Zhu, Yangyong, Ph.D., who pioneered the concept of “dataology”, is also a Founding Director of Shanghai Key Laboratory of Data Science apart from being the cofounder of Fudan's Institute for Data Industry. So far, the laboratory is the only one provincial key laboratory in China. Zhu is a Professor of Computer Science in Data Mining at Fudan University as well, and serves as the chairman of Academic Committee for Fudan’s School of Computer Science.

 

Professor Zhu’s work begins in the application of data mining to various fields (e.g., finance, economics, insurance, bioinformatics, sociology) from 1996, and since 2004 has focused on data science, particularly at the theoretical level. After engaging in a broad range of activities at original viewpoints (involving publications), Zhu is recognized as one of vital global advocates in data science. More specifically, these activities there are: expressing an opinion about “the data resource can be one of the important modern strategic resources for humans; so improving exploitation level of the data resource as well as protecting it, is an inevitable choice of enhancing comprehensive national strength and international competitiveness” (2008); having published a book of Dataology and a paper of Data Explosion, Data Nature and Dataology (2009), which probe both connotation and denotation of data science; initiating an international Workshop on Dataology and Data Science (2010), and having upgraded it to international academic conference in 2014; serving as executive co chairman for the 462nd Session of Xianshan Science Coference – Theoretical Issues Exploration on Data Science and Big Data (2013); holding a post as editor-in-chief for Big Data Applications and Technologies: Series of Book (2014); having proposed the concept of “Big Data Arena” and an point of “Transform the Land Finance to the Data Finance” in 2015.