Xiao Yang

Biography

I received my PhD degree at School of Computing, The University of Kent in 2015 under the supervision of Prof. Frank Wang. My PhD thesis "Memristor-based neural networks: feasibility, theories and approaches" focuses on the frontier of memristor studies that apply the newly emerged device - memristor to neural networks such as "cellular neural networks", "echo state networks" and "spiking neural networks". Since 2015, I work in Terrier Group, School of Computing Science with Prof Iadh Ounis and Dr Craig Macdonald. We are currently working on an ESRC funded project of "Explaining and mitigating electoral violence" with researchers in Social/Political Science department. In the project, we develop upon existing information retrieval and state-of-the-art machine learning approaches such as Convolutional Neural networks (ConvNets) to develop effective classifiers that can detect electoral violence incidents from social media platforms (e.g. Twitter). By clustering and extracting information of detected posts of electoral violence incidents, fine databases are generated for researchers to determine the strategies best suited to preventing, managing and mediating conflict related to electoral processes.

Research Interest

Work on the ESRC project of Explaining and Mitigating Electoral Violence. Research interest is mainly in the areas of neural networks, data mining/analytics and embedded systems.