- University News Archive - ��Vlog��ý Little Rock

��Vlog��ý Little Rock Partnering in $660,000 Department of Defense Grant

John Hill — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 13:00:40 +0000

of ��Vlog��ý Little Rock and Dr. Samer Al-Khateeb of Creighton University have received a $660,407 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)/Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) to research violent mob behavior to strengthen domestic and national security apparatus. Agarwal, Maulden-Entergy Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, and Al-khateeb, assistant professor of computer science and informatics at Creighton University, will work on the three-year grant titled, “Building a Computational Model of Mobs Leveraging Social Science Theories.”Al-khateeb and Agarwal have a long history of collaboration as Al-Khateeb completed his Ph.D. under Agarwal’s supervision at , where Agarwal is the director. ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s part of the grant will be $249,955. It is part of $14.6 million in the Defense Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (DEPSCoR) the DoD awarded to . DEPSCoR is a capacity-building program that is designed to strengthen the basic research infrastructure at institutions of higher education in under-utilized states/territories. Each team will pursue science and engineering research in areas relevant to DoD initiatives supporting the National Defense Strategy. “The Department’s research mission relies on an ecosystem of creative and insightful researchers in every state of the nation,” said Dr. Bindu Nair, director of the DoD’s Basic Research Office. “DEPSCoR enhances our science and engineering research capacity both now and in the long term, and increases the number of researchers pursuing research in DoD-relevant areas. It is crucial that we build a research infrastructure that strategically uses the research capabilities found across the country.” Agarwal and Al-Khateeb will use the findings from this research to build capabilities that could assist the DoD in gaining situational awareness and prepare for strategic intervention with mobs that could take a violent turn during military exercises, humanitarian crises, and disaster relief operations or around military bases. The researchers will also create a socio-computational model that can simulate mobs to answer questions about a mob’s outcome and mobbers’ behavior as well as an online tool that implements the model. This effort will enhance to monitor social media and extract actionable insights and intelligence. “This research demonstrates the need for interdisciplinary studies by synergistically blending computational and information sciences with social sciences to solve real-world challenges we face today,” Agarwal said. “This is a very special award as it gives me an opportunity to continue to work with one of my former doctoral students.”

��Vlog��ý Little Rock Grad Investigates Spread of Misinformation Through Social Media

John Hill — Thu, 19 May 2022 13:10:39 +0000

During her time at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, Maryam Maleki has been involved in high-profile research investigating the spread of misinformation across social media. She leaves ��Vlog��ý Little Rock with a Ph.D. in systems engineering and a plan to enter the world of academia. Maleki has already received multiple job offers to teach at universities across the country. Maleki joined the (COSMOS) under Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science, and combined her background in systems engineering with social media research to study how misinformation spreads online following models that also predict the spread of infectious diseases. “My research is focused on spreading misinformation on social media, especially Twitter,” she said. “I used my background in systems engineering to develop mathematical models and statistical analyses to evaluate the spread of misinformation on Twitter.” Maleki also evaluates the influence of bots on the spread of fake news and misinformation and evaluates how her model can predict the spread of misinformation that is posted by humans versus bots. Last year, she appeared on to discuss how misinformation spreads and effective ways to thwart it. Maleki credits the COSMOS team for making her feel right at home with the international team of researchers at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock. “I really want to thank all Cosmographers for supporting me and helping me,” she said. “I really hope that in my next career as an assistant professor that I can collaborate and help my students. When I leave here, I would like to continue my collaboration and publication with the researchers at COSMOS. This group is one of the best that I ever worked with, and I was lucky to get the opportunity to work with them.”

��Vlog��ý Little Rock Awarded $165K Grant to Support Research Efforts to Monitor Cyber Warfare Tactics on Social Media

