ChengXiang Zhai

Dr. ChengXiang Zhai serves as Donald Biggar Willett Professor in Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Department of Computer Science, with joint appointments at the Institute for Genomic Biology, Department of Statistics, and School of Information Sciences. His groundbreaking research in information retrieval and text mining has earned him numerous prestigious honors, including the ACM SIGIR Gerard Salton Award (2021), ACM Fellowship (2017), and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). After earning his initial degrees from Nanjing University and a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University, he has published over 200 papers with an H-index of 58, significantly advancing the fields of natural language processing, machine learning, and bioinformatics. His work has received multiple ACM SIGIR Test of Time Awards, reflecting his lasting impact on the field. Through his courses "Text Mining and Analytics," "Text Retrieval and Search Engines," and "Data Mining Project" on Coursera, he continues to shape the next generation of computer scientists while maintaining editorial roles with major journals and conference leadership positions in his field