/news-archive/tag/computing-research-association/ 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Wed, 19 May 2021 13:53:15 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 /news-archive/2021/05/19/tuja-khaund-commencement/ Wed, 19 May 2021 13:53:15 +0000 /news/?p=79063 ... Khaund to begin new career as senior data scientist at Walmart]]> After studying at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock as an exchange student in 2013, Tuja Khaund, a native of Dibrugarh, India, couldn鈥檛 stay away.听 鈥淚t was very exciting at first,鈥� Khaund said. 鈥淚 had never been out of my country. It was one of the biggest challenges. We got to learn about different cultures and people and we made a lot of friends. It was quite the journey.鈥� After her study abroad experience, Khaund returned to Little Rock as a full-time computer science student in 2014. Now she is graduating with a Ph.D. in computer and information science and a new career as a senior data scientist at Walmart Inc. Khaund first met with Walmart recruiters during a campus job fair in 2020. She was offered an internship and spent last summer creating a 3D augmented reality application to visualize Walmart sales across the country. In her new role as a senior data scientist, she will join the NexTech Data Science Team at Walmart. She will specialize in graph theory. 鈥淢y work will focus on what I鈥檝e been doing in my Ph.D., and I will extend that knowledge to work for Walmart,鈥� Khaund said. 鈥淚 will use information about consumers and consumer relationships through graphs. One example is to understand customer behavior based on their shopping patterns. That is a very popular problem that companies are trying to solve. I will utilize my knowledge on graph theory to solve problems in that domain.鈥� As a graduate student, Khaund spent one year studying virtual reality and augmented reality in the Emerging Analytics Center before joining the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS). Her research focuses on social media data analysis, social computing, and network analysis. More specifically, it focuses on cyber forensic analysis of blogs and Twitter content in order to detect covert connections and digital footprints of a website, a user, or an organization. She has also extended her research to study issues on other social media platforms such as YouTube and Telegram. 鈥淥ur students come from different parts of the world,鈥� said Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science and director of COSMOS. 鈥淢any of them belong to minority and underrepresented groups in STEM disciplines 鈥� a cause that COSMOS champions and celebrates. Tuja will work as a senior data scientist at a Fortune 500 company. She has done tremendously well with her dissertation and has an exciting career awaiting her.” Khaund has also participated in the 2020 Computing Research Association Grad Cohort for Women, which helps graduate students prepare for careers in the computer science industry. She serves as web chair for the International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, & Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation. Khaund completed her dissertation, which presents a methodology to assess how online campaigns are coordinated. Khaund began by studying how social bots, automated accounts on social media websites that mimic the social behaviors of humans, are used during natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes. 鈥淪ocial bots help automate many socio-technical behaviors such as tweeting/retweeting a message, 鈥榣iking鈥� tweets, following users, and coordinating with or even competing against other bots,鈥� Khaund said. 鈥淪ocial bots exist as benign bots such as advertising bots, entertainment bots, etc. as well as malicious bots such as spam bots, hackers, and influence bots.鈥� As social bots become more sophisticated, some of these bots operate independently and autonomously for years without getting noticed or suspended. Furthermore, some of the more advanced social bots exhibit highly sophisticated coordination and communication patterns with complex organizational structures. 鈥淭here is a lot of work going on to tackle a problem that is quite challenging for social media platforms and for anyone who is trying to stop malicious activities during events,鈥� Khaund said. 鈥淢alicious actors have become more advanced. They know what tactics people are using to track them. Previously, it was easier to look at a profile and recognize a fake account. They have since evolved and are now becoming more immune to detection algorithms. They are finding new ways to remain hidden and undetected.鈥� She analyzed a Twitter dataset with accounts that were suspected of being used to influence the 2016 presidential election. She then trained a machine learning model to assess the level of coordination within an online information campaign. 鈥淢y model is promising enough to accurately describe a high coordination social network or a low coordination social network,鈥� Khaund said. 鈥淢y model can be replicated or used across different social media platforms. It leverages social network theories to understand the structure of a communication network and analyzes various network measures to label communities in a graph.鈥�]]> /news-archive/2021/05/12/seun-johnson-commencement/ Wed, 12 May 2021 16:54:23 +0000 /news/?p=79018 ... International Student Seun Johnson Earns Master鈥檚 Degree and New Career at Intuit]]> After traveling from Nigeria to earn a graduate degree at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Oluwaseun 鈥淪eun鈥� Johnson is graduating this month with a master鈥檚 degree in information science and a new career at Intuit, Inc.听 Johnson will begin his new job as a software engineer with Intuit in June and will be moving to Mountain View, California, where the company鈥檚 headquarters are located, later this year. 鈥淚 feel happy that I am graduating,鈥� Johnson said. 