(許愷見)

Kaijian Xu

General Information

I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Computer Science Department at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, working in the Semantic Information Research Group under the supervision of Prof. Dennis McLeod.

Prior to this, I completed my undergraduate studies in computer engineering at the School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. There, I conducted research in the areas of Web search and ranking, personalization and recommendation systems for my Honors Year Project at the Center for Advanced Information Systems, and also as part of the university's Undergraduate Research Experience on Campus (URECA) program.

In between, I worked as a researcher at DSO National Laboratories, where I worked on the analysis of temporal patterns in email contents for investigative applications in information security.

I also served as a Teacher Aide for secondary schools and junior colleges under the East Zone Science and Technology Centre at my alma mater, Victoria Junior College.

Previously, I completed a 6-month internship stint at the Institute for Infocomm Research (I²R), a public-sector R&D institute under the Singapore Government's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). In my work at I²R, I covered broad areas in the field of ubiquitous computing, such as context-awareness, ambient intelligence, personalization, location-sensing and human activity recognition.

[Curriculum Vitae]

Research

My research interests include data/web mining, information retrieval, recommendation systems, social networks, context-awareness and user modeling. The primary objective is to help people find, organize and comprehend information.

The rapid growth of the Internet over the last two decades has already led to an information explosion. More recently, new applications such as blogs, wikis, folksonomies and social networks have empowered and encouraged ordinary users to participate and contribute like never before. With current developments in fields like mobile and pervasive computing, we can only expect this trend to accelerate.

As the amount and availability of information increases, it also needs to be more accessible - users are demanding more relevant information with greater speed, accuracy and convenience. To achieve this, we need to develop a better understanding of user habits and preferences, especially how user information needs vary given different situations or contexts. Search and retrieval systems must be improved - by augmenting traditional methods with semantics and contextual information, or developing new techniques utilizing social networks, perception-based models, etc. Finally, information must be filtered and presented appropriately to facilitate users' consumption and comprehension.

We also need to leverage the latest developments in ubiquitous computing to deliver information and services to users on-demand, any time, anywhere. Building adaptive, context-aware, intelligent systems is critical in order to make sense of user contexts in time, location, activity, and other dimensions in pervasive computing. A better understanding of new media like surface computing and ambient displays is also needed.

Education

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science

Department of Computer Science, Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California

Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Engineering) with First Class Honours

School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University

Honors and Awards

Provost’s PhD Fellowship

, 2008/09
The Graduate School, University of Southern California

Dean’s List

, AY 2004-2005, AY 2005-2006, AY 2006-2007 & AY 2007-2008
School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University

Tan Teo Scholarship

, AY 2006-2007
Awarded for "academic excellence and demonstrating creativity and a passion for humanity."
Nanyang Technological University

Titanium Award, URECA Poster Exhibition & Competition

, AY 2006-2007
(2nd place in Category 4: Information Technology and Computer Science)
Nanyang Technological University

NTU President Research Scholar

, AY 2005-2006, AY 2006-2007
Awarded for participation in the exclusive (invitation-only) Undergraduate Research Experience on Campus program.
Nanyang Technological University

Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors' Award

, 1998
Commendation Award (Student Category)

Publications

Papers

Kaijian Xu, Manli Zhu, Daqing Zhang and Tao Gu, "Context-Aware Content Filtering & Presentation for Pervasive & Mobile Information Systems," in Proc. First International Conference on Ambient Media and Systems (Ambi-sys 2008).

Kaijian Xu, "Feature-Conscious Ranking Framework: Rank Refinement Through Feature Injection," Honors Year Project Thesis, Nanyang Technological University, 2007.

Kaijian Xu, Qi He, Jun Zhang and Kuiyu Chang, "FeatRank: Feature-injection for link analysis ranking refinement," in Proc. URECA@NTU 2006-07.

Kaijian Xu, Qi He, Jun Zhang and Kuiyu Chang, "Refining PageRank: A survey of PageRank variants," in Proc. URECA@NTU 2005-06.

Technical Reports

Kaijian Xu, Manli Zhu and Jun Zhang, "A survey of online personalization and recommendation techniques,” Institute for Infocomm Research, 2007.

Qi He, Kaijian Xu, Jun Zhang, Kuiyu Chang and Ee-Peng Lim, "Feature-Conscious Ranking Framework," Nanyang Technological University, 2006. (submitted to WWW 2007)

Posters

Kaijian Xu, Qi He, Jun Zhang and Kuiyu Chang, "FeatRank: Feature-Conscious Ranking Framework," in URECA Poster Exhibition 2006-07. [Titanium Award (2nd Place) in Poster Competition]

Not CS related

Kaijian Xu, Jonathan Yap, Tessa Gan and Chang Han Ng, "Naval Frigate Design," in Proc. 13th Science Research Congress Singapore, 2001. (DSTA news release)