Wei Wang Ph.D.

Associate Professor

I received the PhD degree in Computer Science from the School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham, in 2009, and BSc degree (1st class Hons) in E-Commerce and Digital Business from the School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham, in 2006. Currently I am a senior associate professor at the Department of Computing, School of Advanced Technology. From 2011 to 2013, I worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at Centre for Communication Systems Research (now known as Institute for Communication Systems), University of Surrey, UK. From 2009 to 2011, I was a lecturer at the School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus. My research interests lie in the broad area of Data and Knowledge Engineering, in particular, knowledge discovery, deep learning for textual data, semantic search and ranking, ontology learning, big smart city data processing.


  • PhD in Computer Science, University of Nottingham, 2009
  • BSc (1st class Hons) in E-Commerce and Digital Business, University of Nottingham, 2006


  • Senior associate professor, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, 2022-present
  • Associate professor, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, 2016-2022
  • Lecturer, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, 2013-2016
  • Post doctorial research fellow, University of Surrey, 2011-2013
  • Assistant professor, University of Nottingham, 2009-2011


  • Data and Knowledge Engineering


  • Suparna De, Usamah Jassat, Wei Wang, Charith Perera, Klaus Moessner, “Inferring Latent Patterns in Air Quality from Urban Big Data”, special issue on“IoT and the Environment”, accepted, IEEE Internet of Things Magazine, Sep, 2020.
  • Hang Dong, Wei Wang, Kaizhu Huang, Frans Coenen, “Automated Social Text An- notation with Joint Multi-Label Attention Networks,” IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, 10.1109/TNNLS.2020.3002798, June 2020.
  • Hang Dong, Wei Wang, Kaizhu Huang, Frans Coenen, “Knowledge Base Enrichment by Relation Learning from Social Tagging Data”, 526, PP. 203-220, Information Sci- ences Elsevier, April 2020.
  • Qi Chen, Wei Wang, Fangyu Wu, Suparna De, Ruili Wang, Bailing Zhang, and Xin Huang, “A Survey on an Emerging Area: Deep Learning for Smart City Data”, IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence, PP. 1-19, Mar, 2019.
  • Qi Chen, Wei Wang, Xin Huang, Hai-ning Liang, “Attention-based Recurrent Neural Network for Traffic Flow Prediction”, Journal of Internet Technology, Mar, 2019.
  • Yuchao Zhou, Suparna De, Wei Wang, Ruili Wang, Klaus Moessner, “Missing Data Estimation in Mobile Sensing Environments”, IEEE Access, Oct, 2018.
  • Difeng Yu, Hai-Ning Liang, Feiyu Lu, Vijayakumar Nanjappan, Konstantinos Pa- pangelis and Wei Wang, “Target Selection in Head-Mounted Display Virtual Reality Environments”, special issue on Recent Advancements in Big Data Technologies and Applications in Computing, IoT and Computer Engineering Technology, Journal of Universal Computer Sciences, Mar 2018.
  • Yuchao Zhou, Suparna De, Wei Wang, Klaus Moessner, Marimuthu S. Palaniswami, ”Spatial Indexing for Data Searching in Mobile Sensing Environments”, Sensors, 17(6), 1427, June, 2017.
  • Yuchao Zhou, Suparna De, Wei Wang, Klaus Moessner, ”Search Techniques for the Web of Things: a Taxonomy and Survey”, Sensors, 16(5), 600, Apr, 2016.
  • Wei Wang, Fang Yao, Suparna, De, Klaus Moessner, Zhili Sun, “A Ranking Method for Sensor Services based on Estimation of Service Access Cost”, Volume 319, Pages 1-17, May, 2015, Information Sciences Elsevier.
  • Wei Wang, Suparna, De, Gilbert Cassar, Klaus Moessner, “An Experimental Study on Geospatial Indexing for Sensor Service Discovery”, Expert Systems With Appli- cations, 42 (2015), pp. 3528-3538, 2014.
  • Wei Wang, Suparna De, Gilbert Cassar, Klaus Moessner, “Knowledge Representation in the Internet of Things: Semantic Modelling and its Applications”, special issue on Knowledge Acquisition and Management in the Internet of Things, Automatika - Journal for Control, Measurement, Electronics, Computing and Communications, 54 (4). pp. 388-400, 2013.
  • Payam Barnaghi, Wei Wang, Cory Henson, Kerry Taylor, “Semantics for the Internet of Things: early progress and back to the future”, International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems (special issue on sensor networks, Internet of Things and smart devices), Vol 8, No 1, pp 1-21, 2012.
  • Wei Wang, Payam M. Barnaghi, Andrzej Bargiela, “Rational Research Model for Ranking Semantic Entities”, Information Sciences Elsevier, 181 (13). pp. 2823-2840, Mar, 2011.
  • Wei Wang, Payam M. Barnaghi, Andrzej Bargiela, “Probabilistic Topic Models for Learning Terminological Ontology”, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data En- gineering, vol. 22, no. 7, Jul 2010, pp. 1028-1040.
  • Wei Wang, Payam M. Barnaghi, Andrzej Bargiela, “Search with Meanings: An Overview of Semantic Search Systems”, International Journal of Communications of SIWN, Vol.3, pp.76-82, April 2008.


