CV

Education

• B.S. in Computer Science, Harbin Institute of Technology
• M.S. in Computer Science, Tianjin University of Technology
• Ph.D in Computing and Information Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology

Work experience

• 2024-now: Associate professor
  • Rochester Institute of Technology
• 2018-2024: Assistant professor
  • Rochester Institute of Technology
• 2015-2018: Visiting assistant professor
  • Rochester Institute of Technology
• 2014-2015: Postdoctoral research associate
  • University of Rochester

Research Funding

• NIH MIRA R35 2025-2030, PI
• NSF CAREER 2021-2026, PI
• NSF CRII 2019-2023, PI
• NIH R21 2024-2026, Co-PI
• NSF OAC Core 2022-2024, Co-PI
• NSF CHS Small 2018-2023, Co-PI

Publications

An Emotional Model for Nonverbal Communication Based on Fuzzy Dynamic Bayesian Network

H. Zhang, Rui Li, and J-Z. Sun An Emotional Model for Nonverbal Communication Based on Fuzzy Dynamic Bayesian Network. In: Proceedings of The 19th Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (CCECE 2006), 1534--1537, May 2006.

Emotional Nonverbal Communication Based on Fuzzy Dynamic Bayesian Network

H. Zhang, and Rui Li. Emotional Nonverbal Communication Based on Fuzzy Dynamic Bayesian Network. In: Proceedings of The 9th Intl. Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision (ICARCV 2006), 1--5, December 2006.

Framework of a Real-Time Adaptive Hypermedia System

Rui Li, E. Rozanski, and A.R. Haake. Framework of a Real-Time Adaptive Hypermedia System. In: Proceedings of The Workshop on Understanding the User of the 32nd Conference of ACM Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR 2009), 1--5, July 2009.

A User Model to Predict Web Page Viewing Behavior

Rui Li, E. Rozanski, and A.R. Haake. A User Model to Predict Web Page Viewing Behavior. In: Proceedings of The 18th Intl. Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization (UMAP 2010), 19--21, June 2010.

A Human-Centered Content-Based Image Retrieval System

Rui Li, S.K. Mulpuru, C.F. Calvelli, J.B. Pelz, P-C. Shi, and A.R. Haake. A Human-Centered Content-Based Image Retrieval System. In: 2010 Annual Symposium of The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA 2010), poster, November 2010.

Human-Centric Approaches to Image Understanding and Retrieval

Rui Li, P. Vaidyanathan, S.K. Mulpuru, C.F. Calvelli, J.B. Pelz, P-C. Shi, and A.R. Haake. Human-Centric Approaches to Image Understanding and Retrieval. In: Proceedings of 2010 West New York Image Processing Workshop (WNYIPW 2010), 62--65, November 2010.

Exploring Interaction Modes for Image Retrieval

C. Engelman, Rui Li, J. Pelz, P-C. Shi and A.R. Haake. Exploring Interaction Modes for Image Retrieval. In: Proceedings of Novel Gaze-Controlled Applications (NGCA 2011), 10--15, May 2011.

Learning Eye Movement Patterns for Characterization of Perceptual Expertise

Rui Li, J. Pelz, P-C. Shi, C.O. Alm and A.R. Haake. Learning Eye Movement Patterns for Characterization of Perceptual Expertise. In: Proceedings of The 2012 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications (ETRA 2012), 393--396, March 2012

Annotation Schemes to Encode Domain Knowledge in Medical Narratives

W. McCoy, C.O. Alm, C. Calvelli, Rui Li, J.B. Pelz, P-C. Shi, and A.R. Haake. Annotation Schemes to Encode Domain Knowledge in Medical Narratives. In: Proceedings of The Workshop VI on Language Annotation of the 50th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2012), 95--103, July 2012.

