News

• Our paper "Tabular Image: a method to convert tabular data to images for convolutional neural networks" has been accepted by the Annals of Operations Research. This is based on the first chapter of our PGR Junhao Liang's PhD thesis, congratulations Junhao! Accepted version [PDF]
• 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 at Leeds. I received my Ph.D degree in Computer Science from Warwick and taught at Cambridge and Bath before. My research group explore how artificial intelligence can transform business decision-making by extracting actionable insights from complex human behavioural data. Working at the intersection of AI and business management, we develop machine learning algorithms that decode human traits and characteristics from various forms of unstructured data—including images, texts and digital footprints. This AI-driven approach generates human-centred business intelligence that enhances strategic decision-making across finance, marketing, and operations. Our work demonstrates how AI can predict consumer behaviour through personality analysis and optimise marketing strategies using facial and textual analytics. By bridging psychological insights with advanced AI techniques, these applications help businesses reduce costs, enhance operational efficiency, and create competitive advantages in data-driven markets.

We are particularly interested in:

• AI-powered extraction of personality traits and emotions indicators for business applications
• Multimodal machine learning combining visual, textual, and behavioural data analytics
• Applied AI solutions for finance, marketing, and operations management

Prospective PhD students, post-docs and visiting researchers

We welcome applications from motivated PhD students interested in exploring the transformative potential of AI for business applications. We also encourage applications from visiting PhD students seeking collaborative research opportunities. Scholarship opportunities: University, White Rose. Visiting and Post-doc researchers are welcome to apply for competitive fellowships. For example RS visiting fellowship , MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships.

Please contact me via email to discuss potential research opportunities. In your initial email, please include:

• A clear research proposal outlining your proposed study, research questions, and methodology
• A comprehensive CV highlighting your academic background, relevant experience, and technical skills

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. 2025, J. Liang, X. Wei, B. Summers, "Tabular Image: a method to convert tabular data to images for convolutional neural networks", Annals of Operations Research (ABS3) [PDF] [DOI] [Bibtex]
2. 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]
3. 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]
4. 2022, W. Huang, S. Vismara and X. Wei, "Confidence and Capital Raising", Journal of Corporate Finance (ABS4) [PDF] [DOI] [Bibtex]
5. 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]
6. 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]
7. 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]
8. 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]
9. 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)
• LUBS3012 Data Analytics for Business (2025-current)
• LUBS3200 Business Analytics 3: Analytics Project (2018-2022)
• LUBS5990M Machine Learning in Practice (2019-current)

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

• 2025, Dr. Rui Zheng, 'Data-driven modelling and inference for quantifying the effect of social influence in decision-making', University of Manchester
• 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

• 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

Personal

Hair Donation

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