Dr. Jiawei Han stands as a preeminent leader in the field of computer science with groundbreaking contributions to data mining and database systems. He currently holds the distinguished position of Michael Aiken Chair Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he has been instrumental in shaping the computational landscape since joining the faculty in 2001. Dr. Han received his Ph.D. in Computer Sciences from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985, building upon his foundational education from the University of Science and Technology of China. Prior to his tenure at Illinois, he established himself as a rising scholar during his fifteen-year appointment at Simon Fraser University, where he progressed from assistant to university chair professor, demonstrating exceptional academic leadership and research productivity.
Dr. Han's pioneering research in data mining has fundamentally transformed how we extract knowledge from diverse data sources, with his work spanning spatiotemporal data, multimedia information, social networks, and biological datasets. His seminal textbook Data Mining Concepts and Techniques has become the definitive reference in the field, translated into multiple languages and adopted by universities worldwide as the standard curriculum for data mining education. With an extraordinary citation count exceeding 275,000 according to Google Scholar, his research has established foundational methodologies that power modern data analysis systems across academia and industry. The profound impact of his scholarly contributions is evident in the ACM SIGKDD Innovation Award he received in 2004, recognizing his transformative influence on the theoretical and practical dimensions of knowledge discovery.
Beyond his research excellence, Dr. Han has played a pivotal role in building the global data mining community through his leadership as founding Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data and his service on over 100 program committees for major international conferences. His visionary guidance continues to shape the field through his direction of the Information Network Academic Research Center, supported by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory since 2009, which advances cutting-edge research in information network analysis. Having received the prestigious IEEE Computer Society W. Wallace McDowell Award in 2009 for his outstanding professional contributions, Dr. Han remains at the forefront of innovation, currently exploring advanced text mining techniques with large language models while mentoring the next generation of data scientists. His enduring legacy as a Fellow of both ACM and IEEE, coupled with his Daniel C. Drucker Eminent Faculty Award at UIUC, cement his status as one of the most influential computer scientists of his generation.