John Hill — Wed, 18 May 2022 13:18:05 +0000

Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair and distinguished professor of information science at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, has received a grant for $165,540 that will support research efforts to monitor cyber warfare tactics through social media. ��Vlog��ý Little Rock is one of 81 institutions across 35 states who received a total of through the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP), a Department of Defense (DoD) initiative that supports purchases of major research equipment to augment current and develop new capabilities. “DURIP awards provide essential research infrastructure to enable the pursuit of new knowledge and help maintain cutting-edge capabilities of our universities,” said Dr. Bindu Nair, Director, Basic Research Office, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. “The awards will sustain the scientific excellence of our universities, train the next generation of STEM workforce, and facilitate scientific advances that will drive unparalleled military capabilities for our country.” This effort enables universities to perform state-of-the-art research that boosts the United States’ technological edge, while ensuring that our future science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce remains second to none. The highly competitive award program is administered through a merit competition jointly by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Army Research Office, and Office of Naval Research. Agarwal, founding director of the (COSMOS) at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, received the grant from the Department of Defense and the Office of Naval Research. The grant will provide equipment for a high-density, computational environment that will help scale up research efforts and support the , a monitoring tool for video-based social media platforms. The grant will provide COSMOS with a series of upgrades to the research center’s computational servers that will enable faster computation, more storage, and near real-time analysis of multimedia data from social media platforms. By supporting a data analytics bridge between various tools, the equipment will enable further discovery and analysis, data and knowledge exchange among stakeholders. COSMOS researchers specialize in analyzing deviant activities on social media, including the identification of influential actors, their strategies, and tactics. Some of this research includes disinformation campaigns in the Indo-Pacific region, COVID-19 discourse, and highly sophisticated organizational tactics by adversarial actors who use social media to conduct disinformation campaigns, provoke hysteria, radicalize, and coordinate nefarious acts. Studies examining adversarial information campaigns often focus on primarily text-based posts on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. The rapid growth in popularity of video-based platforms and the rampant mis/disinformation campaigns on them pose computational and scalability challenges for the researchers that the grant will address. “Due to inadequate computational resources, much of the research is conducted at a small scale, say, a few thousand videos,” Agarwal said. “However, one of the most popular video-based social media platforms, YouTube, receives more than 300 hours of videos in under one minute. Existing research methodologies need to be enhanced to meet the new information environment.” The problem is compounded by the rapid expansion of the social media landscape. Emerging non-mainstream and multimedia-rich platforms, such as TikTok, Parler, and Clubhouse, have become preferred choices for adversarial actors or groups to propagate hate speech and disinformation content that garners quick but substantial attention. This disinformation-riddled content often spills over to mainstream platforms.”

