About the event

In the current era, data are generated and collected throughout our daily life. It creates unique opportunities and challenges for business decision makers to formulate timely and optimized decisions utilizing the information embedded in such valuable resources.

Such tasks are challenging not because we do not have enough tools to tackle big data problems, nor because we are short with smart business leaders. It is primarily due to the lack of talents that can fit into both areas, that require both the art and science of data handling. Traditional training in business and engineering schools are relatively silo. However, the new opportunities created by the huge amount of customer and market level data are calling for talents with both business acumen and technical sophistications.

About the speaker

Professor Xiaojing Dong is a tenured Associate Professor of Marketing and Business Analytics at Santa Clara University. She is currently serving as the Head of Marketing Science at LinkedIn.

Her research area applies Data Analytics technics to develop model and help improving Marketing and Business decisions. Her studies span multiple industries, including social network, online retail, pharmaceutical, travel, among many others. Her papers have appeared in top academic journals in business and top computer science conferences in Big Data and AI. Some of her research papers have attracted media attentions and been widely cited. She has three patents pending in the US, in the area of modeling, forecasting and field experiments.

She developed a cross-disciplinary course in marketing analytics, where not only skills of computer programming, data statistics are sharpened, knowledge of the market and business insights are also emphasized. This course has been widely received and became very popular among her students in the US and in China.

With participations of ten top companies (Google, Adobe, Palantir, etc.) in the Silicon Valley, Prof. Dong founded a new Master of Science program in Business Analytics at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University. The program has attracted students from top schools globally, as well as attentions from major companies in seeking talents who can leverage big data technologies.

She is also an affiliated adjunct professor at Beijing University, and specially invited visiting professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University, and summer adjunct professor at the School of Big Data at Fu Dan University. She received her B.E. from Tsinghua University in China, M.S. from MIT and PhD from Northwestern University.

Participation

Tsinghua students, faculty, and staff may present a valid Tsinghua ID Card to access this event. Guests will be admitted on a first come basis until all seating is full. This lecture will be given in English.