Kevin Xu, doctoral student
in the Electrical Engineering:Systems program, received a highly-competitive
fellowship from the
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) for
his research on the topic "Inference in Dynamic Networks for Prediction of
Epidemics." Xu works with
Prof. Alfred O. Hero
"My current research focuses on discovering structure in time-varying
networks," explains Xu. "Many real-world networks contain communities of
tightly connected individuals, and as these networks change with time, their
community structure often changes as well. I am developing methods for
tracking these communities over time, with applications to email spam
networks, online social networks, and epidemiological contact networks."
Xu's main research interests are in machine learning. In particular, he is
interested in methods for learning from time-varying data; that is,
identifying patterns in data that is collected over time where the
underlying processes generating the data may be non-stationary. This
situation occurs especially often in unsupervised learning, with
applications such as community detection in dynamic social networks. He is
also interested in network theory.
About the Award
The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada has
several programs for graduate fellowships. Xu's award, from the Postgraduate
Scholarship (PGS) program, provides 2 years of financial support to Canadian
citizens at the doctoral level pursuing a degree in science or engineering.
Posted: April 29, 2010 by
Catharine June
EECS/ECE Communications Coordinator
cmsj@umich.edu or 734-936-2965
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