PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Xia Hu

Also known as Xia Ben Hu

Xia Hu is a computer scientist whose work spans automated machine learning, interpretable AI, graph learning and language-model systems. He earned computer science degrees at Beihang University and Arizona State University, then joined Texas A&M in 2016 as an assistant professor. He received an NSF CAREER Award and the SIGKDD Rising Star Award, and coauthored Auto-Keras, an open-source AutoML system for neural architecture search. At Rice, he directed the Data to Knowledge Lab; his coauthored G-Mixup won ICML’s 2022 Outstanding Paper Award, and KIVI addressed memory demands in language-model serving. As of October 2026, he is a full professor at Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Works
363
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026. Citations and h-index are hidden because this OpenAlex record may be incomplete or mix in other authors.

Timeline

  1. 2016

    Texas A&M appointment

    By 2016, he holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science from Beihang University and a PhD in computer science from Arizona State University. Before joining Texas A&M, he works as a postdoctoral researcher at Arizona State University and the Phoenix Veteran Affairs Health Care System. In 2016, he joins Texas A&M’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering as an assistant professor and directs its DATA Lab.

  2. 2018

    An NSF CAREER Award

    In 2018, he receives an NSF CAREER Award.

  3. 2019

    Building Auto-Keras

    In 2019, he coauthors Auto-Keras with Haifeng Jin and Qingquan Song. The paper introduces an open-source AutoML system that uses Bayesian optimization to guide network morphism during neural architecture search.

  4. 2021

    A SIGKDD Rising Star Award

    In 2021, SIGKDD presents him with its Rising Star Award for research in human-centric data mining and interpretable, automated methods that help domain experts use machine learning.

  5. 2021–2025

    Rice professor and D2K director

    He joins Rice’s Department of Computer Science as an associate professor in 2021. In 2022, Rice names him director of the Data to Knowledge Lab. Rice promotes him to full professor in 2025.

  6. 2022

    G-Mixup’s ICML paper award

    In 2022, the DATA Lab he founds at Rice wins ICML’s Outstanding Paper Award for G-Mixup, which he coauthors with Xiaotian Han, Zhimeng Jiang and Ninghao Liu. The method interpolates graphons from graph classes to generate synthetic graphs for classification.

  7. 2024

    KIVI compresses the KV cache

    At ICML 2024, he coauthors KIVI, which introduces asymmetric two-bit quantization for the key-value cache used by large language models.

  8. As of October 2026

    Full professor at Shanghai AI Lab

    As of October 2026, he is a full professor at Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Career

  1. NowShanghai Artificial Intelligence LaboratoryFull Professor
  2. 2021–2025Rice UniversityFounder, Associate Professor
  3. From 2016Texas A&M UniversityAssistant Professor
  4. Until 2016Arizona State UniversityPostdoctoral Researcher
  5. Until 2016Phoenix Veteran Affairs Health Care SystemPostdoctoral Researcher

Education

  1. Beihang UniversityBachelor's degree in computer science
  2. Arizona State UniversityPhD in computer science

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 Xia Hu. 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. 5 of the 25 people with the most-cited recent papers also lead on career citationsIncludes Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. We compare citations to 2023–2025 papers with career citations and h-index, after correcting reviewed publication-date errors: who leads, when they started and where they work.
  3. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Rice University. 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. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Rice University. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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

  1. Hu joins Department of Computer Science and Engineering engineering.tamu.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. Meet Rice CS’ New Faculty: Xia “Ben” Hu, Associate Professor cs.rice.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. KDD 2019 | Auto-Keras: An Efficient Neural Architecture Search System kdd.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. SIGKDD Awards : 2021 SIGKDD Rising Star Award kdd.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. Rice CS’ Xia “Ben” Hu named D2K director cs.rice.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. Rice Engineering and Computing promotes 11 faculty engineering.rice.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. Xia “Ben” Hu and Rice CS’ DATA Lab win Outstanding Paper at ICML 2022 csweb.rice.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  8. G-Mixup: Graph Data Augmentation for Graph Classification proceedings.mlr.press. Checked 22 October 2026.
  9. KIVI: A Tuning-Free Asymmetric 2bit Quantization for KV Cache proceedings.mlr.press. Checked 22 October 2026.
  10. The 2nd Workshop on AI-Ready Data for Science Discovery @ ICDM 2026 cnicds.github.io. Checked 22 October 2026.