Polo CHAU
Legal name:
Duen Horng Chau
Machine Learning Department
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
dchaucs.cmu.edu
www.cs.cmu.edu/~dchau

Education

  1. May, 2012
    (expected)     Ph.D. Machine Learning Carnegie Mellon University
    Understanding and Interacting with Massive Graphs: Bridging Data Mining and Human-Computer Interaction
    Committee: Christos Faloutsos (Chair, Advisor), Jason Hong (Co-advisor), Niki Kittur, Jiawei Han (UIUC)
  2. 2010 M.S. Machine Learning Carnegie Mellon University
  3. 2005 M.S. Human-Computer Interaction Carnegie Mellon University
  4. 2004 B.Eng. Information Engineering (Honors) The Chinese University of Hong Kong
    Online Auction Fraud Detection
    Advisor: Prof. Soung-Chang Liew
  5. 2000 Diocesan Boys' School (high school) Hong Kong
    6.

Research Interests

  1. My research bridges Data Mining and Human-Computer Interaction to synthesize systems and tools that help people understand and interact with Big Data. My thesis focuses on massive networks with billions of nodes and edges.
  2. I blend techniques from machine learning (Belief Propagation), data mining (anomaly detection), visualization and user interaction. Notable projects:
    Apolo
    mixed-initiative system (ML+vis) for making sense of large network data (watch a demo);
    Apolo helps users incrementally find relevant subgraphs to explore, avoids overwhelming the user
    Polonium
    patent-pending malware detection technology (with Symantec);
    infers file reputation over 37 billion machine-file relationships
    NetProbe
    auction fraud detection (eBay) that fingers bad guys by identifying their suspicous transactions;
    appeared in Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and more
    PEGASUS
    award-winning project that creates graph algorithms for massive graph data

ACADEMIC Honors & Awards

  1. 2010Open Source Software World Challenge, Silver Award (3rd place), for the PEGASUS project which mines billion-node graphs. U Kang, Duen Horng Chau, Christos Faloutsos
  2. 2009-2010Symantec Research Labs Graduate Fellowship, covers full tuition and stipend (in addition to the previous fellowship). Re-selected, as one of the only three graduate students worldwide to receive the award.
  3. 2009Yahoo! Key Scientific Challenges Award, in Information Retrieval, Algorithms, and Data Mining. Awarded as one of the 20 graduate student nationwide, with a gift of $5,000 unrestricted research fund.
  4. 2008-2009Symantec Research Labs Graduate Fellowship, covers full tuition and stipend. Selected as one of the only two graduate students to receive the award. Featured on: The Wall Street Journal, MSN Money, CNNMoney.com, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Fox Business, AOL Money & Finance, MSNBC Business.
  5. 2008Winner, Symantec research competition (internal).
  6. 2006Best Presentation Award, 3rd Place, PKDD'06.
  7. 2001, 2002, 2003Dean's List
  8. 2002, 2003Nominated for university scholarships

Employment

  1. Summer-Fall 2011Google, Ads Backend Team Mountain View, CA
    Ph.D. Software Engineer Intern Mentor: Dr. Arun Swami
  2. Fall 2009Symantec Research Labs Los Angeles, CA
    Ph.D. Research Intern Mentor: Mr. Carey Nachenberg
  3. Summer 2008Symantec Research Labs Los Angeles, CA
    Ph.D. Research Intern Mentor: Mr. Darren Shou
  4. 2005-2007Carnegie Mellon University, Human-Computer Interaction Institute Pittsburgh, PA
    Research Associate Supervisor: Prof. Brad Myers
  5. Summer 2003The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Lightwave Communications Lab Hong Kong
    Undergraduate Research Assistant
  6. 2002-2007Elfware Company Hong Kong
    System Consultant

