Quantum groupoids and deformation quantization

The purpose of this Note is to unify quantum groups and star-products under a general umbrella: quantum groupoids. It is shown that a quantum groupoid naturally gives rise to a Lie bialgebroid as a classical limit. The converse question, i.e., the quantization problem, is posed. In particular, any regular triangular Lie bialgebroid is shown quantizable. For the Lie bialgebroid of a Poisson manifold, its quantization is equivalent to a star-product.