鈥淲hen I look back to when I first came to 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, I feel like I鈥檝e achieved a lot. I have a good portfolio and a new job, and I am happy.鈥� A native of Lagos, Nigeria, Johnson received his bachelor鈥檚 degree in industrial physics and applied geophysics from Covenant University in Nigeria. He learned about 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock through a friend who was studying abroad. At the time, Johnson was working as a data scientist for Petrodata Management Services Limited in Lagos and has a background in data mining, data visualization, and software development. 鈥淢y friend told me about 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock and all the opportunities here, and I thought I could be a good fit for the Information Science Program,鈥� Johnson said. 鈥淚 found Dr. Nitin Agarwal in the Information Science department, and I told him about my interests and showed him what I was working on.鈥� Johnson moved to Little Rock in 2019 and has put his skills to work at COSMOS (Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies) with Dr. Agarwal, Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science, who said he is extremely proud of Johnson鈥檚 accomplishments. 鈥淒espite the unique challenges presented by COVID-19, our students continue to demonstrate resolve and resilience,鈥� Agarwal said. 鈥淥ur students come from different parts of the world. Many belong to minority and underrepresented groups in STEM disciplines 鈥� a cause that COSMOS champions and celebrates. They join COSMOS to hone their skills, develop solutions for real-world problems that contribute to social good and innovation, and transform into thought leaders.鈥� At COSMOS, Johnson worked as one of the lead developers of the Blogtrackers tool that helps COSMOS conduct discourse analysis and event analysis on blogs, including assessment of misinformation and fake news. 鈥淭he COSMOS team gave me the opportunity to learn new things and to build myself as a software engineer,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 enjoyed meeting new people in Little Rock and learning things from new people all over the world.鈥�听 Last year, Johnson was one of three students selected for the third annual Grad Cohort for Underrepresented Minorities and Persons with Disabilities Workshop by the Computing Research Association. The prestigious workshop brings together students and industry professionals from around the country to prepare graduate students for careers in the computer science industry. During summer 2020, Johnson worked as a data science intern at Windstream Holdings. He created an automated workflow for text mapping/cross referencing for data migration and created an automated workflow for tracking and updating projects using Python. Johnson recently completed his master鈥檚 project, 鈥淥ptimizing Data Ingestion and Retrieval for Narrative Analysis Using Parallel Pools and Elastic Research.鈥� The project solves the problem of slow data ingestion and retrieval for the narrative analysis page on the Blogtrackers web application.听 鈥淲hen storing big data on any storage platform, it is not unusual to encounter performance issues as the ingested data can dramatically impact the performance and usefulness of a data lake,鈥� he said. 鈥淎 proper data ingestion mechanism should optimize storage for analytic performance, which is often best done upon ingestion. This process will also avoid data loss and redundancies when processing streams of data.鈥�]]> /news-archive/2021/03/11/galeano-selected-for-workshop/ Thu, 11 Mar 2021 21:47:19 +0000 /news/?p=78443 ... Galeano selected for Workshop for Women in Computer Science Industry]]> A University of Arkansas at Little Rock doctoral student has been selected for a prestigious workshop designed to prepare graduate students for careers in the computer science industry. Katrin Galeano, a third-year doctoral student in the integrated computer and information science Ph.D. program, will attend the Grad Cohort for Women conference that will be held virtually April 23-24. 鈥淚鈥檓 really looking forward to the conference,鈥� Galeano said. 鈥淚 receive a lot of mentoring and support from COSMOS and Dr. (Nitin) Agarwal, but I think it will be great to communicate and have an exchange with women researchers. I cannot be the only person balancing between being a doctoral student, being a mom, and, in our case, being a military wife all during the time of COVID.鈥� At the Grad Cohort for Women Conference, participants interact with about 20 senior female computing-related researchers and professionals, who will share pertinent information on graduate school survival skills, as well as more personal information and insights about their experiences. The workshop aims to increase the ranks of senior women in computing-related studies and research by building and mentoring nationwide communities of women through their graduate studies. The two-day event is hosted by the Computing Research Association (CRA), an organization dedicated to bringing industry, government, and academia together to support research and advanced education in computing.听 鈥淚 am ecstatic because this conference gives me a lot of motivation,鈥� Galeano said. 鈥淢y goal this semester is to complete the Ph.D. candidacy exam and to prepare for my dissertation proposal.鈥� Galeano is a researcher with the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Behavioral Studies () at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, a research group led by, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science. 鈥淐RA-WP is a highly competitive program that provides a platform to female graduate students to share their research with internationally renowned scientists,鈥� Agarwal said. 鈥淲e are extremely proud of Katrin Galeano for being selected in CRA-WP that encourages participation from women and other underrepresented groups in STEM disciplines – a cause that COSMOS champions and celebrates.