Teaching

  1. Guest lecturesWeb Search for Science of the Web (15-396).
    Instructor: Prof. Luis von Ahn, Brendan Meeder. Fall 2011. Carnegie Mellon University.
  2. Making Sense of Large Networks for Sensemaking: Cognitive, Social, and Technical Perspectives (05-899).
    Instructor: Prof. Niki Kittur. Spring 2011. Carnegie Mellon University.
  3. Teaching AssistantScience of the Web (15-396).
    Instructor: Prof. Luis von Ahn, Brendan Meeder. Fall 2011. Carnegie Mellon University.
  4. Multimedia Databases and Data Mining (15-826).
    Instructor: Prof. Christos Faloutsos. Spring 2010. Carnegie Mellon University.

Publications (h-index: 12)

  1. Conference Papers PEGASUS: Mining Billion-Scale Graphs in the Cloud. U Kang, Duen Horng Chau, and Christos Faloutsos. IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP) 2012. Mar 25-30, 2012. Kyoto, Japan
  2. PDF
    Unifying Guilt-by-Association Approaches: Theorems and Fast Algorithms. Danai Koutra, Tai-You Ke, U Kang, Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Hsing-Kuo Kenneth Pao, and Christos Faloutsos. European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (PKDD) 2011. Sept 5-9, 2011. Athens, Greece. [20% acceptance rate]
  3. PDF
    Mining Large Graphs: Algorithms, Inference, and Discoveries. U Kang, Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Christos Faloutsos. IEEE International Conference of Data Engineering (ICDE) 2011. April 11-16. Hannover, Germany. [20% acceptance rate]
  4. PDF
    YouTube
    Apolo: Making Sense of Large Network Data byCombining Rich User Interaction and Machine Learning. Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Aniket Kittur, Jason I. Hong, Christos Faloutsos. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2011. May 7-12, 2011. Vancouver, BC, Canada. [26% acceptance rate]
  5. PDF
    Polonium: Tera-Scale Graph Mining and Inference for Malware Detection. Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Carey Nachenberg, Jeffrey Wilhelm, Adam Wright, Christos Faloutsos. SIAM International Conference on Data Mining (SDM) 2011. April 28-30, 2011. Mesa, Arizona. [25% acceptance rate]
  6. PDF
    Code
    On the Vulnerability of Large Graphs. Hanghang Tong, B. Aditya Prakash, Charalampos Tsourakakis, Tina Eliassi-Rad, Christos Faloutsos, Duen Horng (Polo) Chau. IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM) 2010. Dec 14-17, 2010. Sydney, Australia. [19% acceptance rate]
  7. PDF
    YouTube
    What to Do When Search Fails: Finding Information by Association. Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Brad Myers, and Andrew Faulring. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2008. April 5-10, 2008. Florence, Italy. New York: ACM Press, Pages 999-1008. [22% acceptance rate]
  8. PDF
    The eBay Graph: How Do Online Auction Users Interact? Yordanos Beyene, Michalis Faloutsos, Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Christos Faloutsos. Computer Communications Workshops, 2008. INFOCOM. April 13-18, 2008. Phoenix, AZ.
  9. PDF
    NetProbe: A Fast and Scalable System for Fraud Detection in Online Auction Networks. Shashank Pandit, Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Samuel Wang, Christos Faloutsos. International Conference on World Wide Web (WWW) 2007. May 8-12, 2007. Banff, Alberta, Canada. Pages 201-210. [15% acceptance rate]
  10. PDF
    Eyes on the Road, Hands on the Wheel: Thumb-based Interaction Techniques for Input on Steering Wheels. Ivan E. Gonzalez, Jacob O. Wobbrock, Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Andrew Faulring, Brad A. Myers. Graphics Interface (GI) 2007. May 28-30, 2007. Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Pages 95-102. [48% acceptance rate]
  11. PDF
    Demonstrating the Viability of Automatically Generated User Interfaces. Jeffrey Nichols, Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Brad A. Myers. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2007. April 28-May 3, 2007. San Jose, CA. Pages 1283-1292. [25% acceptance rate]
  12. PDF
    An Alternative to Push, Press, and Tap-tap-tap: Gesturing on an Isometric Joystick for Mobile Phone Text Entry. Jacob O. Wobbrock, Duen Horng (Polo) Chau and Brad A. Myers. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2007. April 28-May 3, 2007. San Jose, CA. Pages 667-676. [25% acceptance rate]
  13. PDF
    Huddle: Automatically Generating Interfaces for Systems of Multiple Connected Appliances. Jeffrey Nichols, Brandon Rothrock, Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Brad A. Myers. ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) 2006. October 15-18, 2006. Montreux, Switzerland. Pages 279-288. [23% acceptance rate]
