2019 International Conference on Very Large Database PhD Workshop, VLDB-PhD 2019

The chairs (Ilaria Bartolini, University of Bologna, Feifei Li, Alibaba) are glad to present this volume of the proceedings of the 2019 edition of the VLDB Ph.D. Workshop. The workshop was co-located with the 45th International Conference on Very Large Database (VLDB 2019) and held on August 26, 2019, in Los Angeles, California. We assembled the technical program to give Ph.D. students an opportunity to present their research ideas in a premier international research venue. The resulting program, consisting of 15 papers accepted for presentation over 23 submissions we received, presents a clear sample of emerging topics in database research that included contributions from young researchers across the world. The workshop indeed provides a forum that facilitates interactions among Ph.D. students and stimulates feedback from more experienced researchers. The program this year also included two keynote talks from prestigious industries. The first one, entitled “Database Systems 2.0”, was presented by Johannes Gehrke (Microsoft), whereas the second one, entitled “Structured Data Meets News”, was presented by Cong Yu (Google). The two keynotes were able to inspire and provide directions to Ph.D. students, discussing novel issues and challenges. We believe the event had given excellent opportunities to share and exchange research ideas between the Ph.D. students and the more experienced researchers and promoted synergistic collaborations.