A Young Faculty’s Life in Beijing Xin Beijing Institute of Technology August 28, 2015 Ph.D Time:

My Experiences NowBeijing Institute of TechnologyAP CUHKPost-Doc CUHKPh. D Tsinghua UniversityMaster Tsinghua UniversityBachelor 2

Research Directions 3 Collaborative Filtering Multiple Criterion WSDM 2011 Heterogeneous Features CIKM 2009, JCST 2015 Transfer Learning IJCAI 2015 Recommender Systems Urban Computing Road Speed Predictions AAAI 2015 Real Estate Prediction TBD… Real-time User Prediction TBD…

An Example 4 T i-3 T i-2 T i-1 TiTi T i+1 R1?30? R250?20? R3??50? R460??? R560??? R6??5040

Some Tips in Conducting Research 5 Solve problems. Industry is full of problems, e.g., organizing the schema for Uber. Not too simple, not too difficult. The dataset is easier to be obtained than you think. Crawlers are still effective in many web sites. Most companies would like to open some data sample to researchers. New problems are easier than new approaches. Old problem with new method. New problem with old method. New problem with new method (not recommended). Write an abstract and introduction before doing experiments. CCF standard is important. Journals are more important than conferences.

An Assistant Professor’s Life What I imagine three years ago about the faculty life in Beijing? The salary will increase significantly in recent years, like Hong Kong, or Singapore, to reach 1million CNY per year. Truth The salary will stay steady for at least 10 years. Because smart people have already earned 1million CNY per year from multiple ways; and for those others, their ability determine that they can never earn those money from the government. 6

Basic Responsibilities To conduct two courses per year, “machine learning” and “computer fundamentals”. To finish occasional tasks from directors, project meetings, project application materials. The basic salary: 120,000 CNY per year. 7

What’s More We Have? Permanent residence, high-quality education for children. The permission to buy apartments, and to let your children have education. 人大附中附属人民大学 The funding system from the government. 青年基金 30 万元（ 3 年） 面上项目 80 万元（ 4 年） Students and working places. 4 masters student per year, 12 students simultaneously at most. 1 Ph. D student per year, 5 students simultaneously at most. Connections to government projects. 8

My Experiences Conducting small projects A visiting in Microsoft Research Asia. 国家自然科学基金青年基金. Two small projects Have 8 students. Have top-tier papers published, IJCAI and AAAI. Have a mid project. 9

10 Conclusions A faculty life in Beijing is challenging. The platform is really big. Contact: Xin Xin,