Graduating Student Spotlight: Billy Spann

John Hill — Fri, 13 May 2022 13:20:22 +0000

Billy Spann will graduate May 14 with a Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science and an impressive research resume from his time as a researcher with the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock. Tell us a little bit about yourself. I grew up in the Little Rock area and went to K-12 schools here. My wife, Christy, and I have three boys, Josh, Sammy, and John. I’ve earned several advanced degrees while working full time and raising a family. I’ve been somewhat of a non-traditional student who has been fortunate enough to be able to work through each of my degrees. I’ve also been a lifelong learner, where I have always been a student of my industry and also a student of whatever discipline I have been in at that time. On April 2, 2022, I finally achieved one of the highest goals I set for myself by successfully completing my Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science. What do you do for a living? My work experience includes over 20 years in the wireless technology industry where I’ve been part of the research, design, and optimization of wireless networks. I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in new technology research and planning as the industry has evolved from 3G to 4G and now 5G. I began my career at Alltel Communications, which became Verizon Wireless, and am now employed at Windstream. At Windstream, my team is complementing our next generation fiber-to-the-home buildout strategy by building high performing wireless networks to reach unserved and underserved people in rural areas that don’t have access to high-speed internet. Your educational background is impressive. Please tell us about that. I have a degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. I also have two master’s degrees from ��Vlog��ý Little Rock. One is in business administration (M.B.A), and the other is in computer and information science. I recently defended my doctoral dissertation and will graduate with my Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science on May 14. Why did you decide to pursue a Ph.D. at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock? As I mentioned earlier, I have always enjoyed learning and part of my career path has involved the research and deployment of new technologies. I got my MBA when my career was a little more business focused and involved strategic planning and looking at merger and acquisition opportunities. As my career progressed with Verizon, I transitioned back into a more technical role and we started looking at how we could use big data solutions with AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) to perform tasks done by humans, such as network monitoring and decision making. ��Vlog��ý Little Rock was local and the Computer Science department has produced some really great programs and research such as the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS). After doing some research, I knew ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s program competed with other top universities, so I knew it would be a good fit for my Ph.D. Who were some of your mentors? Dr. Nitin Agarwal is my advisor and provided major guidance for my research. He leads the COSMOS research center, which stands for Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies. I am one of the “Cosmographers” in this program. Dr. Agarwal leads our group as we develop big data analytical tools to understand online behavior such as information operations, how radical and extremist groups coordinate online, propaganda dissemination, misinformation, fake news, influence operations and other interesting projects. Our research sheds light on these types of digital and cyber behaviors. My dad also influenced me by always pushing me to do my best. Tell us about your dissertation? My research looks at how people use social media to organize and coordinate online collective action for events like protests, demonstrations or social movements. Protests, social justice movements, and other types of information operations (e.g., misinformation, disinformation campaigns) have become pretty popular the last several years due to the ease of using social media to instantly capture and broadcast perceived injustices, or to engage in political discourse. My dissertation provides a computational framework to measure the psychological and social processes that serve as catalysts for these types of events. The techniques from my work provides a new computational approach to measuring these psycho-social behaviors, and ultimately identifies features for predictive modeling of when a protest or demonstration is emerging. Understanding the root behaviors of protest participants will help policymakers develop appropriate interventions or countermeasures if needed. With all of the online deviant behavior, platform manipulation, and influence operations going on discreetly (or sometimes not so discreetly) it’s a really interesting interdisciplinary research area that bridges the social sciences with computer science, into a field known as computational social science. I’m excited to see how our computer science models can help solve some of the most pressing issues on social media. Another exciting aspect of my research is that, because it’s highly interdisciplinary, there is a lot of knowledge transfer between social networks and other information networks like wireless networks (which is my industry background), so a lot of the same advanced techniques can be used. What is your fondest memory? I was fortunate enough to work with several accomplished teams to publish 16 publications (two are forthcoming). However, getting my first primary authored paper published gave me a sense of pride. The paper shows how users in social networks tend to adopt information campaigns similar to how people adopt new technologies. For example, you have people that are early adopters of new technologies like the latest iPhone, and similarly, there are initiators and amplifiers of new social media campaigns. The stages of adoption are part of a well known theory known as the Diffusion of Innovations. My work takes inspiration from this theory, and I applied new stages of adoption for the information environment. What do you think about Elon Musk buying Twitter? I think his goal of having transparency is good since everything we do online is publicly available. He’ll likely introduce innovative ideas and be less restrictive, while making the platform more open-sourced. He’s mentioned he hopes the platform will become less polarized, which would provide for some interesting behavior analysis by our COSMOS group. It will be interesting to see what happens. How are you going to celebrate your graduation? We’ll probably keep it simple and go out for a nice dinner with the family. My middle son is also graduating high school in a few weeks, so we might have a combined celebration, but I don’t want to take away from his big accomplishment during this time too. It will be exciting for everyone! This story was compiled by Toni Boyer.

COSMOS Researchers Win Best Paper Award for Research into Australian Blogosphere

John Hill — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 12:56:37 +0000

��Vlog��ý Little Rock researchers at the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS) received the Best Paper Award for the paper, “Developing Situational Awareness from Blogosphere: An Australian Case Study,” from the 11th International Conference on held in Barcelona, Spain. The study’s authors include Mainuddin Shaik, a doctoral student from Andhra Pradesh, India, Dr. Muhammad Nihal Hussain, data scientist at Equifax, Dr. Zachary Stine, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Central Arkansas, and Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair, distinguished professor of information science, and the founding director of . “Social media’s increasing proliferation provides great opportunities for gaining situational awareness to assist with strategic policy making, particularly in defense, security, diplomacy, and foreign policy. Our study of the Australian blogosphere identifies influential topics and discourse movers,” Dr. Agarwal said. “Being awarded the best paper is very rewarding. I am extremely proud of our students that can demonstrably conduct such a high quality of internationally competitive research.” The study of the Australian blogosphere identifies influential topics and discourse movers. The researchers analyzed more than 20,000 blog posts and more than 10,000 comments from July 2019 to December 2020. The researchers analyzed Australian blog posts that dealt with diplomacy, defense, trade tension surrounding Australia and China, and election-related discourse in Australia. “Our results showed that Australian bloggers were dominant and discussed the topics of interest compared to Russian and U.S. bloggers,” Shaik said. “The Australian blogosphere simultaneously discussed climate change along with defense-related topics, and they prefer to give attention to long-term topics over short-term topics.” The results can help policy makers reach informed decisions, visualize trending topics over time, and discover influential topics, as well as help political scientists and sociologists mine key concerns from influential discourse. “Analyzing topics of interest from online discourse can be challenging,” Shaik said. “Our results show that COVID-19 discourse absorbs much of the attention of bloggers during the time period considered, even though no COVID-related keywords were incorporated in the data collection. Our findings suggest that a topic can be influential even when it is not trending and vice-versa.” The research was supported by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, Office of Naval Research, U.S. Army Research Laboratory, National Science Foundation, Australian DSTO, Entergy, and Arkansas Research Alliance. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organizations. The researchers gratefully acknowledge the support.

