Education background
Bachelor of Computer Science & Engineering, Huazhong University of Science & Technology, Wuhan, China, 1990;
Ph.D. in Pattern Recognition & Intelligent Control, Huazhong University of Science & Technology, Wuhan, China, 1995.
Social service
Director of Centre for Computational Mental Healthcare Research, Institute of Data Science, Tsinghua University (2015-);
Member of the advisory committee of Faculty of Information Science and Technology, Tsinghua University (2017-);
Member of the advisory committee of Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University (2007-);
Senior Member of Database Committee, Chinese Academy on Computers (2007-).
Areas of Research Interests/ Research Projects
Context-Aware Data Management Towards Ambient Intelligence;
Data Mining and Warehousing;
Distributed Object-Oriented Database Management Systems.
Courses
Frontier Software Technologies (40240751，Undergraduate);
Distributed Database Systems (70240063，Graduate).
Teaching Profile
I have taught 18 different courses for undergraduates and graduates at the Department of Computing in Hong Kong Polytechnic University (1997-1999), Department of Information Systems and Management in Tilburg University in The Netherlands (1999-2002), Department of Computer Science in University of Twente in The Netherlands (2002-2006), and Department of Computer Science and technology in Tsinghua University inChina(2006-). These courses span from fundamental database theory, database design, (advanced) distributed multimedia databases, secure data management, object-oriented programming paradigm, data structure and algorithm, information system development, operating systems, frontier software technologies to computer programming for non-majors.
During the past 3 years, my major teaching efforts were spent on the 1st year bachelor course on programming fundamentals which is open to all the university students. I believe that computing education for non-majors must be distinguished from that for computing-major students. Students in these classes are from diverse backgrounds and are heading on diverse directions. They work with entities (e.g., signals, images, equations, tables of data, etc.) , and have different thoughts about computing. Many times they think of computers as a tool rather than an object of intrinsic interest. Computation is not their primary interest or career goal, and often very limited time is devoted to their formal study of computation.
According to these characteristics of the students and their requirements on the course, in my teaching, I pick up examples which are accessible at an intuitive level by different kinds of students, or those in their working domains. To let the course be directly useful, the course materials guide the students how to represent and operate on diverse entities in their domains rather than focus on abstract complex data structures like AVL trees. Overall, the course teaching aims to introduce to the students the fundamental programming methodology, and meanwhile empower the students with a strong intuition regarding the power of computing, what computers can do, and what computers cannot.
Research Status
I have been in the area of data management for over 30 years. My research interests include context-aware secure data management towards Ambient Intelligence, data mining and warehousing, and distributed object-oriented database management systems, etc. As a principal investigator, co-principal investigator, or key project member, I have undertaken over 30 national and international projects in the Mainland of China, Hong Kong, Netherlands, and Australia, and published over 200 scientific articles in high-quality international conferences or journals (including ACM TOIS, IEEE TKDE, J. VLDB, J-BHI, etc.).
One of my work in secure data management was patented by the Royal Philips in theNetherlandsdue to its innovation and applicability in 2003.The key contribution that I made in the area of data mining is to extend the work on association rule analysis from intra transactional analysis to inter transactional analysis. This is of particular significance when one is looking at forecasting systems. This is the first work which has done this kind of extension. In the area of data warehouses, I provided explanatory semantics for data warehouses using linguistic representations and fuzzy reasoning. In the area of XML databases, I developed techniques which do transformation of object oriented systems as well as a conceptual graph approach to the design of XML documents. I once proposed a context-aware data management and service paradigm towards Ambient Intelligence, which has raised a number of challenging issues in the next-generation mobile intelligent data management field. This work received the NWO VIDI Vernieuwingsimpuls (innovational) outstanding individual prize, awarded by the Dutch Organization of Scientific Research, which is the most prestigious award given to outstanding researchers in the Neterlands, and I was the first winner from the IT field since the setting up of this award in 2000.
