COSMOS Map
Director
Dr. Nitin Agarwal is the Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science at UA Little Rock and Director of the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS). He researches cyber information campaigns, social computing, deviant behavior modeling, group dynamics, social-cyber forensics, data mining, and privacy.
Postdoctoral Fellows
After graduating with his master's degree in systems engineering from UA Little Rock, Mustafa chose to continue in his education in this field and enrolled in the Ph.D. program. He was introduced to COSMOS in the Spring of 2018. His background includes operational research and the protection of infrastructure networks from malicious attacks.
Thomas Marcoux is a doctoral graduate in Information Science. After graduating from Université d’Orléans in France, he came to UA Little Rock for his master’s degree in Computer Science in 2015. His current focus is on researching and developing technologies providing insights into online behaviors and decision-making through social medias analysis.
Billy Spann is a Ph.D. postdoctoral research fellow at the COSMOS research center. He earned his Ph.D. in April 2022. He also has an M.S. in Information Science, and B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from UALR and an M.B.A. from the UALR College of Business. Billy is a mid-career PhD Graduate that has over 20 years of planning, design, and research experience as an engineering leader in the wireless telecom industry.
Doctoral Students
Abiola is pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer and Information Sciences at UA Little Rock. He possesses significant experience as a software engineer across organizations in the financial, financial technology, and energy industries. In his most recent experience, Abiola was an iOS engineer for multiple financial institutions. He holds a bachelor's degree in Applied Geology and a master's degree in Exploration Geophysics from the Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria (FUTA). Abiola is an avid lifelong learner.
Ahmed Al-Taweel is a Ph.D. candidate in applied mathematics at UA Little Rock with a research interest in numerical analysis and scientific computing. He received an M.S. in Mathematical Sciences from the UA Little Rock (2020).In COSMOS, he works with the research team in developing mathematical models of socio-technical behaviors on a variety of social media platforms. Currently he is working on Mob-Modeling project.
Hayder is pursuing his doctoral degree at UA Little Rock. He graduated from Al Nahrain University in Bagdad, Iraq, with a bachelor's degree and master's degree in computer science. His extensive studies focused on web technologies.
Sayantan is currently pursuing PhD in Computer & Information Science from UA Little Rock. He has experience in working as a MDM Developer for organizations like Accenture and Cognizant. He is interested in the research of Social Computing, Fake News, and Misinformation-Propaganda detection. Currently, he is working as a Graduate Research Assistant in the COSMOS lab. He is passionate about Cinema, Football (the actual one), and Music.
Mert is pursuing PhD in Computer and Information Science at UALR. He completed his bachelor's in computer science in 2021. He is interested in data mining, and natural language processing on social media. Currently he is working on recommender bias on YouTube project in COSMOS. In his free time, he plays video games and watch movies.
Rick is a PhD student at the UA Little Rock pursuing a degree in Computers and Information Science. His interests revolve around strategic communications, social network analysis and social cyber forensics.
Katrin Galeano is a PhD student at the UA Little Rock. She majors in Computers and Information Science. Her background is in strategic communications for non-profit and government organizations.
He received the B.S. degree in international relations from Ege University, ̇Izmir, Turkey, and the M.Phil. degree in international relations from the National Defence University, Islamabad, Pakistan. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in computer and information sciences with the Uni- versity of Arkansas at Little Rock, Little Rock, AR, USA.
Mainuddin Shaik is a doctoral Candidate in Information Science. His research interests include social media, social science, information operation and online discourse. He is working as a graduate research assistant for COSMOS lab working on multiple projects from data collection to big data analysis along with his own research on identifying mechanism of dynamic influential operation on blogs, YouTube and Twitter.
Shadi Shajari received her bachelor's degree in information technology engineering from Tehran, Iran and her masters degree in computer science from Pisa University, Italy. She have 8 years experience of software development In Iran and Italy and currently, She is a Ph.D. student in computer and information science at University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She is working as a graduate research assistant at COSMOS.