COSMOS Researchers Win Best Paper Award for Research into Dynamics of COVID-19 Misinformation Themes

John Hill — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 14:58:40 +0000

Researchers at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies () won the Best Paper Award for their paper studying the dynamics of COVID-19 misinformation themes using topic streams. The researchers received the award from the Seventh International Conference on held in Nice, France. The researchers used computational techniques to help reveal the dynamics of COVID-19 misinformation themes that assist in forecasting and proactive policy making. The paper’s authors include Thomas Marcoux, a doctoral student from Orléans, France, Dr. Esther Mead, who graduated from ��Vlog��ý Little Rock in 2020 with a Ph.D. in computer and information science and is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow at COSMOS, and Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair, distinguished professor of information science, and the founding director of COSMOS. “The paper proposes a methodology to visualize the evolution of misinformation narratives over time,” Marcoux said. “While it relies on public data and is not intrusive, my hope is that we can progressively reduce the need for such tools. I hope the study can shed some light on the misinformation phenomenon, and help readers get a better grasp of the complexity of online narratives.” The research is intended to help sociologists, journalists, and politicians understand the movements of online trends involving misinformation to help report information, make decisions, and set policies. “It is an honor to have been able to work alongside such great researchers on this very important work that illustrates the fact that misinformation stories can be identified on social media and tracked and visualized over time,” Mead said. “This capability can be immediately used by social media administrators, governmental organizations, other researchers, and any other collaborative effort towards stemming the misinformation problem.” The research was supported by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, Office of Naval Research, U.S. Army Research Laboratory, National Science Foundation, Australian DSTO, Entergy, and Arkansas Research Alliance. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organizations. The researchers gratefully acknowledge the support.

��Vlog��ý Little Rock Expert Nitin Agarwal Featured as Leader in IT Arkansas Magazine

John Hill — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 13:47:31 +0000

Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Maulden-Entergy Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, has been featured in the latest edition of IT Arkansas magazine for his expertise in analyzing social media, misinformation campaigns, and emerging cyber threats. In the article, “How Anti-Social is Social Media,” Dr. Agarwal describes why military and government agencies are so interested in what’s happening online. The article can be found on pages 14-15 on . In his second role as director of the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS) at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, Dr. Agarwal and his team of student researchers study online deviant behaviors that include cyber flash mobs, weaponization of information, radical and extremist groups, propaganda dissemination, misinformation, and fake news. “There have always been cases in which social media was abused or exploited, whether to sow discord, create chaos, or undermine trust in democratic and scientific institutions of a society,” Dr. Agarwal said. “These deviant behaviors affect the democratic societies of the world, which are known for their openness to viewpoints. Countries like Russia or China are known to selectively quash narratives through strict content moderation policies. However, such policies infringe upon freedom of speech. Therefore, adversarial actors, whether state sponsored or non-state sponsored, extremist groups or terrorists, find it easier to target democracies around the world.” Dr. Agarwal and COSMOS have partnered with many agencies, including the Department of Defense, NATO, National Science Foundation, DARPA, Department of Homeland Security, who are interested in identifying how social media can be used to combat emerging cyber threats. You can read Dr. Agarwal’s full interview on when social media becomes . Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the researchers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organizations. The researchers gratefully acknowledge the support of the agencies funding the studies.

��Vlog��ý Little Rock Receives DoD Grant to Research Covert Online Information Campaigns

