Heng Xu, Ph.D.

My current research focuses on redefining the Corporate Social Responsibility in the Big Data and AI era, involving topics such as AI governance, privacy protection, ethical data practices, analytical transparency and accountability, etc. Specifically, I am developing methods and techniques that support the goals of fairness and transparency through all stages of the data lifecycle and analytical activities: beginning with data collection and acquisition, through cleaning, integration, analysis and ultimately decision making.

As a tenure-track and then tenured professor at Penn State, I received the National Science Foundation’s CAREER award in 2010, and published over 100 research papers on information privacy and security, human-computer interaction, and data analytics. My work was recognized by more than 10 best paper awards and nominations at various leading conferences. I was also awarded the endowed PNC Technologies professorship in 2010.

I was a program director at the National Science Foundation for 3 years, during which I served on a broad spectrum of national leadership committees, including co-chairing the Federal Privacy R&D Inter-agency Working Group to implement the National Privacy Research Strategy in 2016.

In pursuing my Ph.D. degree in Information Systems at NUS, I was awarded the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship in 2004 and the Singapore Millennium Foundation Fellowship in 2005. I was the Valedictorian and Ph.D. Commencement Speaker for NUS in 2006. My Ph.D. dissertation was the runner-up for the 2006 ACM SIGMIS Best Doctoral Dissertation Award.

Associate Editor. My editorial interests include both behavioral research and studies that collect and analyze “organic data”, which are generated organically without explicit research design, e.g., data originated from mobile applications, social interactional data from social networking sites, Twitter feeds, etc. I also have a strong interest in papers that extend our knowledge of methods by combining “design data” and “organic data” in research design.

Associate Editor. IEEE Security & Privacy publishes “articles with both a practical and research bent by the top thinkers in the field of security and privacy, along with case studies, surveys, tutorials, columns, and in-depth interviews and podcasts for the information security industry”.

Committee Member. In Open Science by Design: Realizing a Vision for 21st Century Research, the committee provided guidance to the research enterprise and its stakeholders as they work to achieve open science. The committee offered 5 recommendations and several implementation actions, with a focus on solutions that move the research enterprise toward open science.

Co-Chair. The working group developed and then implemented the National Privacy Research Strategy, which established the objectives and priorities for Federally-funded privacy research, provided a framework for coordinating privacy research and development, and promoted multidisciplinary research that recognizes privacy needs of individuals and society and the responsibilities of the government.