/news-archive/tag/social-networks/ 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Fri, 19 Jul 2019 14:48:25 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 /news-archive/2019/07/19/nitin-agarwal-cybersecurity-grant/ Fri, 19 Jul 2019 14:48:25 +0000 /news/?p=74773 ... 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock researcher receives $2.4 million for cybersecurity research]]> Dr. Nitin Agarwal, director of the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies () at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, has been awarded a $2.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to develop ways to track emerging cyber-social threats and strengthen social cybersecurity research infrastructure.聽 The funding will support the development of research infrastructure to assess social media and blogs in real time and respond to the growing weaponization of online discourse in influencing peacekeeping, and tactical, operational, and strategic operations. The research infrastructure will include development of models, software applications, and training programs. Military units at all levels will benefit from the intended goals of the project in identification of threats and opportunities within the information environment. 鈥淲e appreciate the support from Sen. John Boozman for the social networking research at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock,鈥� Agarwal said of the three-year grant. 鈥淭he senator recognizes the importance of developing new approaches, software tools, and training programs for national security in cyberspace, and this grant was enabled through his support of funding for the Navy鈥檚 Social Networks Analysis program.鈥� Boozman serves as chairman of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies and has a seat on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. 鈥溙切腣log传媒 Little Rock continues to be an outstanding partner in the Navy鈥檚 efforts to track and counter our adversaries鈥� use of social media to bring harm to American interests at home and overseas,鈥� Boozman said. 鈥淭his award will expand capabilities at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock and create opportunities for students to develop new skills and expertise in this important area of information science.鈥� Agarwal鈥檚 proposed research infrastructure will enable rapid and appropriate response that can neutralize propaganda and mitigate its negative effects. Social media platforms that are manipulated by adversarial campaigns can shift international and regional opinions about the use of military force or validity of military operations in a region. At the tactical level, social media propaganda could potentially be used to persuade susceptible targets to disrupt or delay military operations through protests or other 鈥渘on-lethal鈥� resistance. 鈥淭he aim of this project is to examine, evaluate, measure, and predict the threat level of the adversarial information campaigns,鈥� Agarwal said. Agarwal and his team will develop a multi-model approach to analyze adversarial information campaigns conducted online. Their research will identify key actors, groups, narratives, media integration strategies, and tactics deployed by those who disseminate disinformation and conduct influence operations.聽 The research approach will adopt a blend of computational modeling, big social data, and social science theoretical principles to examine cyber campaigns and assess the threats they pose. More specifically, the effort will bridge big data and social computing research communities to advance big data research infrastructure and security for the modern social and communication space.聽 COSMOS will develop research-informed solutions to surmount challenges in curating and analyzing social media data characterized by its volume, velocity, and variety. Training exercises will be conducted that will help enhance the U.S. workforce with skills in the challenging and changing domain of big data analytics, data management, machine learning, and artificial intelligence with applications in security. 鈥淲e hope to spark innovation and entrepreneurial aspirations in big data and its applications aligning with the knowledge-based economic development mission of the state of Arkansas,鈥� Agarwal said. 鈥淭his will not only help develop talent within Arkansas but also retain and acquire new talent.鈥� About the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS) At COSMOS, researchers study various aspects of social media and online behavior under the direction of Dr. Nitin Agarwal, who is directing several projects with funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. Army Research Office, U.S. Office of Naval Research, U.S. Air Force Research Lab, and the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Research at COSMOS has contributed to computational social network analysis and advanced the studies in social cyber security, cyber campaign coordination, identifying powerful actors and groups, disinformation dissemination across social media, cyber threat monitoring, social-cyber forensics, health informatics, data mining, and privacy. COSMOS has developed publicly available social media mining tools, Blogtrackers and YouTubeTracker, used during NATO鈥檚 military exercises. COSMOS participates in the national Tech Innovation Hub launched by the U.S. Department of State鈥檚 Global Engagement Center to defeat foreign-based propaganda. For more information, visit .]]> /news-archive/2018/12/12/kim-tran-social-networks-ipf/ Wed, 12 Dec 2018 15:35:15 +0000 /news/?p=72926 ... 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock grad researches validity of patient data found on social networks]]> A University of Arkansas at Little Rock student who is graduating on Dec. 15 is making it easier for medical researchers to validate patient data found on social networks that can be used to make important decisions about what medical products are advanced for future development. When Kim Tran of Little Rock was working at Arkansas Capital Corporation a decade ago, she noted that there was a statewide discussion on the critical importance of computer and information technology. 