John Hill — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 16:48:32 +0000

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies () has received a multi-year grant from a Department of Defense (DoD) initiative to study covert online information campaigns in the Indo-Pacific region. ��Vlog��ý Little Rock is partnering on the five-year project, “Multi-Level Models of Covert Online Information Campaigns,” with Carnegie Mellon University, University of Regina, and The Atlantic Council. Total funding for the project, which is headed by Dr. Kathleen Carley of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), is about $5 million. , Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair, distinguished professor of information science, and the founding director of COSMOS, will serve as principal investigator for ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, which will receive $456,657 to study online information campaigns during elections, protests, and other major events in the Indo-Pacific region. Influence campaigns are becoming more sophisticated as they are often well orchestrated, spread across multiple social media platforms, and conducted by humans, bots, and cyborg-like actors in a flash-mob style coordination manner. Agarwal defines influence campaigns as information designed and shared to sway public opinion or manipulate people’s beliefs and behaviors. “Advanced tactics and maneuvers are used to amplify the messages,” Agarwal said. “For instance, narratives are framed in blogs and YouTube videos, which are then shared on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and other such platforms. Links to blog posts and YouTube videos are massively amplified using bots, which drive traffic to respective blog posts or YouTube videos. Traffic amplification further leads to the content being recommended more, which creates a feeding frenzy. Such a tactic is known as algorithmic manipulation.” In this project, COSMOS is studying similar tactics deployed in online covert influence campaigns concentrated on the Indo-Pacific region. COSMOS will use its programs, VTracker and BTracker, to collect information from YouTube and blogs. The data will be used to track a video or a blog post’s dissemination across multiple media platforms and their influence. Some of the narratives that COSMOS researchers are tracking online include:

Efforts to increase Chinese social, economic, political, and cultural hegemony in the Indo-Pacific region
Efforts to undermine U.S. leadership in the South China Sea and the Indo-Pacific region
U.S. military efforts in the Indo-Pacific region is meant to create a war with China and Russia
Countries in Southeast Asia must rise with China to find alternatives against America’s primacy in Asia.
The Rohingya, a stateless Muslim minority in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, are secretly U.S. proxies or Saudi-backed ISIS militants

COSMOS researchers will use a collective action theory-based model, social network theories, and social influence theory to lay the groundwork for detecting coordination and measuring the power of the online influence campaigns. “This will help in identifying key actors, key groups, coordination strategies, and tactics indicating coordinated content engagement boosting, such as ‘spiked’ views, likes, commenter mobs, etc.,” Agarwal said. “Aside from the social network theory-based analysis, we will study the content captured from YouTube, blogs, Reddit, and other social media platforms to assess inflammatory speech and text that evoke certain emotions using tonality/toxicity assessment.” Coordination behaviors and tactics detected from these social media platforms will be mapped to a framework developed by Dr. Carley at CMU. This will help in characterization of such tactics in covert online influence campaigns and enable further experimentation with countermeasures. “Such a comparison would help develop a characterization of information maneuvers and media platforms, which maneuvers are more prevalent on a particular social media platform, or which platforms are more suited for a particular information maneuver,” Agarwal said. The grant is managed by the Office of Naval Research and awarded under the DoD’s Minerva Research Initiative. Minerva that focuses on topics of particular relevance to U.S. national security. Through its network of faculty investigators, Minerva also strengthens the department’s connections with the social science community and helps DOD better understand and prepare for future challenges, including National Defense Strategy priorities such as great power competition. The Minerva Research Initiative is jointly administered by the Basic Research Office and the Strategy and Force Development Office in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in partnership with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Office of Naval Research. ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s COSMOS is also partnering with Arizona State University and Nanyang Technological University on another DoD Minerva Research Initiative grant, “Fusing Narrative and Social Cyber Forensics to Understand Covert Influence.” COSMOS is conducting social network and cyber forensic analysis to examine online activity and the dissemination of ideas and elements of these narratives. Since 2009, COSMOS has received more than $15 million in funding from the DoD to conduct research. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Office of Naval Research.

U.S. Sen. John Boozman Visits ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, NuShores Biosciences

