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.

Openings I am looking for self-motivated PhD students and visiting scholars to work with me on the exciting area of urban data analytics. I'm particularly interested in candidates with background in big data analytics, control theory, data mining, machine learning, and strong programming skill. 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

[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.
[TPC] 3/2018 TPC member for CIKM 2018, ICDM 2018, SIGSPATIAL 2018, Urbcomp 2018.
[Paper] 11/2017: One paper was accepted by TKDE.
[Talk] 11/2017: Invited talks in workshop on Sharing Economy at University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
[TPC] 10/2017: TPC member for ICDE 2018 Industry and Application track.
[Paper] 08/2017: Four papers were accepted by SIGSPATIAL GIS 2017 and TBD.
[Paper] 07/2017: Congratulations to Guojun and Yichen for our paper being accepted by IEEE CDC 2017.
[Paper] 07/2017: One paper was accepted by IEEE RTSS 2017.
[TPC] 06/2017: TPC member for AAAI 2018.
[Paper] 05/2017: One paper was accepted by KDD 2017.

⧫ 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
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: AAAI 2019
TPC: NIPS 2018
TPC: ACM SIGSPATIAL 2018
TPC: IEEE ICDM 2018
TPC: ACM CIKM 2018
TPC: IEEE ICDE 2018
TPC: AAAI 2018
TPC: IEEE ICCPS 2017
TPC: SIGMETRICS 2017

⧫ 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