Kyumin Lee

Kyumin Lee is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), with affiliations to both the Data Science Program and Artificial Intelligence Program. He maintains his office in Unity Hall 363 and leads the Infolab research group at WPI.

Dr. Lee earned his BS from Kyonggi University in 2005, MS from Sungkyunkwan University in 2007, and PhD from Texas A&M University in 2013. Prior to joining WPI, he served as an assistant professor at Utah State University from 2013 to 2017.

His primary research interests focus on social computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, and information retrieval within large-scale systems like the Web and social media. A significant portion of his work addresses threats to these systems, developing methods to mitigate negative behaviors such as misinformation and hate speech. He also explores positive applications of these technologies, including recommender systems and natural language understanding. Notably, his work on AI for social good, particularly disrupting wildlife trafficking networks, has received substantial recognition including a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

Analysis of his recent publications (2023-2025) reveals a strong focus on recommendation systems, graph neural networks, large language models, and applications for social good. His work demonstrates a consistent trajectory toward addressing both theoretical challenges in AI and practical societal problems, with particular emphasis on context-aware systems, contrastive learning approaches, and multi-modal representations.

• Google Faculty Research Award (2013)
• NSF CAREER Award (2016)
• ACM CIKM Test of Time Award (2020)
• ACM SIGIR Test of Time Award - Honorable Mention (2022)
• Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty Fellow (2022)
• WPI Recognition of Faculty Achievement (2018, 2025)
• Nominee for Outstanding Academic Advisor of the Year (2019, 2024, 2025)

Dr. Lee has demonstrated exceptional commitment to student mentorship, evidenced by multiple nominations for Outstanding Academic Advisor of the Year. His research has been supported by prestigious grants including the NSF CAREER Award and a $2 million grant for wildlife trafficking research. He actively serves the academic community through program committee memberships for top conferences including SIGIR, WSDM, ACL, and AAAI.

As the leader of Infolab at WPI, Dr. Lee directs research efforts focused on social computing, AI, and information retrieval. His lab has produced significant work on detecting misinformation, hate speech, and wildlife trafficking activities on social media platforms, while also developing next-generation recommendation systems and natural language understanding techniques.