Feida Zhu

Feida Zhu is a tenured associate professor at Singapore Management University, the founder of Symphony Protocol, Pinnacle Lab for Analytics and DBS-SMU Life Analytics Lab, and conference co-chair of KDD 2021. Zhu has focused his career of more than 10 years in data science and academia, is considered a global expert in data mining, AI, and blockchain, and he specializes in helping organizations leverage big data and AI for a wide range of business applications.

Zhu founded Symphony Protocol, a next-generation blockchain-based protocol to empower a data-driven economy with privacy by design, in 2018 and provides strategic vision and direction. In 2012, he founded Pinnacle Lab for Analytics, a multimillion-dollar collaboration with China Ping An Insurance Group. He was also the founding director of DBS-SMU Life Analytics Lab with DBS Bank Singapore. Zhu joined Singapore Management University in 2010, where his research and instruction includes large-scale data mining and machine learning, blockchain and data asset, text mining, graph/network mining and social network analysis, with applications on web, management information systems, business intelligence and bioinformatics. As co-chair of KDD 2021, Zhu leads in the planning and execution of the largest and longest running international data mining conference.

A respected data science expert, Zhu has published more than 100 papers, with multiple garnering best paper awards. He earned his Ph.D. the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.