Yanhua Li

yanhua li

I am an Associate Professor in Computer Science Department and Data Science Program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). I am also an affiliated researcher at UMass Transportation Center (UMTC). 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 artificial intelligence and spatial-temporal data science with applications in smart cities and urban intelligence. 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 intelligence. I'm particularly interested in candidates with background in Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Data Mining, Machine Learning, Statistics, Applied Math, 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

[Award] 11/2024: Our 2014 SIGSPATIAL paper was selected as a runner-up for the 2024 10-Year Impact Award for SIGSPATIAL Conference.
[TPC] 01/2024: PC for ICML 2024, KDD 2024, and IJCAI 2024.
[Paper] 12/2023: Two papers were accepted by SDM 2024.
[Paper] 09/2023: Three papers were accepted by ICDM 2023, and two papers by SIGSPATIAL 2023. Congratulations to Mingzhi.
[TPC] 08/2023: SPC for SDM 2024, and PC for ICLR 2024.
[Students] 7/2023: Congrats to Xin joining CS at San Diego State University as an assistant professor.
[Paper] 5/2023: One paper was accepted by KDD 2023. Congratulations to Mingzhi and Xin.
[TPC] 03/2023: PC for NeurIPS 2023, and SIGSPATIAL 2023.
[TPC] 12/2022: PC for ICML 2023, IJCAI 2023, and KDD 2023, ICDM 2023.
[Paper] 12/2022: Two papers were accepted by SDM 2023. Congratulations Xin and Yingxue.
[Paper] 11/2022: One paper was accepted by AAAI 2023.
[Paper] 10/2022: One paper was accepted by WACV 2023. Congratulations to Guojun and Xin.
[Paper] 08/2022: Three papers were accepted by ICDM 2022, and one paper was accepted by SIGSPATIAL 2022.
[TPC] 03/2022: PC for NeurIPS 2022, ICDM 2022, SIGSPATIAL 2022.
[Students] 02/2022: Congrats to Yingxue joining CS at SUNY Binghamton University as an assistant professor.
[TPC, Paper] 12/2021: PC for ICML 2022, KDD 2022 and one paper was accepted by SDM 2022.
[Paper] 09/2021: One paper was accepted by NeurIPS 2021. Congratulations to Guojun.
[Paper] 08/2021: Three papers were accepted by ICDM 2021. Congrats to Xin, Yingxue, and Guojun.
[TPC] 08/2021: SPC for AAAI 2022 and PC for CVPR 2022.
[Paper] 08/2021: Five papers were accepted by SIGSPATIAL 2021, ACM TIST, and IEEE CDC 2021. Congrats to Yingxue, Xin, Huimin, and Menghai.
[Talk] 05/2021: I gave a talk in MassDOT Transportation Innovation Conference.
[Paper] 05/2021: One paper was accepted by KDD 2021. Congratulations to Huimin.
[Paper] 05/2021: Two papers were accepted by ACM TIST.
[TPC] 4/2021 TPC for NeurIPS 2021, ICDM 2021, SIGSPATIAL 2021, ICLR 2022.
[TPC] 12/2020 TPC for KDD 2021, and ICML 2021.
[Paper] 10/2020: Two papers were accepted by IEEE Transactions on Big Data. Congrats to Menghai and Xin.
[Paper] 09/2020: Two papers were accepted by NeurIPS 2020. Congratulations to Xin.
[Award] 08/2020: $2 million NSF grant from NSF SCC program.
[Paper] 08/2020: Six papers were accepted by ICDM 2020 (2), SIGSPATIAL 2020 (3), and CIKM 2020 (1).
[TPC] 07/2020 TPC for ICLR 2021, AAAI 2021, SDM 2021, WWW 2021, and Senior PC for IJCAI 2021.
[Award] 06/2020: $529k NSF CAREER Award! Thanks, NSF.

⧫ Research Projects

full list of awards/grants

[NSF] IIS-1942680, "CAREER: Spatial-Temporal Imitation Learning". (sole PI), 7/2020-6/2025.
[NSF] CNS-1952085, "SCC-IRG Track 1: Empowering and Enhancing Workers Through Building A Community-Centered Gig Economy". (Subawarded to PI Li at WPI), 10/2020-9/2024.
[NSF] DGE-2021871, "NRT-HDR: Data-Driven Sustainable Engineering for a Circular Economy". (Senior Personnel), 7/2020-8/2025.