  • Qi Chen, Wei Wang, Kaizhu Huang, Suparna De, Frans Coenen, “Adversarial Do- main Adaptation for Crisis Data Classification on Social Media”, IEEE iThings 2020, Rhodes Island, Greece, November 02-06, 2020 (virtual conference due to COVID-19).
  • Qi Chen, Wei Wang, Kaizhu Huang, Suparna De, Frans Coenen, “Multi-modal Adversarial Training for Crisis-related Data Classification on Social Media”, The 6th IEEE International Conference on Smart Computing (SMARTCOMP 2020), Bologna, Italy, Sep 2020 (virtual conference due to COVID-19).
  • Qi Chen, Wei Wang, “Multi-modal Neural Network for Traffic Event Detection”, in proceedings of the International Conference on Electronics and Communication Engineering (ICECE’ 2019), Xi’an, China, Dec, 2019.
  • Yuanying Qu, Haowei Song, Haining Liang, Jieming Ma, Wei Wang, “Protein Image Classification based on Convolutional Neural Network and Recurrent Neural Net- work”, CSAI2019: Proceedings of the 2019 3rd International Conference on Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Pages 186-190, Dec 2019.
  • Hang Dong, Wei Wang, Kaizhu Huang, Frans Coenen, Joint Multi-Label Attention Networks for Social Text Annotation, in Proceedings of the 2019 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (NAACL-HLT 2019), Volume 2, Minneapolis, USA, 2-7 June, 2019.
  • Mengjie Chen, Yuexuan Li, Zhuocheng Xu, Xin Huang, and Wei Wang, “A Blockchain Based Data Management System for Energy Trade”, First International Conference on Smart Blockchain (SmartBlock 2018), Lecture Notes in Computer Science Tokyo, Japan, December 10-12, 2018.
  • Qi Chen, Wei Wang, and Xin Huang, “Attention-based Recurrent Neural Network for Traffic Flow Prediction”, The International Conference on Recent Advancements in Computing, IoT and Computer Engineering Technology (CICET 2018), Taipei, Taiwan, 29-31 October, 2018.
  • Hang Dong, Wei Wang and Frans Coenen, “Learning Relations from Social Tag- ging Data”, the 15th Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, August 28-31, 2018, Nanjing, China.
  • Yuyun Chen, Hang Dong, and Wei Wang, “Topic-Graph Based Recommendation on Social Tagging Systems: a study on ResearchGate”, Proceedings of the 2018 Inter- national Conference on Data Science and Information Technology, ACM, Singapore, 20-22 July, 2018.
  • Hang Dong, Wei Wang and Frans Coenen, “Rules for Inducing Hierarchies from Social Tagging Data”, Proc. iConference 2018 Transforming Digital Worlds, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS, volume 10766), pp 345-355, Sheffield, UK, Mar, 2018.
  • Lulu Liang, Kai Zheng, Qiankun Sheng, Wei Wang, Rong Fu and Xin Huang, “A Denial of Service Attack Method for IoT System in Photovoltaic Energy System”, 11th International Conference on Network and System Security (NSS-2017), Helsinki, Finland, 21-23 August, 2017.
  • Wei Wang, Suparna De, Yuchao Zhou, Xin Huang and Klaus Moessner, “Distributed Sensor Data Computing in Smart City Applications”, In 18th IEEE International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WoWMoM 2017), June 12-15 2017, Macau, China.
  • Hang Dong, Wei Wang and Frans Coenen, “Deriving Dynamic Knowledge from Aca- demic Social Tagging Data: A Novel Research Direction”, Proc. iConference 2017, iSchools.org, 22-25, Wuhan, China, Mar, 2017.
  • Hang Dong, Wei Wang and Hai-Ning Liang, “Learning structured knowledge from social tagging data: a critical review of methods and techniques”, the 8th IEEE Int. Conf. on Social Computing and Networking (SocialCom 2015), pp. 307-314, IEEE, 2015.
  • Yuchao Zhou, Suparna De, Wei Wang, Klaus Moessner, “Enabling Query of Fre- quently Updated Data from Mobile Sensing Sources”, the 13th IEEE International Conferences on Ubiquitous Computing and Communications, pp. 946-952, 2014.
  • Wei Wang and Liang, H.-N., “IRIS2: A Semantic Search Engine that Does Rational Research”, the 17th IEEE International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering, pp.165-171, Chengdu, China, 2014
  • Liang, H.-N., Fleming, C., and Wei Wang. (2014). “User Authentication Interfaces in Mobile Devices: Some Design Considerations“, the 17th IEEE International Con- ference on Computational Science and Engineering, pp: 754-757, December, 2014
  • Kevin Kam Fung Yuen, Wei Wang, “Towards quality of service ranking strategy using primitive cognitive network process”, 2014 IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Quality of Service, pp. 344-348, Hong Kong, June, 2014.
  • Hai-Ning Liang, Nancy Diniz, Charles Fleming, Dawei Liu, Wei Wang, and Ka Lok Man, “Towards an analytical framework of interactions in mobile devices”, in pro- ceedings of 2014 International Conference on Platform Technology and Service, Feb, 2014.
  • Payam Barnaghi, Wei Wang, Lijun Dong, Chonggang Wang, “A Linked-data Model for Semantic Sensor Streams”, the 2013 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings), Beijing, China, 2013.
  • Gilbert Cassar, Payam Barnagh, Wei Wang, De S, Moessner K. “Composition of Services in Pervasive Environments: A Divide and Conquer Approach”. the 18th IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications, Croatia, July, 2013.
  • Martin Serrano, Hoan Nguyen M. Quoc, Manfred Hauswirth, Wei Wang, Payam Barnaghi, Philippe Cousin, “Open Services for IoT Cloud Applications in the Future Internet”, Second IEEE Workshop on the Internet of Things: Smart Objects and Services (IEEE IoT-SoS), Madrid, Spain, 2013.
  • Gilbert Cassar, Payam Barnaghi, Wei Wang, Klaus Moessner, “A Hybrid Semantic Matchmaker for IoT Services”, IEEE International Conference on Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom), November 20-23, 2012, Besanon, France.
  • Wei Wang, Payam Barnaghi, Gilbert Cassar, Frieder Ganz, Pirabakaran Navarat- nam, ”Semantic Sensor Service Networks”, in Proceedings of the IEEE Sensors 2012 Conference, Taipei, Taiwan, October 2012.
  • Wei Wang, De S, Toenjes R, Reetz E, Moessner K, ”A Comprehensive Ontology for Knowledge Representation in the Internet of Things”, IEEE 11th International Con- ference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (Trust- Com), pp. 1793-1798, Liverpool, UK. 25-27 June, 2012.
  • Wei Wang, Payam M. Barnaghi, “Semantic Annotation and Reasoning for Sensor Data and Linked Data”,the 4th European Conference on Smart Sensing and Con- text (EuroSSC2009), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, September, 2009, ISBN:3-642-04470-0, 978-3-642-04470-0.
  • Wei Wang, Andrzej Bargiela, “Multi-Resolution Modelling of Topic Relationships in Semantic Space”, in Proceedings of the 23rd European Conference on Modelling and Simulation (ECMS 2009), June, 2009.
  • Wei Wang, Payam M. Barnaghi, Andrzej Bargiela, “Knowledge Acquisition for Semantic Search Systems”, in Proceedings of 3rd International Symposium on Information Technology, pp.1157-1162, IEEE Computer Society, August, 2008.
  • Wei Wang, Payam M. Barnaghi, “Semantic-enhanced Information Search and Re- trieval”, in Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Advanced Language Processing and Web Information Technology, pp.218-223, IEEE Computer Society, ISBN: 978-0-7695-2930-1, August, 2007.
  • Wei Wang, Payam M. Barnaghi, “Semantic Support for Medical Image Search and Retrieval”, in Proceedings of IASTED International Conference on Biomedical Engi- neering (BioMed 2007), pp.315–319, February, 2007.


