I am a professor at the University of Michigan and the founding director of the Master of Applied Data Science program, one of the first online degree programs at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Michigan, I received my PhD degree from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and my Bachelor's degree from Peking University. My research spans data mining, information retrieval, machine learning, and natural language processing. I develop novel techniques for analyzing large-scale text, social and information networks, and behavioral data. These techniques are applied to solving problems in Web search, Web mining, social computing, health informatics, and other domains with the aim to generate a positive impact on everyone’s daily life.