Learning Image-Derived Eye Movement Patterns to Characterize Perceptual Expertise

Rui Li, J. Pelz, P-C. Shi and A.R. Haake. Learning Image-Derived Eye Movement Patterns to Characterize Perceptual Expertise. In: Proceedings of The 34th annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2012), 190-195, August 2012.

Image Understanding from Experts’ Eyes by Modeling Perceptual Skills of Diagnostic Reasoning Processes

Rui Li, P-C. Shi and A.R. Haake. Image Understanding from Experts Eyes by Modeling Perceptual Skills of Diagnostic Reasoning Processes. In: Proceedings of 2013 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2013), 2187--2194, June 2013.

Infusing Perceptual Expertise and Domain Knowledge into a Human-Centered Image Retrieval System: A Prototype Application

X. Guo, Rui Li, J. Pelz, P-C. Shi, C.O. Alm and A.R. Haake. Infusing Perceptual Expertise and Domain Knowledge into a Human-Centered Image Retrieval System: A Prototype Application. In: Proceedings of The 2014 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications (ETRA 2014), 275--278, March 2014.

Fusing Multimodal Human Expert Data towards Semantic Image Use

X. Guo, Q. Yu, Rui Li, C.O. Alm and A.R. Haake. Fusing Multimodal Human Expert Data towards Semantic Image Use. In: Proceedings of The Workshop of 2014 Conference on Multimedia Interaction (ICMI 2014), 21--26, November 2014.

Predicting Computer-Mediated Negotiation Outcomes based on Modeling Facial Expression Synchronization

Rui Li, J. Curhan and M.E. Hoque. Predicting Computer-Mediated Negotiation Outcomes based on Modeling Facial Expression Synchronization. In: Proceedings of The 11th IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG 2015), 1--6, May 2015.

An Expert-in-the-loop Paradigm for Learning Medical Image Grouping

X. Guo, Q. Yu, Rui Li, C.O. Alm and A.R. Haake. An Expert-in-the-loop Paradigm for Learning Medical Image Grouping. In: Proceedings of The 20th Pacific Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD 2016), 477--488, April 2016.

Automated Malware Detection Using Artifacts in Forensic Memory Images

R. Mosli, Rui Li, B. Yuan and Y. Pan. Automated Malware Detection Using Artifacts in Forensic Memory Images.In: Proceedings of 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Technologies for Homeland Security (HST 2016), 1-6, May 2016

Intelligent medical image grouping through interactive learning

X. Guo, Q. Yu, Rui Li, C.O. Alm, C. Calvelli, P-C. Shi, and A.R. Haake. (2016). "Intelligent medical image grouping through interactive learning." International Journal of Data Science and Analytics. 1(1).

Modeling Eye Movement Patterns to Characterize Perceptual Skill in Image-based Diagnostic Reasoning Processes

Rui Li, P-C. Shi, J. Pelz, C.O. Alm, A.R. Haake. (2016). "Modeling Eye Movement Patterns to Characterize Perceptual Skill in Image-based Diagnostic Reasoning Processes." Computer Vision and Image Understanding. 151(1).

A Behavior-based Approach for Malware Detection

R. Mosli, Rui Li, B. Yuan and Y. Pan. A Behavior-based Approach for Malware Detection. Proceedings of The 13th IFIP WG 11.9 International Conference on Digital Forensics (IFIP WG 11.9 2017), 187-201, January 2017.

Modeling Physicians Utterances to Explore Diagnostic Decision-making

X. Guo, Rui Li, Q. Yu and A.R. Haake. Modeling Physicians Utterances to Explore Diagnostic Decision-making. In: Proceedings of The 26th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2017), 3700-3706, August 2017.

Understanding Social Interpersonal Interaction via Synchronization Templates of Facial Events

Rui Li, J. Curhan and M.E. Hoque. Understanding Social Interpersonal Interaction via Synchronization Templates of Facial Events. In: Proceedings of The 32nd AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2018), 1579-1586, April 2018.

