Yanhua Li

yanhua li

I am an Assistant Professor in Computer Science Department and Data Science Program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). I obtained two Ph.D. degrees, in Computer Science from University of Minnesota, Twin Cities in 2013, and Electrical Engineering from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications in 2009, respectively. I am interested in analyzing, understanding, and making sense of urban big data, smart cities, and data-driven cyber-physical systems (CPS). I am a senior member of IEEE and a member of ACM and AAAI.

Call For Papers Special issue on Urban Computing and Smart Cities with ACM Transactions on Data Science due on June 15, 2019. (details).

Openings I am looking for self-motivated PhD students and visiting scholars to work with me on the exciting area of urban data analytics. Please send me a short email with your C.V. and anything you believe relevant! For PhD program applicants, here is the admission page at WPI.

⧫ News

[Editor] 02/2019: I serve as an associate editor (AE) for ACM TIST. and a guest editor for ACM TDS.
[TPC] 01/2019 TPC for IJCAI 2019 and KDD 2019.
[Paper] 12/2018: Congratulations to Menghai for our paper being accepted by SDM 2019.
[Paper] 10/2018: One paper was accepted by AAAI 2019.
[Award] 09/2018: $1.75 million NSF grant from NSF SCC program.
[Paper] 08/2018: Three paper were accepted by ICDM 2018, TKDE, TBD.
[TPC] 06/2018 TPC for AAAI 2019 and NIPS 2018.
[Editor] 05/2018: I serve as an associate editor (AE) for IEEE Transactions on Big Data (TBD).
[Paper] 05/2018: One paper was accepted by KDD 2018.
[Paper] 05/2018: Two papers were accepted by IEEE Transactions on Big Data (TBD).
[Award] 03/2018: Research grant from DiDi Chuxing Research.

⧫ Ongoing Research Projects

full list of awards/grants

[NSF] CMMI-1831140, "SCC: Leveraging Autonomous Shared Vehicles for Greater Community Health, Equity, Livability, and Prosperity (HELP)". (Subawarded to WPI), 9/2018-9/2021.
[NSF] CNS-1657350, "CRII: CPS: CityLines: Designing Urban Hub-and-Spoke Transportation System with Data-Driven Cyber-Control", NSF CRII award from CPS program, 8/2017-7/2019.
[Industry] DiDi Chuxing Research, "User Behavior Analysis for Ride-Hailing Services", 3/2018-.

⧫ Recent Publications

KDD 2018: Detecting Illegal Vehicle Parking Events using Sharing Bikes' Trajectories
KDD 2017: Planning Bike Paths based on Sharing-Bikes' Trajectories
AAAI 2019: Predicting Urban Dispersal Events: A Two-Stage Framework through Deep Survival Analysis on Mobility Data
ICDM 2018: Human-Centric Urban Transit Evaluation and Planning
ICDM 2016: The Optimal Distribution of Electric-Vehicle Chargers across A City
ICDM 2015: Dissecting Regional Weather-Traffic Sensitivity throughout a City
SDM 2019: Dissecting the Learning Curve of Taxi Drivers: A Data-Driven Approach
ICDE 2017: Mining Spatio-Temporal Reachable Regions over Massive Trajectory Data
ICDE 2015: Growing the Charging Station Network for Electric Vehicles with Trajectory Data Analytics
SIGMOD 2015: Telco Churn Prediction with Big Data
SIGSPATIAL 2017: CityLines: Hybrid Hub-and-Spoke Urban Transit System
SIGSPATIAL 2017: Forecasting Gathering Events through Continuous Destination Prediction on Big Trajectory Data
SIGSPATIAL 2017: Querying Massive Trajectories by Path on the Cloud
IEEE TKDE 2018: User Preference Analysis for Most Frequent Peer/Dominator
IEEE TKDE 2017: TaxiRec: Recommending Road Clusters to Taxi Drivers Using Ranking-based Extreme Learning Machines
IEEE TBD 2018: CityLines: Designing Hybrid Hub-and-Spoke Transit System with Urban Big Data
IEEE TBD 2018: Efficient Path Query Processing over Massive Trajectories on the Cloud
IEEE TBD 2018: Sampling Big Trajectory Data for Traversal Trajectory Aggregate Query
IEEE TBD 2017: Mining the Most Influential k-Location Set From Massive Trajectories
IEEE TBD 2017: Detecting and Analyzing Urban Regions with High Impact of Weather Change on Transport
IEEE TBD 2017: Scalable User-Substation Assignment with Big Data from Power Grids
CDC 2017: Data-driven inverse learning of passenger preferences in urban public transits
RTSS 2017: REC: Predictable Charging Scheduling for Electric Taxi Fleets
e-Energy 2016: Shepherd: Sharing Energy for Privacy Preserving in Hybrid AC-DC Microgrids

⧫ Sponsors

Sincere gratitude to our sponsors from NSF, DiDi Chuxing, Pitney Bowes Inc., and NVIDIA.

⧫ Research Interests:

⧫ Recent Professional Service

Panelist: NSF 2017-2018
Pub Chair: ACM SIGSPATIAL 2017-18
TPC: IJCAI 2019
TPC: KDD 2019
TPC: AAAI 2019
TPC: NIPS 2018
TPC: ACM SIGSPATIAL 2018
TPC: IEEE ICDM 2018
TPC: ACM CIKM 2018
TPC: IEEE ICDE 2018
TPC: AAAI 2018

⧫ Media Coverage

5/2017: Telegram & Gazette News
3/2017: WPI Research News
3/2017: WBJournal Online

⧫ Professional Appointments

2015-now: Assistant Professor, WPI
2015: Postdoc, U of Minnesota
2013-14: Researcher, Noah's Ark Lab, Hong Kong
2013: Research Intern, HUAWEI Research Lab, CA
2012: Research Intern, Bell Lab, NJ
2011: Research Intern, Microsoft Research, Beijing
2009-13: Research Assistant, U of Minnesota

⧫ Education

Ph.D.: Computer Science, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, 2013
Ph.D.: Electrical Engineering, Beijing U of Posts and Telecommunications, 2009
MS: Electrical Engineering, Sichuan University, 2006
BS: Electrical Engineering, Sichuan University, 2003