Invited Talk by Prof. Ponnurangam Kumaraguru on Social Complexity and Computing on Online Networks

Title: Social Complexity and Computing on Online Networks
Speaker: Prof. Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, IIIT Delhi.
Host Faculty: Dr. Srijith P.K.
Room No: LH-2
Time: 12:00

Abstract:

With increase in usage of the Internet, there has been an exponential increase in the use of online social media. Websites like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest, and Flickr have changed the way the Internet is being used. There is a dire need to investigate, measure, and understand different facets of online social media from various perspectives (computational, cultural, psychological). Large amount of data, and understanding of the behaviour on social networks can be used to address various societal problems that users face on the Internet. Real world scalable systems need to be built to reduce the impact of these problems on the users. I will describe briefly some cool projects that we work on: Spam Campaigns on Twitter, Follower Count Fallacy, I Spy With My Little Eye, #KillFies, and #BlueWhale Most of our research work is made available for public use through tools or online services. Our work derives techniques from Computational Social Science, Data Science, Statistics, Network Science, and Human Computer Interaction. I will be more than happy to clarify, discuss any of our work in detail, as required, after the talk.

Speaker bio:

Prof. Ponnurangam Kumaraguru (“PK”) is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Communications and Alumni, at IIIT-Delhi. He is a TEDx and an ACM Distinguished speaker & ACM India Eminent Speaker. He advises various government organizations and a Fortune 500 company. PK received his Ph.D. from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He has authored research papers in the field of Privacy and Security in Online Social Media, Cyber Security, Computational Social Science,Data Science for Social Good, and other topics. He is passionate about solving societal problems using technologies, especially contributing to the domain of social computing. PK and his students have played an integral role in developing a technology used by over 50+ State and Central Government agencies in India. He has spent time making notable contributions at organizations like IBM India Research Labs, Adobe Research Labs – India, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) – Brazil, and Max Planck Institute for Software Systems – Germany. PK has served as a Program Committee member at prestigious conferences like WWW, ICWSM, CSCW, AsiaCCS. His Ph.D. thesis work on anti-phishing research at CMU contributed in creating an award-winning start-up - Wombat Security Technologies, wombatsecurity.com. He was the Founding Head of Cybersecurity Education and Research Centre (CERC) at IIIT-Delhi. PK started and successfully manages PreCog precog.iiitd.edu.in, a research group at IIIT-Delhi. PK can be reached at pk@iiitd.ac.in.

Dates:
Thursday, February 15, 2018 - 10:30 to 11:30