Office: Woodward Hall 310G

 xniu2@uncc.edu

  704-687-8772

  Google Scholar

About me

Dr.Niu is an Associate Professor at the Department of Software and Information Systems at University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Before joining UNC Charlotte in 2015, she was an assistant professor at the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University (Indianapolis Campus). Her research is in the intersection of data analytics, search and online behavior, interactive information retrieval, and knowledge discovery. Her recent projects include text mining for serendipitous recommendation, transaction log analysis of e-commerce websites, and analyzing user-generated contents. She has substantial experience in analyzing online user behavior to generate insights about user experience.


Education
Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
M.S., Tsinghua University
Funding Sources

Thanks to these funding sources to our research projects!

NSF EBSCO
WFG BOA UNCC IUPUI
News
Dr. Niu organized the compS'18: Computational Surprise in Information Retrieval workshop at SIGIR 2018.

Recent Achievements and News about Dr. Niu

1. Dr. Niu and Dr. Maher earn half million NSF grant from the prestigious NSF IIS core program on their project on computational serendipity. See this CCI news brief:

CCI news brief


2. Dr. Niu has been awarded CCI 2019 Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award. Thanks for all the nominations from the graduate students! TeachingAward

Publications

I haven't got a chance to update my publication list yet. For most recent publications, please refer to my Google Scholar profile (sorted by Year) at https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8s12jxMAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao.


2018

Niu, X., Zadrozny, W., Grace, K., & Ke, W. (2018, June). Computational Surprise in Information Retrieval. In The 41st International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research & Development in Information Retrieval (pp. 1427-1429). ACM.

Niu, X., An Adaptive Recommender System for Computational Serendipity. In 2018 ACM SIGIR International Conference on the Theory of Information Retrieval (ICTIR ’18), September 14–17, 2018, Tianjin, China. ACM.

Niu, X., Abbas, F., Maher, M. L., & Grace, K. (2018, April). Surprise Me If You Can: Serendipity in Health Information. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (full paper no. 23). ACM.

Chuqin Li, Niu, X., Ahmad Al-Doulat and Noseong Park. A Computational Approach to Finding Contradictions in User Opinionated Text. Accepted to the 2018 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM).

Xiangyu Fan, & Niu, X., Implementing and evaluating serendipity in delivering personalized health information. ACM transactions on Management Information System (TMIS).

2017

Niu, X., Li, C., & Yu, X. (2017). Predictive Analytics of E-Commerce Search Behavior for Conversion. In Proceedings of the 23rd Americas Conference on Information Systems.

Husari, G., Al-Shaer, E., Ahmed, M., Chu, B., & Niu, X. (2017, December). TTPDrimatic and Accurate Extraction of Threat Actions from Unstructured Text of CTI Sources. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (pp. 103-115). ACM.

Niu, X., & Abbas, F. (2017, July). A Framework for Computational Serendipity. In Adjunct Publication of the 25th Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization (pp. 360-363). ACM.

Pritom, M. M. A., Li, C., Chu, B., & Niu, X. (2017, July). A Study on Log Analysis Approaches Using Sandia Dataset.

2016

Zhang, T., Niu, X., & Promann, M. (2017). Assessing the user experience of e-books in academic libraries. College & Research Libraries, 78(5), 578.

Niu, X., & Yu, X. (2016). Exploring Customers’ Search Behavior on a Large E-Commerce Website. In Proceedings of the 22nd Americas Conference on Information Systems.

2015

Niu, X., & Hemminger, B. (2015). Analyzing the interaction patterns in a faceted search interface. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(5), 1030-1047.

Chen, H. L., Doty, P., Mollman, C., Niu, X., Yu, J. C., & Zhang, T. (2015, November). Library assessment and data analytics in the big data era: Practice and policies. In Proceedings of the 78th ASIS&T Annual Meeting: Information Science with Impact: Research in and for the Community (p. 2). American Society for Information Science.

HUANG, K., NIU, X., WANG, S., & WANG, K. (2015). Chinese Web users' daily image needs and seeking behavior in a Q&A community. 数据与情报科学学报, 7(1), 1-20.

Chen, H. L., Doty, P., Mollman, C., Niu, X., Yu, J. C., & Zhang, T. (2015, November). Library assessment and data analytics in the big data era: Practice and policies. In Proceedings of the 78th ASIS&T Annual Meeting: Information Science with Impact: Research in and for the Community (p. 2). American Society for Information Science.

2014

Niu, X., & Kelly, D. (2014). The use of query suggestions during information search. Information Processing & Management, 50(1), 218-234.

Niu, X., Zhang, T., & Chen, H. L. (2014). Study of user search activities with two discovery tools at an academic library. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 30(5), 422-433.

Jia, Y., Niu, X., Bharali, R., Bolchini, D., & De Tienne, A. (2014, June). CORPUS: Next-Generation Online Platform for Research Collaborations in Humanities. In International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 3-12). Springer, Cham.