  14. PDF
    In-stroke Word Completion. Jacob O. Wobbrock, Brad A. Myers, and Duen Horng (Polo) Chau. ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) 2006. October 15-18, 2006. Montreux, Switzerland. Pages 333-336. [23% acceptance rate]
  15. PDF
    Detecting Fraudulent Personalities in Networks of Online Auctioneers. Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Shashank Pandit, and Christos Faloutsos. European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (PKDD) 2006. Sept 18-22, 2006. Berlin, Germany. Pages 103-114. [15% acceptance rate]
    Best Presentation Award, 3rd place
  16. PDF
    A Linguistic Analysis of How People Describe Software Problems. Andrew J. Ko, Brad A. Myers, and Duen Horng (Polo) Chau. Proceedings of VL/HCC 2006. September 4-8, 2006, Brighton, UK. Pages 127-134. [28% acceptance rate]
  17. PDF
    Answering Why and Why Not Questions in User Interfaces. Brad Myers, David A. Weitzman, Andrew J. Ko, and Duen Horng (Polo) Chau. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2006. April 22-27, 2006. Montreal, Canada. Pages 397-406. [23% acceptance rate]
  18. PDF
    Invited ArticlesCatching Bad Guys with Graph Mining. Polo Chau. Crossroads: The ACM Magazine for Students - The Fate of Money. Volume 17 Issue 3, Spring 2011. Pages 16-18.
  19. Case study on fraud detection using social-network analysis. Duen Horng (Polo) Chau and Christos Faloutsos. Encyclopedia of Social Networks and Mining. In preparation.
  20. Workshop PapersPolonium: Tera-Scale Graph Mining for Malware Detection. Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Carey Nachenberg, Jeffrey Wilhelm, Adam Wright, Christos Faloutsos. The 2nd Workshop on Large-scale Data Mining: Theory and Applications (LDMTA 2010). July 25, 2010. Washington, DC.
    IBM Student Travel Fellowship
  21. PDF
    Inference of Beliefs on Billion-Scale Graphs. U Kang, Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Christos Faloutsos. The 2nd Workshop on Large-scale Data Mining: Theory and Applications (LDMTA 2010). July 25-28, 2010. Washington, DC.
  22. Supporting Ad Hoc Sensemaking: Integrating Cognitive, HCI, and Data Mining Approaches. Aniket Kittur, Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Christos Faloutsos, Jason I. Hong. Sensemaking Workshop at CHI 2009. April 4-5, 2009. Boston, MA.
  23. PDF
    Feldspar: A System for Finding Information by Association. Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Brad Myers, and Andrew Faulring. PIM 2008: CHI 2008 Workshop on Personal Information Management. April 5-6, 2008. Florence, Italy.
  24. PDF
    Fraud Detection in Electronic Auction. Duen Horng (Polo) Chau and Christos Faloutsos. Proceedings of EWMF'05: European Web Mining Forum, at ECML/PKDD'05. October 3-7, 2005. Porto, Portugal.
  25. Poster Papers Parallel Crawling for Online Social Networks. Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Shashank Pandit, Samuel Wang, and Christos Faloutsos. International Conference on World Wide Web (WWW) 2007. May 8-12, 2007. Banff, Alberta, Canada. Pages 201-210.
  26. PDF
    Integrating Isometric Joysticks into Mobile Phones for Text Entry. Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Jacob O. Wobbrock, Brad A. Myers, Brandon Rothrock. Extended Abstracts, CHI 2006. April 22-27, 2006. Montreal, Canada. Pages 640-645.
  27. Demos
    PDF
    Apolo: Interactive Large Graph Sensemaking by Combining Machine Learning and Visualization. Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Aniket Kittur, Jason I. Hong, Christos Faloutsos. ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) 2011. Aug 21-21, 2011. San Diego, USA.
  28. PDF
    SHIFTR: A Fast and Scalable System for Ad Hoc Sensemaking of Large Graphs. Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Aniket Kittur, Christos Faloutsos, Hanghang Tong, Jason I. Hong. ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) 2009. June 28-July 1, 2009. Paris, France.
  29. PDF
    YouTube
    GRAPHITE: A Visual Query System for Large Graphs. Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Christos Faloutsos, Hanghang Tong, Jason I. Hong, Brian Gallagher, Tina Eliassi-Rad. International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM) 2008. Dec 15-19, 2008. Pisa, Italy.
  30. Video SHIFTR: a user-directed, link-based system for ad hoc sensemaking of large heterogeneous data collections. Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Aniket Kittur, Christos Faloutsos, Jason I. Hong. Extended Abstracts of CHI 2009. Apr 4-9, 2009. Boston, MA.

