News

• Xingjie Wei is involved in a new KTP project funded by the Innovate UK with the SR Mailing Ltd.
• Our paper The impact of CEO political ideology on labor cost reductions and payout decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic has been accepted by the Journal of Corporate Finance. Accepted version [PDF]
• Our paper Actors' Facial Similarity and its Impact on U.S. Movies' Box-Office Performance in East and South-East Asia has been accepted by the International Marketing Review.
• Xingjie Wei is involved in a new KTP project funded by the Innovate UK with Katchr
• Xingjie Wei has secured the Collaborative Award from the ESRC White Rose DTP on the project "Measuring life quality from digital footprints for informed policy decision making".
• Xingjie Wei has secured an ESRC grant to build a research network between the UK and South Korea for the project "Climate change, social inequality & psychosocial wellbeing with emerging digital data."
• Our research project "Predicting inequality from digital textual data" has been funded by the LUBS Challenge Fund.
• Our paper Confidence and Capital Raising has been accepted by the Journal of Corporate Finance. Accepted version [PDF]
• Our paper "How Does Brand Loyalty Interact with Tourism Destination? Exploring the Effect of Brand Loyalty on Place Attachment" has been accepted by the Annals of Tourism Research.
• Our paper "Emotion Analysis for Personality Inference from EEG Signals" has been accepted by the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing.
• Our paper "How smart does your profile image look? Estimating intelligence from social network profile images" has been accepted by the ACM WSDM 2017
• Our book chapter "Face Recognition Technologies for Evidential Evaluation of Video Traces" in the "Handbook of Biometrics for Forensic Science" is in press now.
• Our paper "The science and detection of tilting" has been accepted by the ACM ICMR 2016.
• Our paper "On the Generalization Power of Face and Gait in Gender Recognition" published in the International Journal of Digital Crime and Forensics has won the IGI Global's Excellence in Research Journal Award for 2014.

About

I am an Associate Professor in the Centre for Decision Research, Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds. I received my Ph.D degree in Computer Science from the University of Warwick and worked as a Research Associate in the Psychometrics Centre, Cambridge Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. Before joining Leeds, I was a lecturer at the University of Bath. I was also a Visiting Researcher in the National Lab of Pattern Recognition (NLPR) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

My research interests lie in the intersection of data science and business management, focusing on understanding human behaviour through psychological experiments, big data analytics, and machine learning modelling. My work develops algorithms that identify human traits and characteristics from various forms of unstructured data—decoding identity and emotions from images, extracting personality patterns from text, and detecting behavioural signals from digital footprints. These approaches generate human-centred insights that drive better decisions and outcomes, ultimately guiding governments, public sector organisations, and businesses to transform their operations and make their services more cost-effective and user-friendly. I am particularly interested in:

• Understanding and identifying human traits from unstructured data: faces, expressions, personalities, intelligence, confidence...
• Multimodal data mining techniques
• Employing those computational techniques to improve business and management practices

Prospective students, post-docs and visiting researchers

I am accepting PhD students and am interested in supervising topics related to the above areas using big data and machine learning techniques. Students are also welcome to propose their own topics. Please send me an email with your CV and research proposal for further discussion. I also welcome visiting PhD students. Scholarship opportunities: University, White Rose

Visiting and Post-doc researchers are welcome to apply for competitive fellowships. For example RS visiting fellowship

Team

Current PhD students

• Junhao Liang (2021-), 'Machine learning in credit risk management', Primary supervisor (with Prof Barbara Summers)
• Siran Wang (2022-), 'Social media language and problem gambling behaviour', Primary supervisor (with Dr Joshua Weller)
• Yao Wang (2023-), 'Measuring life quality from digital footprints for informed policy decision making', Primary supervisor (with Dr Sajid Siraj, Prof Peter Ayton)

