Welcome to the homepage of Xin Lu

Co-founder, Flowminder Foundation.
Professor, College of Systems Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China. 
(download CV)


Xin obtained his PhD from Department of Public Health Sciences at Karolinska Institutet, He worked at the Department of Sociology at Stockholm University during 2009~2012 and the Institute For Future Studies in Stockholm in early 2013.

Dr. Xin's research is multidisciplinarily distributed in the following areas:

  • Disaster response with big data analytics, e.g., mobile phone data, satellite imagery, IoT, online social networking data, etc.
  • Evaluating and improving network sampling strategies (e.g., respondent-driven sampling, RDS) and make statistical inference for hard-to-access populations
  • Network-based epidemic modeling of infectious diseases
  • Operational research, graph algorithms
  • Anomaly detection models for symdromic surveillance systems
  • Other issues in big data, mobility, complex networks, social networks, complex systems, organizational dynamics, human behaviors, etc.






Selected Publications

  • Jia J, Lu X, et al., Population flow drives spatio-temporal distribution of COVID-19 in China. Nature. 2020. 582(7812): 389-394. (pdf)
  • Buckee CO, Tatem AJ, Wetter E, Lu X & Bengtsson L, Society: Protect privacy of mobile data. Nature, 2014. 514(7520): p. 35-35. (correspondence, pdf)
  • Zhang J, et al., Heterogeneous changes in mobility in response to the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.2 outbreak in Shanghai. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2023. 120(42): p. e2306710120. (pdf)
  • Lu X, Bengtsson L, & Holme P, Predictability of population displacement after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012. 109(29): p. 11576-11581. (pdf)
  • Zhang, Z-K, et al., Dynamics of information diffusion and its applications on complex networks. Physics Reports, 2016. 651: p. 1-34. (pdf)
  • Kraemer M, et al., Past and future spread of the arbovirus vectors Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. Nature Microbiology, 2019. 3: p. 1-10. (pdf)
  • Zhou B, et al., The nature and nurture of network evolution. Nature Communications, 2023. 14(1): p. 7031. (pdf)
  • Jia J, Li Y, Lu X, et al., Triadic embeddedness structure in family networks predicts mobile communication response to a sudden natural disaster. Nature Communications, 2021. 12(1): p. 4286. (pdf)
  • Zhao Y, et al., Towards parallel intelligence: An interdisciplinary solution for complex systems. The Innovation, 2023. 4(6): p. 100521. (pdf)
  • Zhu Z, et al., Strategy evaluation and optimization with an artificial society toward a Pareto optimum. The Innovation, 2022. 3(5): p. 1-3. (pdf)
  • Tan S, et al., Mobility in China, 2020: a tale of four phases. National Science Review, 2021. 8(11): p. nwab148. (pdf)
  • Lu X, et al., Unveiling hidden migration and mobility patterns in climate stressed regions: A longitudinal study of six million anonymous mobile phone users in Bangladesh. Global Environmental Change, 2016,38:1-7. (pdf)
  • Lu X, et al., Mobile Phone-Based Population Flow Data for the COVID-19 Outbreak in Mainland China. Health Data Science, 2021. p. 9796431. (pdf)
  • Zhou B, Lu X, and Holme P, Universal evolution patterns of degree assortativity in social networks. Social Networks. 2020. 63: p. 47-55. (pdf)
  • Lu X, Linked Ego Networks: Improving estimate reliability and validity with respondent-driven sampling. Social Networks, 2013. 35(4): p. 669-685. (pdf)
  • Lu X, A.L. Horn, J. Su, and J. Jiang, A Universal Measure for Network Traceability. Omega, 2019. 87: p. 191-204. (pdf)
  • Lu X, et al., Detecting climate adaptation with mobile network data in Bangladesh: anomalies in communication, mobility and consumption patterns during cyclone Mahasen. Climatic Change, 2016. 138(3): p. 505-519. (pdf)
  • Lu X, et al., Approaching the limit of predictability in human mobility. Scientific Reports, 2013. 3. (pdf)
  • Lu X, et al., The sensitivity of respondent-driven sampling. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society), 2012. 175(1): p. 191-216. (pdf)
  • Bengtsson L, Lu X, Thorson A, Garfield R, Schreeb J, Improved Response to Disasters and Outbreaks by Tracking Population Movements with Mobile Phone Network Data: A Post-Earthquake Geospatial Study in Haiti. PLoS Medicine, 2011. 8(8): p. e1001083. (pdf)

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Updated: January 5, 2022