PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Hanghang Tong

Hanghang Tong is a computer scientist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who studies how to mine and learn from large graphs and networks, from random-walk proximity measures to safe graph neural networks. He earned a machine learning PhD at Carnegie Mellon in 2009 under Christos Faloutsos, and his 2006 ICDM paper "Fast Random Walk with Restart and Its Applications" won a best research paper award and a 10-Year Highest-Impact Paper Award in 2015. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Carnegie Mellon and a stint as a research staff member at IBM, he joined Arizona State University in 2014 and moved to Illinois in 2019. He became an IEEE Fellow and coauthored the fourth edition of Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques in 2022, then a University Scholar in 2024 and an ACM Fellow in 2025. He is a professor and University Scholar at the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science and co-PI of GridFM, a Department of Energy-funded foundation model for the electric grid.

Timeline

  1. 2006–2015

    Fast random walk with restart

    In 2006, he coauthors "Fast Random Walk with Restart and Its Applications" with Christos Faloutsos and Jia-Yu Pan, and it wins the Best Research Paper Award at ICDM. The paper shows how to quickly compute personalized random walk with restarts to estimate node proximity, with applications in image captioning and co-authorship graphs. ICDM gives it the 10-Year Highest-Impact Paper Award in 2015.

  2. 2009–2014

    A PhD and IBM Research

    He completes his PhD in Carnegie Mellon's Machine Learning Department in 2009, with Christos Faloutsos as his adviser. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Carnegie Mellon, he works as a research staff member at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center.

  3. 2014–2019

    Faculty at Arizona State

    He joins the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University in 2014 after a year with the City University of New York's Computer Science Department. His network algorithms earn an NSF CAREER Award in 2017 for "Network Robustification: Theories, Algorithms and Applications" and the SDM/IBM Early Career Data Mining Research Award in 2018.

  4. 2019

    Professor at Illinois

    He joins the Illinois computer science faculty in 2019 and works in the IDEA Lab@UIUC on large-scale data mining, machine learning and AI, especially for graph and multimedia data. ICDM awards him its Tao Li Award in 2019, given to researchers within ten years of their PhD for impact in data mining, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

  5. 2022

    IEEE Fellow and a textbook

    He is named an IEEE Fellow in 2022 for contributions to graph mining. In July 2022, Elsevier publishes the fourth edition of Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques, which he coauthors with Jiawei Han and Jian Pei.

  6. 2024

    University Scholar and NetSafe

    The University of Illinois names him a University Scholar in 2024 in recognition of his excellence in teaching, scholarship and service. With Jingrui He, he leads NetSafe, a project on safe graph neural networks that receives an $800,000 NSF AI-Safety program grant announced in September 2024.

  7. 2025

    ACM Fellow and AAAI Senior Member

    He is named an ACM Fellow in 2025 for contributions to the theories, algorithms, and applications of large-scale graph mining. In March 2025, AAAI selects him as a Senior Member, in a class of six chosen for significant accomplishments in artificial intelligence.

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor and GridFM co-PI

    He is a professor and University Scholar at the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. GridFM, an AI foundation model for the electric grid, is funded by a three-year, $14.2 million Phase II award from the US Department of Energy's Genesis Mission announced in September 2026, and he is co-PI with principal investigator Jingrui He. They lead the core model development in scalable graph learning and agentic AI.

Career

  1. Since 2019University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignProfessor
  2. Until 2014City University of New York
  3. 2014–2019Arizona State UniversityFaculty
  4. Carnegie Mellon UniversityPostdoctoral Fellow
  5. IBM ResearchResearch Staff Member

Education

  1. 2009Carnegie Mellon UniversityPhD

From the biography.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Hanghang Tong. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorateIncludes University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorate. Across 2,116 people with both an undergraduate degree and a doctorate recorded, we trace which undergraduate schools feed which doctoral programs, how often students stay at the same school, and how paths differ by birth-country region.
  3. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  4. 11% of AI doctorate holders from 2010 to 2016 founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduationIncludes University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. We estimate how often AI doctorate holders founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduation, how waiting times compare between founders and top jobs, and which universities trained the most.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Hanghang Tong yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Tong's Elevation to IEEE Fellow Connected to Overarching Research Philosophy siebelschool.illinois.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. SCS Team Wins ICDM 2015 Ten Year Highest-Impact Paper Award ml.cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Tong Wins ICDM 2019 Tao Li Award cs.cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Designing algorithms for better data analysis and stronger networks news.engineering.asu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Hanghang Tong tonghanghang.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Data Mining - 4th Edition | Elsevier Shop shop.elsevier.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Five Illinois professors recognized as University Scholars news.illinois.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Illinois team receives NSF grant for safe graph neural networks siebelschool.illinois.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. CS professor Hanghang Tong named ACM Fellow grainger.illinois.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. Hanghang Tong | Siebel School of Computing and Data Science cs.illinois.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  11. Illinois researchers part of DOE Genesis Mission Award team ischool.illinois.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.