RA

Alumni

Grant

• 2025-2027, Academic advisor, Knowledge transfer partnerships(KTP) with SR Mailing, on the project of 'LLM-enhanced decision support system for the sustainable packaging', £338,916, Innovate UK.
• 05/2024-05/2026, Academic advisor, Knowledge transfer partnerships(KTP) with Katchr on the project of 'AI-Powered financial intelligence dashboard for legal sector services', £324,129, Innovate UK.
• 09/2023-09/2027, Primary supervisor, Collaborative Award, White Rose DTP, "Measuring life quality from digital footprints for informed policy decision making" to recruit a 4-year fully funded PhD student (international rates, equivalent to £150,166), ESRC
• 02/2022-06/2023, PI, "LINK: Climate change, social inequality & psychosocial wellbeing with emerging digital data - a multidisciplinary network between UK and South Korea", £45,758, ESRC
• 01/2022-08/2022, PI, "Predicting inequality from digital textual data", £21,467, LUBS Challenge Fund
• 07/2021-08/2021, PI, "Sentiment analysis from unstructured text and image data: a study to understand consumer emotion on laundry products", equivalent to £4,175 for two funded students research placements, Nuffield Foundation
• 02/2019-11/2020, PI, "Visual analytics on CEO profile images in initial coin offerings (ICO)", £2,000, University of Leeds
• 02/2017-11/2017, PI, "Image pre-processing for automatic face recognition in forensics applications", £37,500, Metropolitan Police Service

Publication

Journal

1. 2024, A. Bayat, M. Goergen, P. Koutroumpis, X. Wei, "The impact of CEO political ideology on labor cost reductions and payout decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic", Journal of Corporate Finance (ABS4) [PDF] [DOI] [Bibtex]
2. 2024, V. Giannetti, J. Chen and X. Wei, "Actors' Facial Similarity and its Impact on U.S. Movies' Box-Office Performance in East and South-East Asia", International Marketing Review (ABS3) [PDF] [DOI] [Bibtex]
3. 2022, W. Huang, S. Vismara and X. Wei, "Confidence and Capital Raising", Journal of Corporate Finance (ABS4) [PDF] [DOI] [Bibtex]
4. 2020, Y. Liu, M. Hultman, A. B. Eisingerich, X. Wei. "How Does Brand Loyalty Interact with Tourism Destination? Exploring the Effect of Brand Loyalty on Place Attachment", Annals of Tourism Research (ABS4). [PDF] [DOI] [Bibtex]
5. 2018, A. Doukani, X. Wei, B. Kader, F. Soazandry, & B. Inkser (2018). "Views From the Street Pilot Study: Constraints and Difficulties of Using Photographs in Research of a Complex Nature Such as Homelessness", Biomedical Informatics Insights. [PDF] [DOI] [Bibtex]
6. 2017, G. Zhao, Y. Ge, B. Shen, X. Wei, and H. Wang, "Emotion Analysis for Personality Inference from EEG Signals", IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing (Impact factor: 13.99), Dec. 2017 [Bibtex] [PDF]
7. 2014, X. Wei, C.-T. Li, Z. Lei, D. Yi, Stan Z. Li, "Dynamic Image-to-Class Warping for Occluded Face Recognition", IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS) (Impact factor: 7.231), vol. 9, no. 12, Dec. 2014 [Bibtex] [PDF] [Code]
8. 2014, Y. Guan, X. Wei, and C.-T. Li, "On the Generalization Power of Face and Gait in Gender Recognition", International Journal of Digital Crime and Forensics (IJDCF), vol. 6, no. 1, Jan. 2014 [Bibtex] [PDF] (Winner of the 2014 IGI Global's Excellence in Research Journal Award)

Peer-reviewed Conference (Proceeding)