Learning Topology-preserving Embedding for Gene Interaction Networks

K. KC, Rui Li, F. Cui and A.R. Haake. Learning Topology-preserving Embedding for Gene Interaction Networks. In: The 17th European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB 2018), September 2018.

GNE: A Deep Learning Framework for Gene Network Inference by Aggregating Biological Information

K. KC, Rui Li, F. Cui, Q. Yu and A.R. Haake. (2019). "GNE: A Deep Learning Framework for Gene Network Inference by Aggregating Biological Information." BMC System Biology. 13(2).

Bayesian Methods for Radiometric Calibration in Motion Picture Encoding Workflows

R. R. Figueroa, Rui Li. (2019). "Bayesian Methods for Radiometric Calibration in Motion Picture Encoding Workflows." SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal. 128(7).

Multivariate Sparse Coding of Nonstationary Covariances with Gaussian Processes

Rui Li. Multivariate Sparse Coding of Nonstationary Covariances with Gaussian Processes In: Proceedings of The 33rd Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2019).

Dynamic Fusion of Eye Movement Data and Verbal Narrations in Knowledge-rich Domains

E. Zheng, Q. Yu, Rui Li, P-C Shi, and A.R. Haake. Dynamic Fusion of Eye Movement Data and Verbal Narrations in Knowledge-rich Domains. In: Proceedings of The 34th Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2020).

Histopathological distinction of non-invasive and invasive bladder cancers using machine learning approaches

P-N. Yin, K. KC, W-S. Shi, Q. Yu, Rui Li, A.R. Haake, M. Hiroshi, and F. Cui. (2020). "Histopathological distinction of non-invasive and invasive bladder cancers using machine learning approaches." BMC medical informatics and decision making. 20(1).

Predicting Biological Interactions with Higher-Order Graph Convolutional Networks

K. KC, Rui Li, F. Cui, and A.R. Haake. (2021). "Predicting Biological Interactions with Higher-Order Graph Convolutional Networks." ACM/IEEE Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. 14(8).

Machine learning predicts nucleosome binding modes of transcription factors

K. KC, S.K. Subramanya, Rui Li, and F. Cui. (2021). "Machine learning predicts nucleosome binding modes of transcription factors." BMC Bioinformatics. 22(1).

A Continual Learning Framework for Uncertainty-Aware Interactive Image Segmentation

E. Zheng, Q. Yu, Rui Li, P-C. Shi, and A.R. Haake. A Continual Learning Framework for Uncertainty-Aware Interactive Image Segmentation. In: Proceedings of The 35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2021).

TarGAN: Target-Aware Generative Adversarial Networks for Multi-modality Medical Image Translation

J-X. Chen, J. Wei and Rui Li. TarGAN: Target-Aware Generative Adversarial Networks for Multi-modality Medical Image Translation. In: Proceedings of The 24th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI 2021).

Joint Inference for Neural Network Depth and Dropout Regularization

K. KC, Rui Li, and M. Gilany. Joint Inference for Neural Network Depth and Dropout Regularization. In: Proceedings of The 35th Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2021).

Dual-Level Adaptive Information Filtering for Interactive Image Segmentation

E. Zheng, Q. Yu, Rui Li, P-C. Shi, and A.R. Haake. Dual-Level Adaptive Information Filtering for Interactive Image Segmentation. In: Proceedings of The 25th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS 2022).

Unsupervised Multi-Modal Medical Image Registration via Discriminator-Free Image-to-Image Translation

Z-K. Chen, J. Wei, and Rui Li. Unsupervised Multi-Modal Medical Image Registration via Discriminator-Free Image-to-Image Translation. In: Proceedings of The 31st International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2022).

Slice Imputation: Multiple Intermediate Slices Interpolation for Anisotropic 3D Medical Image Segmentation

Z-T. Wu, J. Wei, J-B. Wang, and Rui Li. (2022). "Slice Imputation: Multiple Intermediate Slices Interpolation for Anisotropic 3D Medical Image Segmentation." Computers in Biology and Medicine. 147.