  • S. De, Wei Wang, Maria Bermudez-Edo, “Data Models and Contextual Information”, Handbook of Internet of Things, Springer, edited by Sbastien Ziegler and Antonio Skarmeta, 2020.
  • Vijayakumar Nanjappan, Hai-ning Liang, Wei Wang, and Ka Lok Man, ”Big Data: A Classification of Acquisition and Generation Methods”, in book, ”Big Data An- alytics for Sensor-Network Collected Intelligence”, Elsevier, edited by Hui-Huang Hsu,Chuan-Yu and Ching-Hsien, 2016.
  • Suparna De, Francois Carrez, Eike Reetz, Ralf Tnjes, Wei Wang, “Test-Enabled Architecture for IoT Service Creation and Provisioning”, FIA book 2013, Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume number 7858, 8th May 2013.
  • Wei Wang, Payam M. Barnaghi, Andrzej Bargiela, “Learning SKOS Relations for Terminological Ontologies from Text”, in book “Ontology Learning and Knowledge Discovery Using the Web: Challenges and Recent Advances”, edited by Wilson Wong, Wei Liu and Mohammed Bennamoun, pages 129-152, ISBN: 9781609606251, 2011.
  • Payam M. Barnaghi, Wei Wang, Jayan C Kurian, “Semantic Association Analysis in Ontology-based Information Retrieval”, Handbook of Research on Digital Libraries: Design, Development and Impact, Chapter XIII, pp. 131-141, IGI Global, ISBN:978- 1-59904-879-6, February 2009.


  • CPT406 Software Architectures
  • CPT201 Database design and development
Wei Wang