Design Awards & Leadership

  1. 2006Winner, Carnegie Mellon ID card design contest. My design has been in use since then.
  2. Winner, Graduate Student Assembly logo design contest. Carnegie Mellon University.
  3. Winner, Language Technologies Institute T-shirt design contest. Carnegie Mellon University.
  4. 2005Design lead, HCI Masters capstone project. Client: Office of Naval Research.
  5. 2004Winner, webpage design contest for the New Asia College homepage. The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
  6. Lead graphics designer, The Chinese University of Hong Kong 40th Anniversary Concert.
  7. 1999-2000Art Director of school yearbook. Diocesan Boys' School (Hong Kong).

Talks

  1. May 13, 2011Mining Massive Graphs: Visualization and Anomaly Detection
    Google. Mountain View, CA, USA
  2. May 10, 2011Mining Massive Graphs: Visualization and Anomaly Detection
    Simon Fraser University. Vancouver, Canada Host: Prof. Jian Pei
  3. Feb 16, 2007Detecting Fraudulent Personalities in Networks of Online Auctioneers
    eBay. Palo Alto, CA, USA

Patent Applications

  1. Inferring File and Website Reputations by Belief Propagation Leveraging Machine Reputation. Adam Wright, Duen Horng Chau. Filed 22 Feb 2010.

Press

  1. "Fraudsters on Internet Auction Sites Often Leave Trail Leading to Crimes", Lee Gomes, The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2006.
  2. "Researchers: Software Can Nip eBay Fraud in The Bud", Bob Sullivan, MSNBC, December 8, 2006.
  3. KQV Radio live interview, Host: Frank Gottlieb, December 10, 2006.
  4. "Researchers Developing Anti-Fraud Tool", Joe Mandak, The Associated Press, December 11, 2006. Also appeared in over 100 newspapers around the world, including USA Today, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post.
  5. "CMU Develops Program To Online Auction Fraud", Keith Jones, KDKA-TV News, originally aired December 12, 2006.
  6. BizRadio live interview, Host: Brent Clenton, December 13, 2006
  7. "Online Auction Frauds Not As Clever As They Think, Researchers Say", Alpha Doggs, Network World, December 5, 2006.