Knowledge Acquisition for Human-In-The-Loop Image Captioning

E. Zheng, Q. Yu, Rui Li, P-C. Shi, and A.R. Haake. Knowledge Acquisition for Human-In-The-Loop Image Captioning. In: Proceedings of The 26th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS 2023).

Learning Multi-modal Brain Tumor Segmentation from Privileged Semi-paired MRI Images with Curriculum Disentanglement Learning

Z-C. Liu, J. Wei, Rui Li, and J-L. Zhou. (2023). "Learning Multi-modal Brain Tumor Segmentation from Privileged Semi-paired MRI Images with Curriculum Disentanglement Learning." Computers in Biology and Medicine. 159.

Deep Learning for Histopathological Segmentation of Smooth Muscle in the Urinary Bladder

S.K. Subramanya, Rui Li, Y. Wang, H. Miyamoto, and F. Cui. (2023). "Deep Learning for Histopathological Segmentation of Smooth Muscle in the Urinary Bladder." BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making. 23(122).

SFusion: Self-attention based N-to-One Multimodal Fusion Block

Z. Liu, J. Wei, Rui Li, and J. Zhou. SFusion: Self-attention based N-to-One Multimodal Fusion Block. In: Proceedings of The 26th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI 2023).

AdaVAE: Bayesian Structural Adaptation for Variational Autoencoder

P. Regmi and Rui Li. AdaVAE: Bayesian Structural Adaptation for Variational Autoencoder. In: Proceedings of The 37th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2023).

Unsupervised Tumor-Aware Distillation for Multi-Modal Brain Image Translation

C. Huang, J. Wei, and Rui Li. Unsupervised Tumor-Aware Distillation for Multi-Modal Brain Image Translation. In: Proceedings of International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2024).

Bayesian Adaptation of Network Depth and Width for Continual Learning

J. Thapa and Rui Li. Bayesian Adaptation of Network Depth and Width for Continual Learning. In: Proceedings of The 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2024).

On the Interdependence between Data Selection and Architecture Optimization in Deep Active Learning

P. Bajracharya, Rui Li, and L-W. Wang. (2024). "On the Interdependence between Data Selection and Architecture Optimization in Deep Active Learning" Transactions on Machine Learning Research. .

Bayesian Neighborhood Adaptation for Graph Neural Networks

P. Regmi, Rui Li, and KC. Kishan. (2025). "Bayesian Neighborhood Adaptation for Graph Neural Networks" Transactions on Machine Learning Research. .

Minimally Supervised Regression using Topological Projections in Self-Organizing Maps

Z-M. Lyu, A. Ororbia, Rui Li, and T. Desell. Minimally Supervised Regression using Topological Projections in Self-Organizing Maps. In: Proceedings of International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2025).

Harnessing Heterogeneous Statistical Strength for Personalized Federated Learning via Hierarchical Bayesian Inference

M. Thapa, and Rui Li. Harnessing Heterogeneous Statistical Strength for Personalized Federated Learning via Hierarchical Bayesian Inference. In: Proceedings of The 42nd International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2025).

Towards Straggler-Resilient Split Federated Learning: An Unbalanced Update Approach

D-D. Liang, J-N Zhang, E, Chen, Z. Li, Rui Li, and H-B. Yang. Towards Straggler-Resilient Split Federated Learning: An Unbalanced Update Approach. In: Proceedings of The 39th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2025).

Shortcut Diffusion Training with Cumulative Consistency Loss: An Optimal Control View

P. Regmi, S. Ghimire, and Rui Li. Shortcut Diffusion Training with Cumulative Consistency Loss: An Optimal Control View. In: Proceedings of The 14th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2026).

Students

MS/BS students

PhD students (Co-advising)

PhD students

Teaching

CSEC-602 Research Methods

CISC-863 Statistical Machine Learning

CISC-865 Deep Learning