1. 2018, H. Wang, X. Wei, V. Sanchez and C.-T. Li, "Fusion Network for Face-Based Age Estimation", IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), Oct., 2018, Greece [Bibtex] [PDF]
2. 2017, X. Wei and D. Stillwell, "How smart does your profile image look? Estimating intelligence from social network profile images", ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM), Feb., 2017, UK [Bibtex] [PDF] [Slides] [Poster]
3. 2016, X. Wei*, J. Palomaki*, J. Yan and P. Robinson, "The Science and Detection of Tilting", ACM International Conference in Multimedia Retrieval (ICMR), Jun., 2016, US (*denotes equal contribution) [Bibtex] [PDF] [Slides]
4. 2015, B.-B. Liu, X. Wei and J. Yan, "Enhancing sensor pattern noise for source camera identification: an empirical evaluation", ACM Workshop on Information Hiding and Multimedia Security (IH&MMSEC), Jun., 2015, US [Bibtex] [PDF]
5. 2014, Y. Guan, X. Wei, C.-T. Li, and Y. Keller, "People Identification and Tracking through Fusion of Facial and Gait Features", Invited Paper, International Workshop on Biometrics (BIOMET), Jun., 2014, Bulgaria [Bibtex] [PDF]
6. 2014, X. Lin, X. Wei and C.-T. Li, "Two improved forensic methods of detecting contrast enhancement in digital images", IS&T/SPIE Conference on Media Watermarking, Security, and Forensics, Feb., 2014, US [Bibtex] [PDF]
7. 2013, Y. Guan, X. Wei, C.-T. Li, G. L. Marcialis, F. Roli and M. Tistarelli, "Combining Gait and Face for Tackling the Elapsed Time Challenges" IEEE International Conference on Biometrics: Theory, Applications and Systems (BTAS), Sep. 2013, US [Bibtex] [PDF]
8. 2013, X. Wei and C.-T. Li, "Fixation and Saccade based Face Recognition from Single Image per Person with Various Occlusions and Expressions", IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshop on Biometrics (CVPRW), Jun. 2013, US [Bibtex] [PDF] [Slides]
9. 2013, X. Wei, C.-T. Li and Y. Hu, "Face Recognition with Occlusion Using Dynamic Image-to-Class Warping (DICW)", IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG), Apr. 2013, China [Bibtex] [PDF] [Slides] [Poster] [Code]
10. 2013, X. Wei, C.-T. Li and Y. Hu, "Robust Face Recognition with Occlusions in both Reference and Query Images", International Workshop on Biometrics and Forensics (IWBF), Apr. 2013, Portugal [Bibtex] [PDF] [Slides]
11. 2012, X. Wei, C.-T. Li and Y. Hu, "Robust Face Recognition under Varying Illumination and Occlusion considering Structured Sparsity", International Conference on Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications (DICTA), Dec. 2012, Australia [Bibtex] [PDF] [Slides]

Book Chapter

1. 2016, X. Wei and C.-T. Li, "Face Recognition Technologies for Evidential Evaluation of Video Traces", Handbook of Biometrics for Forensic Science, ed. by M. Tistarelli and C. Champod, Springer (in press) [Bibtex] [PDF]
2. 2015, B. Arbab-Zavar, X. Wei, J.D. Bustard, M.S. Nixon and C.-T. Li, "On Forensic Use of Biometrics", Handbook of Digital Forensics of Multimedia Data and Devices, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.[Bibtex] [PDF]

Teaching

• LUBS1086 Exploring Your Potential (2018-2019)
• LUBS2940 Business Analytics 2 (2018-2021)
• LUBS3200 Business Analytics 3: Analytics Project (2018-2022)
• LUBS5990M Machine Learning in Practice (2019-)

Research Impact

• Our research this and this have been featured by the LUBS research blog: Revolutionising financial decision-making with emerging technologies and interdisciplinary approaches
• Our research project 'Digital footprints for climate change insight' has been featured by the Further Together campaign of the University
• Selected media coverage around our research How smart does your profile image look? Estimating intelligence from social network profile images: Cambridge News, The Bold Italic, Digital Trends, Techspot, Fusion. Attention score:

Professional Activity

Editorial service

• 2023, Editorial Board Member, Discover Analytics
• 2022, Special Issue Editor, "Connecting Data, People, and Artificial Intelligence toward Smart and Personalized Healthcare", A special issue of Sensors
• 2015-2018, Associate Editor, International Journal of Digital Crime and Forensics (IJDCF)