John Hill — Mon, 08 Nov 2021 18:28:29 +0000

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock and its spinoff company, NuShores Biosciences, received a visit from Sen. John Boozman Oct. 29 to check out the ongoing research and scientific advancements at the institutions. Sen. Boozman first visited NuShores Biosciences to get a firsthand look at innovative labs and projects underway in central Arkansas. NuShores CEO Sharon Ballard and Dr. Alex Biris, director of the Center for Integrative Nanotechnology Sciences, gave the senator a tour of the facility and reviewed the initiatives to commercialize the bone and tissue regeneration technologies. “I’m grateful for Sen. Boozman’s support of NuShores and our licensor ��Vlog��ý Little Rock,” Ballard said. “He asked great questions and enjoyed discussing our science and manufacturing efforts with our team. It was quite the energy boost to have a sitting senator take such interest and encouragement in our work!” Sen. Boozman also learned about the manufacturing processes for the NuCress Bone Scaffold that has been developed at NuShores with funding from the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Army Medical Command. “NuShores is doing groundbreaking work to help improve bone regeneration technology, and I enjoyed getting to learn more about its operation and research, which could ultimately help prevent amputations,” Sen. Boozman said. At ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, the senator toured the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS), the Emerging Analytics Center (EAC), and the Cyber Arena in the Donaghey College of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics to see the amazing projects taking place in information science, computer science, cybersecurity, and augmented and virtual reality. “Sen. Boozman’s visits are always a delight,” said Dr. Lawrence Whitman, dean of the Donaghey College of STEM. “We appreciate his support of the vital research at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock and the manner in which he engages us to ensure that we are providing impact for all Arkansans.” Sen. Boozman and his staff have worked with the university for the last several years in helping secure federal funding for many of ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s research projects focused on national security. “The important research conducted at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock is leading to breakthroughs and discoveries that enable us to better safeguard our country against emerging threats,” Sen. Boozman said. “I’m proud to support the development of innovative strategies advanced by ��Vlog��ý Little Rock researchers that offer solutions to enhance our national security and preparedness.” In , Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair and distinguished professor of information science and director of COSMOS, shared how his research team is using social media analysis to defend against global disinformation threats. One example is COSMOS’ in partnership with the Arkansas Attorney General’s office. COSMOS’ research is funded in part by the U.S. Department of Defense and National Science Foundation. “We deeply appreciate Sen. Boozman for his unwavering support to the research conducted at COSMOS for strengthening the social and cognitive security apparatus that is furthering the U.S. Department of Defense’s mission, particularly enhancing force protection and operation security against adversarial information operations,” Agarwal said. “During the visit, Senator Boozman inspired and encouraged to keep up the groundbreaking research that is of national and strategic importance.” In the Cyber Arena, Sen. Boozman met several students enrolled in ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s new cybersecurity degree program, which is working to fill the gap of qualified cybersecurity professionals needed to protect network security throughout the country. “We appreciate Sen. Boozman’s work to bring cybersecurity workforce development and research opportunities to Arkansas. Our students have tremendous talent and creativity in developing solutions to defend the nation, and the senator works hard to continue providing them with opportunities to make use of those talents.” said Philip Huff, assistant professor of cybersecurity. ��Vlog��ý Little Rock has received numerous grants and created partnerships for workforce education and cybersecurity. These grants are helping ��Vlog��ý Little Rock to provide K-12 cybersecurity education to students in Arkansas, the country’s first graduate certificate in cybersecurity education, and a for first responders.

Sen. John Boozman visits with Dr. Alex Biris and other workers at NuShores Biosciences.

“The State of Arkansas is providing outstanding support for research and teaching in computer science and cybersecurity,” said Dr. Albert Baker, chair of the Department of Science. “The federal support Sen. Boozman has secured for productive research programs at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock is producing actionable results for the state and the nation. We are genuinely appreciative that the senator took the time to review the funded research projects.” Dr. Jan Springer, director of the , discussed the work the center is doing to enhance the nation’s border security. “Our team in the Emerging Analytics Center showcased their work on automated detection of organic threats in x-ray scans for Sen. Boozman,” Springer said. “Throughout this project, the senator has emphasized the importance of innovating border security and has helped us tremendously in securing funding for developing tools and techniques to meet this national priority.”

��Vlog��ý Little Rock to Host Cybersecurity Panel Discussion Oct. 21

John Hill — Fri, 15 Oct 2021 13:17:46 +0000

In celebration of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock will hold a panel discussion with the top cybersecurity experts at the university. The panel will be held from 2-3 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 21, in Dickinson Hall Auditorium. Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a collaboration between the Department of Homeland Security and National Cyber Security Alliance. It was created to ensure individuals stay safe and secure online. ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s cybersecurity panel will focus on the 2021 theme, “Do Your Part #BeCyberSmart.” The panelists will give a timely and informative discussion on how people can improve online security and share recent cybersecurity events that have occurred at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock. The panelists include Dr. Philip Huff, assistant professor of computer science, Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair and distinguished professor of information science and director of the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS), Dr. Thomas Bunton, chief information officer at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, and Dr. Veysel Erdag, chief information security office at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock. Dr. Erin Finzer, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs, will serve as moderate.

- University News Archive - ����Vlog��ý Little Rock

����Vlog��ý Little Rock Partnering in $660,000 Department of Defense Grant

����Vlog��ý Little Rock Grad Investigates Spread of Misinformation Through Social Media

����Vlog��ý Little Rock Awarded $165K Grant to Support Research Efforts to Monitor Cyber Warfare Tactics on Social Media