Xiaoyan Li

Xiaoyan Li serves as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University, where she focuses on teaching and mentoring undergraduate students through junior independent work supervision each semester.

Her academic credentials include:

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst (2006)
• M.S. in Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst (2006)
• M.S. in Management Information Systems, Tsinghua University (1996)
• B.S. in Management Information Systems, Tsinghua University (1992)

Dr. Li's research centers on Question Answering systems and Information Retrieval, with pioneering work in novelty detection using sentence-level patterns and cross-lingual applications. Her expertise spans Machine Learning techniques for data mining, relevance modeling, and query expansion, particularly in multilingual contexts. She has made significant contributions to syntactic feature analysis in Chinese question answering and time-based language models for dynamic information needs.

Her publication history (2001-2008) reveals a concentrated focus on novelty detection and robust relevance models, with prominent outputs in ACM SIGIR, CIKM, and TREC proceedings. The research trajectory shows evolution from syntactic analysis (early 2000s) to adaptive passage retrieval techniques (late 2000s), consistently addressing core challenges in information access through pattern-based and machine learning approaches.

At Princeton, Dr. Li teaches foundational and advanced courses including Machine Learning and Data Science (COS IW02&03), Introduction to Computer Systems (COS217), and Artificial Intelligence (COS402). Previously at Mount Holyoke College, she developed curriculum for Object-Oriented Programming, Data Structures, and Intelligent Information Retrieval courses, demonstrating extensive pedagogical range across computer science disciplines.