The research work on integrating social media and daily activities to sense, predict, alert, and ease teens stress has led to a new computational mental healthcare direction.
Research Projects
Ministry of Science and Technology Key Research and Development Grant: Big Data Management System for Advanced Manufacturing (2016-2019);
The National Natural Science Foundation of China：A Micro-blog Platform for Sensing and Easing Adolescent Psychological Pressures (2014-2017);
Ministry of Science and Technology Major Project：Unstructured Data Management System (2010-2011);
Tsinghua-Boeing Joint Research Center Research Grant: Ambient Smart and Context-Aware Data Management for Aviation Service（2010-2011）;
The National Natural Science Foundation of China：Sensor Data Management: Theoretic Foundation and Implementation Techniques (2011-2013);
Nokia-China Joint Research Fund: Scalable Architecture and Systems for Context-Aware Mobile Services (2009-2011);
The National Natural Science Foundation of China：Context-Aware Data Management Technology (2008-2010);
The National High-Tech R&D Program ofChina(The 863 Program): Key Techniques and Prototype Systems for Building Smart Spaces (2008-2010);
Dutch Organization of Scientific Research (NWO - Innovative Research Grant, TheNetherlands): Towards Context-Aware Data Management for Ambient Intelligence (2005-2010).
Honors And Awards
Ministry of Education, The People's Republic ofChina: ChangJiang Professorship Award (2007);
Tsinghua University: Hundred-Talents Award (2006);
Tsinghua University: 《Fundamentals of Computer Programming》Course Revolution and Innovation Construction，Teaching Achievement Award, 2nd Class (2009).
Ministry of Education, The People's Republic ofChina: SQL-based Standard Relational Database Management System ADB, Award for Science and Technology Progress, 1st Class (1993);
Dutch Organization of Scientific Research, The Netherlands: NWO VIDI Vernieuwingsimpuls (innovational) outstanding individual award (2004);
Academic Achievement
[1] Hongjun Lu, Ling Feng, and Jiawei Han. Beyond Intra-Transaction Association Analysis: Mining Multi-Dimensional Inter-Transaction Association Rules. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 423-454, 2000.
[2] Ling Feng, Tharam Dillon, and James Liu. Inter-Transactional Association Rules for Multidimensional Contexts for Prediction and their Applications to Studying Meteorological Data. International Journal of Data and Knowledge Engineering, vol. 37, pp. 85-115, 2001.
[3] Ling Feng, Elizabeth Chang, and Tharam Dillon. A Semantic Network Based Design Methodology for XML Documents. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 390-421, 2002.
[4] Ling Feng, Jeffrey X. Yu, Hongjun Lu, and Jiawei Han. A Template Model for Multidimensional Inter-Transactional Association Rules. International Journal of Very Large Data Bases, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 153-175, 2002.
[5] Ling Feng and Tharam Dillon. Using Linguistic Representations to Provide Explanatory Semantics for Data Warehouses. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 86-102, 2003.
[6] Xiang Li, Ling Feng, Lizhu Zhou, and Yuanchun Shi. Learning in an Ambient Intelligent Environment. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, vol. 21, no. 6, pp.910-924, 2009.
[7] Yiping Li, Jianwen Chen, and Ling Feng. Dealing with Uncertainty: A Survey of Theories and Practices, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE), 25(11): 2463-2482,2013.
[8] Tangjian Deng, Liang Zhao, Hao Wang, Qingwei Liu and Ling Feng. ReFinder: A Context-based Information Re-Finding System. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE), 25(9): 2119-2132,2013.
[9] Qi Li, Yuanyuan Xue, Liang Zhao, Jia Jia, and Ling Feng. Analyzing and Identifying Teens Stressful Periods and Stressor Events from a Microblog. IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics (J-BHI), 2016.
[10] Li Jin, Gangli Liu, Chaokun Wang, and Ling Feng. Personal Web Revisitation by Context and Content Keywords with Relevance Feedback. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE), 2017.