鈥澨� Galeano plans to graduate in 2022. For her dissertation, she will research the effectiveness of deplatforming, also known as no-platforming, which is a form of or by an individual, group, or organization with the goal of shutting down controversial speakers or speech, or denying them access to a venue in which to express their opinion. 鈥淵ouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms have been removing various information actors,鈥� Galeano said. 鈥淭he question is what do those information actors do and where do they go? Do they evolve, and what happens to their followers? That鈥檚 something I would like to explore. With the former president of the United States being removed from many social media platforms, it鈥檚 brought the issue to greater attention.鈥�]]> /news-archive/2020/06/01/three-students-attend-cra-urmd-graduate-workshop/ Mon, 01 Jun 2020 21:48:34 +0000 /news/?p=76736 ... Three 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock students attend CRA URMD graduate cohort workshop in Austin]]> Adewale Obadimu, a computer science doctoral student, and graduate students Oluwaseun Johnson and Uche Umoga participated in the 2020 March 5-7, 2020 in Austin, Texas. The three-day event was hosted by the Computing Research Association (CRA), an organization dedicated to bringing industry, government and academia together to support research and advanced education in computing. The third annual CRA Grad Cohort for Underrepresented Minorities and Persons with Disabilities (URMD) Workshop attracted students from schools across the United States and Canada. CRA covered the travel expenses for all selected students that collectively represent a diverse set of computing-related research areas and institutions. Participants attended a wide variety of professional development sessions on topics including academic workflow, career options, and mental wellbeing. The focus was to learn from one another leaving not only with more knowledge, but also a greater professional network. 鈥淚 enjoyed networking with graduate students from other institutions and professionals from IBM, Google, Microsoft, and Bloomberg,鈥� said Johnson. 鈥淚 had an opportunity to discuss my research with other participants and hear talks on networking, building your professional persona, summer internships, balancing graduate school and personal life, strategies for human to human interaction, and entrepreneurship.鈥� Obadimu presented his poster titled 鈥淚dentifying Latent Toxic Features on YouTube Using Non-negative Matrix Factorization.鈥� The contribution of this work is to help understand the relationship between the impact of negativity, or toxicity, of a video on the comments, to enable us to predict the likely toxicity of a commenter based on their past history, and to allow us to determine what kind of comments a video will generate based on prior toxicity matrix. 鈥淒uring the poster session, I reviewed other research projects and gained some valuable insights into the do鈥檚 and don鈥檛s of effectively convey poster information,鈥� Umoga said. Obadimu, Johnson, and Umoga are the lead developers of the Blogtrackers tool that helps COSMOS conduct discourse analysis and event analysis on blogs, including assessment of misinformation and fake news.]]> /news-archive/2019/03/04/ua-little-rock-doctoral-student-for-selected-prestigious-computer-science-research-workshop/ Mon, 04 Mar 2019 14:35:57 +0000 /news/?p=73546 ... 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock doctoral student selected for prestigious computer science research workshop]]> A University of Arkansas at Little Rock doctoral candidate has been selected for a prestigious workshop designed to prepare graduate students for careers in the computer science industry.听 Adewale Obadimu, a fourth-year computer science doctoral student from Nigeria, has been selected for the 2019 March 22-24 in Waikoloa, Hawaii. The Computing Research Association, an organization dedicated to bringing industry, government and academia together to support research and advanced education in computing, hosts the workshop, which is designed specifically for underrepresented minorities and person with disabilities who are attending graduate school in computing fields. Obadimu will receive a stipend that will cover his flight, accommodations, and other costs to attend the event. The workshop offers participants the chance to interact and learn from senior computing researchers and professionals, who will provide them with valuable insight about their field, graduate school, and their personal experiences. It is a unique opportunity to develop mentoring relationships and foster peer networks. 鈥淭his workshop is an amazing opportunity to meet people at the forefront of computer technology and innovation,鈥� Obadimu said. 鈥淭hey will provide mentorship opportunities, so you get information from the top people in the industry and tips about how to progress in your career. We will also make a poster presentation on our current research and get feedback and tips on how to proceed with our research topics.鈥� During the workshop, Obadimu will present his research on how to leverage social media analytics tools to understand Information operations in modern communication platforms. Obadimu earned a bachelor鈥檚 degree in computer science from Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria in 2013. He worked as a lead software developer at Health Informatics Research Laboratory and a technologist for the Center for Energy Research and Development in Nigeria before coming to 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock. At 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, Obadimu conducts research on social computing with Dr. Nitin Agarwal, 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair and information science professor. He also serves as a mentor for the Google鈥檚 Code Success, an initiative committed to increasing the number of black engineers in the field of computer science, with the 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers.]]>