Before that, he was a research scientist in Yahoo Research and got his PhD from Arizona State University in 2015. He has broad interests in social computing, data mining and machine learning and is directing the Data Science and Engineering Lab . He was the recipients of the Best Paper Award in KDD2016, the runner up of the Best KDD Dissertation Award in 2015, Dean's Dissertation Award and the best paper shortlist of WSDM2013. He has published his research in highly ranked journals and top conference proceedings, which received thousands of citations (Google Scholar) and extensive media coverage.