Grants

  1. $35 million DARPA proposal onAnomaly Detection at Multiple Scales (ADAMS). CMU funded ~$500,000.
    Co-authored the winning proposal, represented CMU and led research efforts.
  2. Research proposals led to two full years of resesarch funding from Symantec. Awarded ~$140,000.
  3. Helped in creating an NSF proposal HCI meets Data Mining — Attention Routing, Visualization and Sense-making of Large Graphs. $500,000
  4. Helped in creating an NEC proposal for University Awards from NEC Labs Data Management. $75,000

Advising

  1. 2010Sahil Jolly, ECE undergraduate student. Design, implementation and evaluation of large scale graph mining algorithms.
  2. 2009Neha Reddy, M.S. Information Networking -- now Software Engineer at Cvent.
  3. 2009Karthik Thiyagarajan, M.S. Information Networking -- now Software Engineer at QuantiFind.
  4. 2006-2007Samuel Wang, CS undergraduate student now CS Ph.D. student at MIT.

Academic Community Activities

  1. Program CommitteeNIPS 2011 workshop on parallel and large-scale machine learning (Big Learning)
  2. CSCW 2012 workshop on Personal Information Management (PIM)
  3. ASIST 2009 workshop on Personal Information Management (PIM)
  4. OrganizerMachine Learning Lunch Seminar (2008-2011)
    Machine Learning Department, Carnegie Mellon University
  5. The First Student Research Symposium (2009)
    Machine Learning Department, Carnegie Mellon University
  6. Journal ReviewerIEEE Intelligent Systems (2012)
  7. Parallel Computing (2011)
  8. IBM Systems Journal (2007)
  9. Conference ReviewerCHI 2004-2012, UIST 2007-2010, IUI 2012, WWW 2008-2010, ECML/PKDD 2008-2009, VLDB 2008-2009
  10. MemberAssociation for Computing Machinery (ACM). Since 2006.
  11. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Since 2006.
  12. Machine Learning Department website committee

University Service

  1. Mascot Task Force committee member. Carnegie Mellon University. 2006.
  2. The Chinese University of Hong Kong 40th Anniversary Concert committee member. 2004.

Coursework

  1. Machine Learning & Data Mining
    • Machine learning
    • Statistical machine learning
    • Applied Bayesian methods
    • Multimedia databases and data mining
    • Probabilistic graphical models
    • Algorithms in the real world
    • Intermediate statistics
    • Art that learns
  2. HCI
    • Software architecture for user interface
    • Programming usable interfaces
    • Computer-mediated communication
    • Human factors
    • Interface and Interaction Design
  3. Information Engineering
    • Database programming
    • Software engineering
    • Simulation and statistical analysis
    • Network software design and programming
    • Video and image coding and processing
    • Cryptography, security and eCommerce
    • Advanced engineering math

Skills

  1. HCI
    • Contextual inquiry
    • Think-aloud protocol
    • Cognitive walkthrough
    • Heuristic evaluation
    • GOMS
    • Persona
    • Focus groups
    • Rapid paper prototyping
  2. Programming
    • Java
    • C++
    • C
    • SQL
    • VB
    • Assembly
    • JavaScript
    • ActionScript
    • CSS
    • PHP
    • ASP
    • XML
    • HTML
  3. Design
    • Photoshop
    • Illustrator
    • Premiere
    • InDesign
    • Flash
    • Lightwave 3D
    • 3D Studio MAX
  4. Music
    • Pianist (20+ years)
    • Cellist (20+ years)
    • High school string orchestra conductor
    • Chamber music group member
    • Choir member
  5. Languages
    • English
    • Mandarin
    • Cantonese (native)

References

  1. Christos Faloutsos
    Professor, Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University
  2. Jason I. Hong
    Associate Professor, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
  3. Aniket Kittur
    Assistant Professor, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
  4. Brad Myers
    Professor, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
  5. Jacob O. Wobbrock
    Associate Professor, The Information School, University of Washington
  6. Carey Nachenberg
    Vice President and Symantec Fellow, Symantec Corporation
    Adjunct Professor of Computer Science, UCLA Computer Science Department

  7. Dr. Arun Swami
    Member of Technical Staff, Google