Jia, Y., & Niu, X. (2014, April). Should I stay or should I go: Two features to help people stop an exploratory search wisely. In CHI'14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1357-1362). ACM.

Jia, Y., Niu, X., Bharali, R., Bolchini, D., & De Tienne, A. (2014, February). Collaborative online research platform for scholars in humanities. In Proceedings of the companion publication of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing (pp. 181-184). ACM.

2012

Niu, X.,& Hemminger, B. M. (2012). A study of factors that affect the information‐seeking behavior of academic scientists. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(2), 336-353.

2011

Niu, X., & Hemminger, B. M. (2011). Effectiveness of real‐time query expansion in a library catalog. Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 48(1), 1-5.

2010

Niu, X., Hemminger, B. M., Lown, C., Adams, S., Brown, C., Level, A., ... & Cataldo, T. (2010). National study of information seeking behavior of academic researchers in the United States. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(5), 869-890.

Niu, X., & Hemminger, B. M. (2010). A method for visualizing transaction logs of a faceted OPAC. Code4Lib Journal, 12.

Niu, X., & Hemminger, B. M. (2010, October). Beyond text querying and ranking list: How people are searching through faceted catalogs in two library environments. In Proceedings of the 73rd ASIS&T Annual Meeting on Navigating Streams in an Information Ecosystem-Volume 47 (p. 29). American Society for Information Science.

Kelly, D., Cushing, A., Dostert, M., Niu, X., & Gyllstrom, K. (2010, April). Effects of popularity and quality on the usage of query suggestions during information search. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 45-54). ACM.

Niu, X., & Hemminger, B. M. (2010, August). Tactics for information search in a public and an academic library catalog with faceted interfaces. In Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval (HCIR’10) (pp. 83-86).

2009

Niu, X., Lown, C., & Hemminger, B. M. (2009, October). Log based analysis of how faceted and text based search interact in a library catalog interface. In Proceedings of Third Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval.

Niu, X., & Hemminger, B. (2009). Information Resources Used by Academic Professors of the Unites States in the Electronic Age.

Grants

  • NSF EAGER: An Interactive Learning Analytics Framework based on a Student Sequence Model for understanding students, retention, and time to graduation. Award Number:1820862; Award Amount: $298,486; Co-PI: Xi Niu; PI is Mary Lou Maher
  • Targeted Research Internal Seed Program (TRISP) “Leveraging Text Analyticsmate Cyber Threat Intelligence Gathering for Cyber Defense Risk Assessment”; Xi Niu (PI), Bill Chu (Co-PI),Ehab Al-Shaer (Co-PI) ; UNC-Charlotte; $12,000; 2017– 2018 (research)
  • “Phishing Email Analytics for Insider Threat”; Bill Chu (PI), Xi Niu (Co-PI), Jing Yang (Co-PI); Wells Fargo; $100,000; 2016 – 2017 (research)
  • Faculty Research Grant (FRG) “Leveraging Text Analytics to Implement Serendipity in Health Information”; Xi Niu (PI); UNC-Charlotte; $6,000; 2016 – 2017 (research)
  • Faculty Innovation Fund “Data Analytics Challenge for UNC-Charlotte Students”; Lixia Yao (PI), Xi Niu (PI), and Mirsad Hadzikadic (PI); UNC-Charlotte; $31,500; 2015 (educational)
  • “Assessing User Experience of E-Books”; Tao Zhang (PI), Xi Niu (Co-PI); Industries Inc.; $4,000; 2014 (research)
  • Empower Award for Women in Computing Research; Xi Niu (Winner); Indiana University; $6,000; 2013 (research)
  • Eugen Garfield Best Doctoral Dissertation Award “Beyond Text Queries and Ranked List: Faceted Search”; Xi Niu (Winner); Beta Phi Mu Association; $3,000; 2012 (research)

Teaching

Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Fall 2018

ITIS 6162 Knowledge Discovery in Databases Syllabus

Summer 2017, Fall 2017, Summer 2018

DSBA 6400 Internship for Data Science and Business Analytics Syllabus

Spring 2018

ITIS 6120 Applied Database Syllabus


Previous Teaching at Indiana University
INFO I575 Research Methods
INFO I308 Information Representation
S503 Organization & Representation of Information & Knowledge
S511 Database Design
S533 Online Searching

Professional Service

Served on the NSF Panels for IIS programs


Journal Editorial Boards

  • International Journal of Multilingual Translations and Information Communication
  • Journal of Big Data and

Journal/Conference Reviewer

  • Journal of Information Science
  • Information Processing & Management
  • The ACM CHI (Computer Human Interaction) Conference
  • Journal of American Society for Information Science and Technology
  • Computers in Human Behavior
  • IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics – Part A: Systems and Humans
  • PLOS ONE

Program Chairs/Committees

  • the COMPS 2018 Workshop at SIGIR 2018 (Program Chair)
  • World Usability Day, 2013, Indianapolis, IN.