External PhD examiner

• 2023, Dr. Trung Thanh Dang, 'Enhancing intraday stock prediction and trading with social media sentiment using deep learning', University of Hull
• 2021, Dr. Samadhi Poornima Kumarasinghe Wickrama Arachchilage, 'Adaptive Domain Learning for Improved Face Recognition', Queen Mary University of London

External mentor

• 2021-present, Research mentor for PostDoc, University of Cambridge, UK

Invited Talk

• 2023, Invited talk, "Analysing Automobile Recalls using Text Mining", Big Data seminar, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France
• 2022, Panel discussion, "Promoting the culture of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI): impacts of research to society." Designing human resource management (HRM) practices to support NHS staff of minority ethnic backgrounds project workshop, UK
• 2022, Invited talk, "Unstructured data mining in finance applications.", ABCP Annual Conference, UK
• 2021, Invited talk, "How digital images affect audience perceptions", Leeds Digital Festival, UK
• 2021, Invited talk, "Psychological Profile Analysis via Digital Footprints", Northwestern Polytechnical University, China
• 2020, Invited talk, "Can we judge a book by its cover? confidence and capital raising in ICO", University of Nottingham Ningbo China, China
• 2019, Invited talk and panel discussion, "Text and image analytics in supply chain", Ideas in Practice Supply Chain Summit 2019, UK
• 2018, Collaborative research discussion, "Data scraping for real-time economic indicators", The Cabinet Office and HM Treasury, UK
• 2017, Short course of two lectures, "Computational visual analysis techniques", University of Science and Technology Beijing, China
• 2017, Invited speaker on "Do you fit in your business school? University personality study from social media", The Jingshi Conference on Educational Data Mining and Applications, China
• 2017, Panel discussion on "Technology & methodologies in digital mental health", Innovation & Strategies for Digital Interventions in Mental Health, UK

Conference and Workshop Organisation

• 2023, Workshop Chair, 13th EAI International Conference on Big Data Technologies and Applications, UK
• 2022, Session Chair, Entrepreneurial Finance (ENTFIN) Association Annual Meeting 2022, UK
• 2017, Track Chair (Identification through Data Mining), The 16th Australian Data Mining Conference(AusDM), Australia
• 2017, Session Chair, Workshop on Hybrid Human-Machine Computing (HHMC), UK
• 2017, Workshop leader, "View from the street: visual literacy and digital photographic analysis for helping homeless people", Innovation & Strategies for Digital Interventions in Mental Health, UK

Program Committees Member

• 2024, IEEE International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing with Applications (ISPA), China
• 2017, Workshop on Hybrid Human-Machine Computing (HHMC), UK
• 2017, International Workshop on Biometrics and Forensics (IWBF), UK
• 2016, International Conference on Advances in Signal, Image and Video Processing (SIGNAL), Portugal
• 2015, International Conference on Intelligent Information Hiding and Multimedia Signal Processing (IIH-MSP), Australia
• 2014, International Conference in Information Security and Digital Forensics (ISDF), Greece
• 2014, IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME), China

Journal Reviewer

• Finance Research Letters
• European Journal of Information systems
• British Accounting Review
• The European Journal of Finance
• Small Business Economics
• European Journal of Information Systems
• International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management
• Industrial Marketing Management
• IET Biometrics
• IEEE Signal Processing Letters
• Information Science
• Neurocomputing
• IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (TCSVT)
• IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS)
• IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (TIP)
• IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology
• Image and Vision Computing
• Pattern Recognition Letters (PRL)

Conference Reviewer

• ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work And Social Computing (CSCW)
• International Workshop on Digital-forensics and Watermarking (IWDW)
• IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME)
• IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP)
• IEEE International Workshop on Information Forensics and Security (WIFS)
• ACM Workshop on Multimedia and Security (MM&Sec)

Book Reviewer

• Springer Nature
• Taylor & Francis Group
• SAGE Publishing

Personal Hobbies