Her general research interest is in the area of machine learning and data mining. She received an NSF Career Award in 2011. She co-organized the first International Workshop on Discovering, Utilizing and Summarizing Multiple Clustering (MultiClust KDD 2010), and served as the publicity chair for International Conference on Machine Learning in 2007. Dr. Xiaoli Fern is currently an editorial board member of the Machine Learning Journal and serves regularly on the program committee for a number of top tier international conferences on machine learning and data mining such as ICML, ECML, AAAI, KDD, ICDM, SIAM SDM.

My primary research interest is in the areas of machine learning and data mining. My research is largely driven by practical applications and the challenges they present to traditional machine learning and data mining techniques.