鈥淚 was working with business and government leaders throughout Arkansas who were talking about technology and how important it was to have access to the infrastructure in order to enable that technology,鈥� she said. 鈥淎t the time, people were also starting to talk about this thing called big data. With this in mind, I wanted to learn more. 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock had also just partnered with MIT to develop a curriculum that was focused on the science of data and that is what brought me to 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock.鈥� Tran, who began the Ph.D. program in computer and information science in 2010 as a part-time student who worked full time, said one of the most challenging aspects of the process was selecting a topic for her dissertation, citing the more than 1,200 articles she reviewed before choosing a topic. She鈥檚 grateful for her professors who served as mentors during her time at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock. 鈥淒r. Rolf Wigand was always pushing the boundary for me,鈥� she said. 鈥淓very time I felt good about where I was at, he would challenge me to look around the next corner. Ph.D. students need this kind of feedback in order to strengthen the quality of their research. Dr. John Talburt and Dr. Meredith Zozus especially helped me contextualize my research. I also developed lifetime friendships with many professors at the university. They were an exceptionally supportive group, and I was lucky to have that.鈥� Having a support structure during her doctoral endeavors was something she especially owes to her dissertation advisor, Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and distinguished professor in the Department of Information Science and director of the Collaboratorium of Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (). 鈥淭he great thing about the Ph.D. process is that you have an advisor who will guide you through the process and help open doors so that you can grow and develop. Dr. Agarwal guided me through the process,鈥� she said. Tran鈥檚 research brings together the fields of machine learning and natural language processing, psychometrics, and social networks, all of which are applied to Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF), a lung disease which results in scarring (fibrosis) of the lungs for unknown reasons. An estimated five million patients worldwide and 150,000 patients in the United States are affected by this disease. 鈥淜im鈥檚 research bridges the disciplines of statistics, health sciences, information sciences, and social networks by developing a computational framework to assess social media鈥檚 validity in capturing patient reported outcomes from Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis patients,鈥� Agarwal said. 鈥淗er research has far-reaching implications to the health domain by facilitating exploratory efforts in the medical product development process.鈥� Since 2009, regulatory reviewers have been looking at ways to incorporate patient input into its drug selection process, in order to bring drugs to the market sooner, Tran said. In 2015, a discussion held between regulatory reviewers, pharmaceutical companies, and a patient group generated consensus on the potential of social networks in supporting the validity of patient outcomes identified for medical product development and her dissertation creates a scalable framework from which the validity of social networks can be determined. 鈥淗ealthcare is very unique domain since research in this area affects the lives of patients,鈥� she said. 鈥淪o any data you are deriving from any source will require a high level of scrutinization. Social networks are one possible platform that can be used as a source to develop patient-reported outcomes. While the ideal source of feedback is obtained directly from the patient, the way in which this information is gathered is highly variant in scope and in quality. The FDA, for example, still collects patient input through town halls. In the search for more efficient methods of gathering patient understanding, social networks serve as a unique source of observational data.鈥� In order to study whether the data is valid, she uses advanced probabilistic methods to analyze and evaluate Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis messages from Twitter for the last 10 years across 34 different languages from around the world. Tran was drawn to study Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis after attending an international research conference where she spoke with patients and about this little known disease. 鈥淚PF is not as well known or studied as breast cancer,鈥� she said. 鈥淲hen something is idiopathic, you don鈥檛 know the origin. The one thing you do know is that your disease is fatal and that it will result in markedly reduced lung capacity over time. I met with and spoke at length with many patients who were affected by this disease at an international conference. It was eye opening and also touching how driven and motivated these patients were to learn about IPF. They were there because they didn鈥檛 want to just be a patient, they wanted to be a part of finding a cure. That gave me the drive to learn more about the field and to help advance the understanding of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.鈥� As part of her dissertation, Tran has collaborate with a researchers across the country who are planning to set up additional studies based on this research. 鈥淚 have been fortunate to meet researchers from other institutions that I have been working with as well as others that I will begin to work with,鈥� she said. 鈥淭his is a group which will bring diverse perspectives and includes researchers from 糖心Vlog传媒MS, Yale, Georgetown, Northeastern, and Tulane University. There is much opportunity to extend this research to fully evaluate the validity of social networks, and I am really looking forward to it.鈥� In the end, Tran is grateful for the opportunities that earning a Ph.D. brought her. 鈥淭he Ph.D. process is an excellent development opportunity as long as you are able to commit to the process,鈥� Tran said. 鈥淭hrough this process, you learn how to learn. I had an opportunity to work across a variety of fields that are all on the cutting edge of things that matter in today鈥檚 business environment and to make a novel contribution to the field.鈥�]]>