Li Xiaoli

Professor Li Xiaoli is the Head of the Information Systems Technology and Design (ISTD) Pillar at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), effective 15 August 2025. An internationally recognised AI researcher with over 30 years in academia and industry, he was previously Department Head of Machine Intellection at A*STAR I²R and Technical Director of the S$35.8 million national AIMfg centre. He holds adjunct professorial appointments at NUS and NTU and has advised Singapore government agencies including MTI, MOE, MOH and SNDGO.

Education:

• PhD, Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2001

Research Interests:

Prof Li’s work straddles machine learning, data mining, graph learning and time-series analytics, with high-impact applications in smart manufacturing, semiconductors and the digital economy. He pioneered sensor feature learning with deep neural networks and co-coined the term positive-unlabelled (PU) learning; his 2015 IJCAI paper alone exceeds 1,600 citations. Additional contributions span social & biological network mining, NLP & text analytics, and AI sustainability.

Recent Publication Landscape (2022-2025):

His latest 15 papers reveal a dual focus on time-series intelligence (domain adaptation, self-supervised representation, sensor alignment, remaining useful-life prediction) and efficient AI deployment (green AI, hardware-aware deep learning, game-theoretic NAS). Interdisciplinary threads link biomedical informatics (sleep stage, gene networks) and advanced NLP (preference optimisation, video grounding), underscoring a strategy of algorithmic innovation coupled with real-world validation.

Honours & Awards:

• IEEE Fellow (2024)
• Fellow, Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (2023)
• Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher
• Listed among World’s Top 2% Scientists (Stanford University)
• Three IEEE/Conference Best Paper Awards for sensor-data and network-mining research

Grants, Labs & Industry Collaboration:

Prof Li has secured and led more than 10 major collaborative grants with industry partners such as DBS, Singtel and KPMG, including the S$35.8 million AIMfg programme. He directs joint research labs, translating AI advances into aerospace, telecom, insurance and aviation solutions. His group maintains cutting-edge GPU clusters and sensor test-beds for manufacturing analytics, and he currently supervises a large multi-disciplinary team of research staff and graduate students at SUTD.