Xiaobai Li

Xiaobai (Bob) Li, Ph.D.

Professor

College
Manning School of Business
Department
Operations and Information Systems
Phone
(978) 934-2707
Office
Pulichino Tong Business Center - 448
Email
Xiaobai_Li@uml.edu
Profile Links

Research Interests

Data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, business analytics, data privacy, data mining, optimization, information economics

Data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, business analytics, data privacy, data mining, text analytics, Big Data, optimization, medical and health informatics, auctions, mechanism design

Education

  • BS: Civil Engineering, Chongqing University - Chongqing, China
  • MBA, University of New Hampshire - Durham, NH
  • Ph D: Management Science, University of South Carolina - Columbia, SC
    Dissertation/Thesis Title: Multivariate Decision Trees for Data Mining

Biography

Dr. Xiaobai Li's research focuses on data science, machine learning, business analytics, data privacy, and information economics. He has received funding for his research from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF). His work has appeared in Management Science, Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, Operations Research, INFORMS Journal on Computing, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Decision Sciences, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Communications of the ACM, Decision Support Systems, and European Journal of Operational Research, among others. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for Information Systems Research, Decision Support Systems, ACM Journal of Data and Information Quality, and Information Technology and Management.

Dr. Li has taught database management, machine learning, data analytics, data mining, statistics, programming languages, and other information systems and business analytics courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Prior to joining UMass Lowell, Dr. Li taught at the University of Texas at Dallas. In addition, he had worked in industry for 10 years as an engineer, an analyst, and a manager.

Selected Awards and Honors

  • Manning Research Excellence Award (2023) - Manning School of Business
  • Best Associate Editor Award for the Year 2020 (2021) - Information Systems Research
  • The Best Paper Award (2021) - The 2021 New England Association for Information Systems Annual Conference
  • The 2019 Graduate Teaching Award (2019) - University of Massachusetts - Lowell
  • The Best Paper Award (2015) - The 25th Annual Workshop on Information Technologies and Systems (WITS 2015)
  • Teaching Excellence Award (2011) - Operations and Information Systems Department University of Massachusetts Lowell
  • The Best Paper Runner-Up Award (2011) - The 21st Workshop on Information Technologies and Systems (WITS 2011)
  • The Second Runner-Up Best Paper Award (2010) - The 31st International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2010)
  • The Best Poster Paper Award (2009) - The 8th Workshop on E-Business
  • The Best MIS Paper Award (2004) - The 2004 Annual Meeting of the Northeast Decision Sciences Institute

