Chang She
Founder of LanceDB, an open-source vector database built on the Lance format; early pandas co-author
Chang She is the founder of LanceDB, which builds an open-source vector database and multimodal data platform on top of the Lance columnar format. Chang She was one of the original co-authors of the pandas library, and previously co-founded DataPad as its CTO and served as VP of Engineering at TubiTV. Chang She co-authored the 2025 paper describing the Lance format's approach to random access in columnar storage.123
Career
Chang She worked in quantitative finance at AQR and Barclays before turning to data tooling. In spring 2012 Chang She joined Wes McKinney to work on pandas full time, and Chang She describes being one of the library's original co-authors. Chang She also co-founded DataPad as its CTO and was later VP of Engineering at TubiTV, where Chang She designed the machine learning stack and experimentation platform.14
Chang She founded LanceDB, part of Y Combinator's Winter 2022 batch, which Y Combinator lists with Chang She as an active founder. The company's launch post explains that Chang She and Lei Xu, a core HDFS contributor, drew on their experience building data and machine learning tooling to create a vector database backed by the Lance format.1
LanceDB and Lance
LanceDB stores, indexes and searches vectors together with other multimodal data, and is built on the Lance columnar format, which is designed for fast random access to AI datasets. Chang She is second author of the 2025 paper on Lance's adaptive structural encodings, written with Weston Pace, Lei Xu and others, and writes for the LanceDB blog, including a 2023 post on building Windows packages.234
Work
LanceDB (external site: github.com)Open-source code
Founded LanceDB, an open-source vector database built on the Lance columnar format that stores, indexes and searches vectors and multimodal data.12
Lance: Efficient Random Access in Columnar Storage (external site: arxiv.org)Published research
Second author of the 2025 paper on the Lance format's adaptive structural encodings for efficient random access in columnar storage on NVMe-backed systems.3
pandas (external site: pandas.pydata.org)Open-source code
One of the original co-authors of the pandas library, working on it full time with Wes McKinney from 2012.14
Career timeline
Other documented roles
Roles the sources document but that are not confirmed as current.
Related people
More sourced profiles at the same organization, in the same field, or from the same school.
- Jeff HuberDatasets and data
- Jerry LiuDeveloper tools
- Lukas BiewaldDeveloper tools
- Manuvir DasDeveloper tools
- Matei ZahariaDeveloper tools
- Patrick WendellDatasets and data
- Peter StaarDatasets and data
- Reynold XinDatasets and data
- Steven HuelsDeveloper tools
- T.R. VishwanathDatasets and data
- Werner VogelsDeveloper tools
- 0xSeroDeveloper tools
Is this you?
Profiles cover public professional work only, and every line cites a source. If something is out of date, missing or wrong, send a correction with a link to an official page and we will update it. Suggest a correction
Add this badge to your website or GitHub profile README. It links back to this page. It is not an endorsement or a rating.
Markdown (for a README)
[](https://unitedstatesofamericasuperintelligence.com/people/chang-she/)
HTML
<a href="https://unitedstatesofamericasuperintelligence.com/people/chang-she/"><img src="https://unitedstatesofamericasuperintelligence.com/badges/profile.svg" alt="Chang She — Profile on USASI" height="20"></a>
This profile covers public professional work only, from the sources below. It is not an endorsement or a ranking. To correct or remove it, use the correction form.