ICDM Tao Li Awards

Call for ICDM 2026 Tao Li Award

ICDM Tao Li Award (https://www.cse.fau.edu/~xqzhu/taoliaward/icdm-tao-li-award.html) was established in December 2017. The purpose of the award is to honor Professor Tao Li’s life and accomplishment, and reward excellent early career researchers (individuals either in a doctoral program or who have received a doctoral degree less than 10 years prior to receiving the Award) in the field of data mining and machine learning. The award, worth $2,000 in check, for one awardee, will be given out once a year at the annual IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM).

Previous Award Winners

  • 2025: Dr. Jundong Li; University of Virginia, USA

  • 2024: Dr. Shirui Pan; Griffith University, Australia

  • 2023: Dr. Danai Koutra; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

  • 2022: Dr. Evangelos (Vagelis) Papalexakis; University of California, Riverside, USA

  • 2021: Dr. Jiliang Tang; Michigan Stte University, USA

  • 2020: Dr. Jing Gao; Purdue University, USA

  • 2019: Dr. Hanghang Tong; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA

  • 2018: Dr. Jilles Vreeken, Helmholtz Center for Information Security, Germany

2026 Tao Li Award Selection Criteria

  • The awardee is either in a doctoral program or has received a doctoral degree less than 10 years prior to Nov 12, 2026.  

  • The awardee has made significant achievement in the area of data mining, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

  • The awardee has demonstrated significant impact in research contribution, leadership, and services.

  • The awardee has obtained a strong reference from a world leading researcher in the field.

  • The awardee commits to attend the ICDM-2026 ceremony on site to receive the award.

Application Submission

Candidates should submit applications to ICDM.Tao.Li.Award.Committee@gmail.com, with following materials being included in the package (please include materials in one zip file, preferably compiling all documents as one pdf file):

  • A one-page executive CV of the candidate.

  • Response to the above selection criteria (2 pages maximum).

  • Certificate showing PhD degree awarding intuition and the time receiving the PhD degree.

  • One referee letter with referee's contact details and signatures (preferably NOT applicant’s PhD advisor). The referee can directly send the reference letter to the committee (ICDM.Tao.Li.Award.Committee@gmail.com), with applicant's name being listed in the email subject.

Submission Deadline

  • August 22, 2026

Additional Information

Any inquiries and questions about this year’s Tao Li award should be addressed to: ICDM.Tao.Li.Award.Committee@gmail.com.

For more information about the Tao Li Award or ICDM-2026, please access ICDM-2026 website (http://icdm2026.neu.edu.cn/)