had just completed an application for the HP Labs Innovation Research Program to collaborate with the company on his work extending database systems to support sophisticated statistical analysis.

It didn’t take long for the two long-time colleagues -- who first met at Stanford, then worked together developing collaborations between Duke CS and IBM Research, Wang's previous employer, during the last several years -- to put two and two together. This July, Yang flew to Beijing to spend a month at HP Labs China. There, he worked with Wang's team to determine if it will be possible to implement statistical data analysis techniques in large-scale commercial databases.

Staffed with a young team, Wang was eager for Yang not only to provide research direction, but to mentor some of the younger researchers in Beijing. "They really enjoyed his stay and learned a lot from him," she says. "It was quite a rewarding experience for all of us." Three other visiting researchers overlapped with Yang's visit and contributed to the collaboration, including another Duke alum, Ke (Kevin) Yi, an assistant professor and rising star at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Despite the time difference, Yang continues to keep touch with the lab via weekly calls. "It's a long-term collaboration," says Yang. "It's a wonderful way of getting researchers together to work out new and interesting approaches to problems."