Selected Publications

  • Liu, X., Li, X.B. (2024). Cost-Effective Acquisition of First-Party Data for Business Analytics. INFORMS Journal on Computing, 36(5) 1242-1260.
  • Liu, X., Li, X.B., Sarkar, S. (2023). Cost-Restricted Feature Selection for Data Acquisition. Management Science, 69(7) 3976-3992.
  • Li, X.B., Liu, X., Motiwalla, L.F. (2021). Valuing Personal Data with Privacy Consideration. Decision Sciences, 52(2) 393-426.
  • Kartal, H.B., Li, X.B. (2020). Protecting Privacy When Sharing and Releasing Data with Multiple Records per Person. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 21(6) 1461-1485.
  • Zhang, J., Liu, X., Li, X.B. (2020). Predictive Analytics with Strategically Missing Data. INFORMS Journal on Computing, 32(4) 1143-1156.
  • Kartal, H., Liu, X., Li, X.B. (2019). Differential Privacy for the Vast Majority. ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems, 10(2) 15.
  • Li, X.B., Qin, J. (2017). Anonymizing and Sharing Medical Text Records. Information Systems Research, 28(2) 332-352.
  • Gong, Q., Luo, J., Yang, M., Ni, W., Li, X.B. (2017). Anonymizing 1:M microdata with high utility. Knowledge-Based Systems, 115 15-26.
  • Liu, X., Li, X.B., Montiwalla, L., Li, W., Zheng, H., Franklin, P. (2016). Preserving Patient privacy when sharing same-disease data. ACM Journal of Data and Information Quality, 7(4) 14.
  • Motiwalla, L.F., Li, X.B. (2016). Unveiling consumers’ privacy paradox behaviour in an economic exchange. International Journal of Business Information Systems, 23(3) 307–329.
  • Li, X.B., Sarkar, S. (2014). Digression and Value Concatenation to Enable Privacy-Preserving Regression. MIS Quarterly, 38(3) 679-698.
  • Li, X.B., Raghunathan, S. (2014). Pricing and disseminating customer data with privacy awareness. Decision Support Systems, 59(1) 63-73.
  • Li, X.B., Sarkar, S. (2013). Class-restricted clustering and microperturbation for data privacy. Management Science, 59(4) 796-812.
  • Motiwalla, L.F., Li, X.B. (2013). Developing privacy solutions for sharing and analysing healthcare data. International Journal of Business Information Systems, 13(2) 199-216.
  • Li, X.R., Zhao, Z., Li, X.B. (2012). Evaluation of estimation algorithms - Credibility tests. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Part A:Systems and Humans, 42(1) 147-163.
  • Li, X.B., Sarkar, S. (2011). Protecting Privacy Against Record Linkage Disclosure: A Bounded Swapping Approach for Numeric Data. Information Systems Research, 22(4) 774.
  • Li, X.B. (2009). A bayesian approach for estimating and replacing missing categorical data. Journal of Data and Information Quality, 1(1).
  • Zhu, D., Li, X.B., Wu, S. (2009). Identity disclosure protection: A data reconstruction approach for privacy-preserving data mining. Decision Support Systems, 48(1) 133-140.
  • Li, X.B., Sarkar, S. (2009). Against Classification Attacks: A Decision Tree Pruning Approach to Privacy Protection in Data Mining. Operations Research, 57(6) 1496-1509.
  • Li, X.B., Motiwalla, L.F. (2009). For Sale by Owner Online: Who Gets the Saved Commission? Communications of the ACM, 52(2) 110-114.
  • Li, X.B., Jacob, V.S. (2008). Adaptive data reduction for large-scale transaction data. European Journal of Operational Research, 188(3) 910-924.
  • Li, X.B., Sarkar, S. (2006). Privacy protection in data mining: A perturbation approach for categorical data. Information Systems Research, 17(3) 254-270.
  • Li, X.B., Sarkar, S. (2006). A Tree-Based Data Perturbation Approach for Privacy-Preserving Data Mining. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge & Data Engineering, 18(9) 1278-1283.
  • Li, X.B. (2005). A scalable decision tree system and its application in pattern recognition and intrusion detection. Decision Support Systems, 41(1) 112-130.
  • Li, X.R., Zhao, Z., Li, X.B. (2005). General Model-Set Design Methods for Multiple-Model Approach. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 50(9) 1260-1276.
  • Li, X.B., Sweigart, J.R., Teng, J.T., Donohue, J.M., Thombs, L.A., Wang, S.M. (2003). Multivariate Decision Trees Using Linear Discriminants and Tabu Search. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man & Cybernetics: Part A, 33(2) 194-205.
  • Li, X.B. (2002). Data Reduction via Adaptive Sampling. Communications in Information and Systems, 2(1) 53-68.
  • Li, X.B., Sweigart, J., Teng, J., Donohue, J., Thombs, L. (2001). A Dynamic Programming Based Pruning Method for Decision Trees. INFORMS Journal on Computing, 13(4) 332-344.
  • Li, X.B., Reeves, G.R. (1999). A multiple criteria approach to data envelopment analysis. European Journal of Operational Research, 115(3) 507-517.

Selected Contracts, Fellowships, Grants and Sponsored Research

  • New Technology to Preserve Patient Privacy and Data Quality in Health Research (2011), Grant - National Institutes of Health (NIH), $706,669 (2011-2015)
    Li, X.B. (Principal), Motiwalla, L., Franklin, P., Li, W.
  • (2011), Grant - University of Massachusetts Lowell
    Li, X.B.
  • (2009), Grant - University of Massachusetts Lowell
    Li, X.B.
  • Consumer Electronic Privacy Protection System (2008), Grant - National Science Foundation (NSF), $100,000
    Li, X.B.
  • (2006), Grant - University of Massachusetts Lowell
    Li, X.B.