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KXKai Xu
Kai Xu

Kai Xu 徐凯

Associate Professor

Co-director, Visualization, Text Analytics, and Graphics Group (VisTAG)

Career

  1. Associate Professor2022–present

    School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham, UK

    • Co-director of the Visualization, Text Analytics, and Graphics (VisTAG) research group.
    • Founder and convenor of Generative AI Nottingham, a university-wide generative AI initiative.
    • Co-organiser of the Visualisation Interest Group at the Alan Turing Institute, the UK national centre for AI and data science.
    • Chair of Eurographics UK, the largest European professional association for computer graphics.
    • The School ranks 97th in the QS World University Rankings 2026, and Nottingham is part of the UK Russell Group.

  2. Associate Professor in Data Analytics2015–2022

    Department of Computer Science, Middlesex University, UK

    • Six data science projects with total funding over £300k, in defence, intelligence, autonomous driving and social media.
    • Co-founder of the MSc by Research in Data Science.
    • Chair of the departmental internal and external collaboration committee.
    • Member of the Faculty of Science and Technology Knowledge Exchange and Entrepreneurship committee.

  3. Senior Lecturer in Visual Analytics2010–2015

    Department of Computer Science, Middlesex University, UK

    • Seven data science projects with total funding of £12 million, in big data and intelligence analysis.
    • Founder of the MSc by Research in Visual Analytics, the first of its kind in the UK.
    • Co-director of the Interaction Design Centre from 2018 to 2020, an HCI research group of around 10 staff.

  4. Bioinformatics Specialist2009–2010

    The John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University, Australia

    • Phenomics ontology driven database.
    • Next-generation DNA sequencing data management.

  5. Senior Research Scientist2008–2009

    ICT Centre, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia

    • Leader of the visual analysis team for the Australian National Cancer Genomics flagship, with total funding of A$100 million.

  6. Research Fellow2004–2008

    National ICT Australia / School of Information Technologies, University of Sydney, Australia

    • Development of novel analysis and visualisation methods for large networks.
    • Contributor to GEOMI, an open-source 3D network visualisation package.

I received my PhD in Computer Science in 2004 from the University of Queensland, which ranks 42nd in the QS World University Rankings. Before that I graduated from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1999 with a BEng in Computer Engineering.

See funding, papers and services for the rest of the picture.