(Julia) Hua Fang, PhD

Professor
Principal Investigator, CSDS Lab

Department of Computer and Information Science, UMassD
Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences, UMass Chan

Dr. Fang’s areas of expertise include machine learning/statistical learning and visual analytics in longitudinal studies (both randomized clinical trials, RCTs, and observational studies), missing data analyses and behavioral trajectory pattern recognition. She is the inventor of the patent "System and Methods for Trajectory Pattern Recognition."  She has in-depth knowledge of classical statistics, research design, as well as advanced statistical modeling and analyses. Her current research interests focuses on machine learning and statistical learning for multisite longitudinal digital trials and wearable biosensor data, with broad applications in digital health, digital twins, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Her research application areas include data science, substance use, infectious diseases, immunology, nutritional epidemiology, behavioral medicine and business intelligence. As PI or Co-I, she has sustained continuous funding from federal agencies such as NSF, NIH, PCORI or VA over fifteen years.  Her projects, papers and consulting also contribute to a fair number of extramural collaborative grant awards.

While being an active ASA member and an IEEE Senior Member, Dr. Fang has been selected as a 2025–2026 IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer. She has contributed to several prominent IEEE editorial boards, including the IEEE IoT Journal and IEEE Transactions on Big Data, and has participated in technical program committees for major ACM/IEEE and international conferences in data mining and connected health (e.g., ACM KDD, IEEE ICDM, IEEE EMBC, IEEE/ACM CHASE) and AI conferences (e.g., IJCAI). Currently, she is an Area Editor for the IEEE IoT Journal, specializing in Artificial Intelligence for IoT. In addition, Dr. Fang is a member of the IEEE HEALTHCOM Steering Committee and has served as an Advisory Group member of the IEEE Standards Association (SA) Healthcare Life Science Practice Program, focusing on breakthrough technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. Dr Fang teaches CIS454 Computer Graphics and CIS 530 Advanced Data Mining, and taught CIS490/602 Machine Learning, CIS264 Software Quality Assurance and Testing, and CIS602 Pattern Analysis.