I am the Project Director of the Data Science and AI programs and lead the Infolab at WPI. My primary research interests are in machine learning, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, information retrieval, and social computing. I am broadly interested in conducting research on emerging topics and practical applications that have real-world impact. Currently, my research focuses on improving the safety and trustworthiness of AI systems to enhance information quality and trust (e.g., LLM safety), developing next-generation algorithms and architectures (e.g., efficient LLMs and recommender systems), and applying AI for social good (e.g., disrupting wildlife trafficking networks).

Selected Recent Publications (full list)

Recent Professional Activities (full list)

  • Conference Organization: WSDM 2027 (Cub Chair), NeurIPS 2026 (Area Char), EACL 2026 (Area Chair), AAAI 2026 (Area Chair), WSDM 2020 (Cup Chair), JCDL 2015 (Poster and Demo Chair)
  • Senior program committee member: ICWSM 2026, ICWSM 2025, WebSci 2025, AAAI 2025, ICWSM 2025, AAAI 2024, ICWSM 2024, ICWSM 2023, AAAI 2023, ICWSM 2022
  • Program committee member: ECML-PKDD 2026, SIGIR 2025, WSDM 2025, ACL 2024, SIGIR 2024, WSDM 2024, ACL 2023, SIGIR 2023, WSDM 2023, KDD 2022, SIGIR 2022, TheWebConf 2022
  • Tutorial: Social Media Threats and Countermeasures at ICWSM 2014, Social Spam, Campaigns, Misinformation and Crowdturfing at WWW 2014
  • Journal Reviewer: ACM TIST, ACM TKDD, ACM TOIS, ACM TWEB, ACM TOIT, ACM TISSEC, ACM TIIS, ACM Computing Surveys, IEEE TKDE, IEEE TPDS, IEEE Pervasive Computing, IEEE Internet Computing, IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, IEEE/ACM TON, Springer SNAM, Springer Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, Springer GeoInformatica, International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems

Honors and Awards