[NSF] CNS-1657350, "CRII: CPS: CityLines: Designing Urban Hub-and-Spoke Transportation System with Data-Driven Cyber-Control", NSF CRII award from CPS program, 8/2017-7/2020.
[NSF] CMMI-1831140, "SCC: Leveraging Autonomous Shared Vehicles for Greater Community Health, Equity, Livability, and Prosperity (HELP)". (Subawarded to PI Li at WPI), 9/2018-8/2023.
[Industry] DiDi Chuxing Research, "User Behavior Analysis for Ride-Hailing Services", 3/2018-3/2020.

⧫ Recent Publications

NeurIPS 2021: SBO-RNN: Reformulating Recurrent Neural Networks via Stochastic Bilevel Optimization
NeurIPS 2020: f-GAIL: Learning f-Divergence for Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning
NeurIPS 2020: Adaptive Reduced Rank Regression
KDD 2021: MapRec: Map-Constrained Trajectory Recovery via Seq2Seq Multi-task Learning
KDD 2020: xGAIL: Explainable Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning for Explainable Human Decision Analysis
KDD 2020: Curb-GAN: Conditional Urban Traffic Estimation through Spatio-Temporal Generative Adversarial Networks
KDD 2020: ST-SiameseNet: Spatio-Temporal Siamese Networks for Human Mobility Signature Identification
ICDM 2021: DAC-ML: Domain Adaptable Continuous Meta-Learning for Urban Dynamics Predictio
ICDM 2021: Deep Incremental RNN for Learning Sequential Data: A Lyapunov Stable Dynamical System
ICDM 2021: C3-GAN: Complex-Condition-Controlled Urban Traffic Estimation through Generative Adversarial Networks
ICDM 2020: TrajGAIL: Trajectory Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning for Long-term Decision Analysis
ICDM 2020: cST-ML: Continuous Spatial-Temporal Meta-Learning for Traffic Dynamics Prediction
ICDM 2019: Unveiling Taxi Drivers’ Strategies via cGAIL - Conditional Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning
ICDM 2019: TrafficGAN: Off-Deployment Traffic Estimation with Traffic Generative Adversarial Networks
SDM 2019: (Best Paper Award!)Dissecting the Learning Curve of Taxi Drivers: A Data-Driven Approach
SIGSPATIAL 2021: Learning Decision Making Strategies of Non-experts: A NEXT-GAIL Model for Taxi Drivers
SIGSPATIAL 2021: ICFinder: A Ubiquitous Approach to Detecting Illegal Hazardous Chemical Facilities with Truck Trajectories
SIGSPATIAL 2020: Is Reinforcement Learning the Choice of Human Learners? A Case Study of Taxi Drivers
SIGSPATIAL 2020: COVID-GAN: Estimating Human Mobility Responses to COVID-19 Pandemic through Spatio-Temporal Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks
SIGSPATIAL 2020: Cycling-Net: A Deep Learning Approach to Predicting Cyclist Behaviors from Geo-Referenced Egocentric Video Data
SIGSPATIAL 2019: Effective Recycling Planning for Dockless Sharing Bikes

⧫ Sponsors

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

⧫ Research Interests:

⧫ Recent Professional Service

Panelist: NSF 2017-2022
Proceedings Chair: ACM SIGSPATIAL 2020-21
Pub Chair: ACM SIGSPATIAL 2017-18
TPC: ICLR 2024
SPC: SDM 2024
TPC: NeurIPS 2023
TPC: KDD 2023
TPC: ICML 2023
TPC: IJCAI 2023
TPC: ICLR 2023
TPC: ICDM 2023
TPC: SIGSPATIAL 2023

⧫ Media Coverage

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

⧫ Professional Appointments

2021-now: Associate Professor, WPI
2015-21: Assistant Professor, WPI
2015: Postdoc, U of Minnesota
2013-14: Researcher, Noah's Ark Lab, Hong Kong
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