David is pursuing his Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science at UA Little Rock. He is an adjunct teaching faculty member in the University of Arkansas system and a Principal Engineer at a national telecommunications company.
Niloofar is a Ph.D. student in Information Quality at UA Little Rock. She completed her undergraduate degree in Computer engineering in Iran and I graduated from University of Pisa in Italy with master degree in Data science. She is currently working on "Toxicity on Social Media" in COSMOS research center.
Public Affairs Officer
Mary Mezue is a Master’s student studying Business Information and Analytics at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, with a track record of building software products as a product manager in Nigeria’s financial technology space. Mary currently works at COSMOS as public affairs officer and also works with blog tracker team with a research focus on analyzing how false information and fake news stories are spread through social media. Read More
Graduate Students
Qudirat Akanji is pursuing a Master's degree in Business Information Systems and Analytics at UA Little Rock . Her background is in the financial services industry. She is interested in data analytics. In her free time, she enjoys learning new things and playing scrabble.
Mayor Inna Gurung is a Masters in information science student at UA Little Rock. She completed her undergraduate degree in computing in 2020 and has been working in the information technology and service ever since. Travel enthusiast Mayor Inna is currently working as developer in Vtracker and she is ardent about utilizing technology for greater good.
Manohar Koya is currently pursuing his Master's in Computer Science at UA Little Rock. He completed his bachelor's in CS and have an experience of 1.5 years as backend software engineer. Being an ICPC Regionalist he likes to code competitive. And he is passionate about nature and different cultures.
Deepika is currently pursuing her Master’s in Information Science at UA Little Rock. She is currently working at COSMOS as a UI/UX Designer- Graduate Research Assistant. She is familiar with BI tools like Power BI and Tableau.
Nabil is a masters student in Information Science at UA Little. Currently he is working as a Research Assistant in "Toxicity on Social Media" project at COSMOS Research Center. He completed his bachelors from Chittagong University of Engineering & Technology. His research interests is Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Data Science.
Obianuju Ivory Okeke is studying Master’s degree in Business Information Systems & Analytics at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. Ivory is currently a graduate assistant at the COSMOS department and works in the VTracker team as a backend engineer.
Vanessa Okeke is a Masters of Business Information Systems and Analytics graduate student at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, with experience building software for SME's and the Agro-Tech industry. After earning a Bachelor's degree in Architecture, she made a transition to Software Engineering, learning to build products that scale. Vanessa is interested in using data to tell stories, building predictive models and pushing herself to be a better developer and community leader.
Ugochukwu Peter Onyepunuka is a Master of Information Science with a Bachelors degree in Computer Science in 2019. He worked as a Data Engineer at Ehealth4everyone a Health Informatics company. Innovative and flexible, Ugo is passionate about Software Engineering, Data Science and ML. Ugo plays ping pong and soccer during his free time.
Mohan is currently pursuing master's in Information Science at UA Little Rock and also working as a Graduate Research Assistant at COSMOS. He is detail-oriented and analytical professional with IT Experience working as a Data Engineer for the organizations like Cognizant and Accenture. Apart from Software Engineering, He has also explored some of the roles in IT Networking and Social Media Content Moderation right after completing his Bachelor's in Electronics and Communication Engineering.
Ishmam Ahmed Solaiman is a masters student at UALR. He did his undergraduate in BRAC university in bangladesh in computer science. He worked as a software engineer at Optimizely inc. for a year and half starting from my 2nd last semester in university. He also worked as a full stack web developer for a startup before that. His interest in data science was piqued when he did his undergraduate thesis on “detecting covid 19 and pneumonia in xray images using neural network” and have always been keen on learning data science since then. Joining COSMOS has given him a chance to chase after those aspirations.
Gaurav is a student of Master’s in Information Science with a background in Computing and web engineering. With a Bachelor of Science (Honors) in Computing at The British College, Nepal which is affiliated to Leeds Beckett University, UK in 2020, he moved to UALR, Little Rock to continue his further studies and work in data analytics and information science.
With a collaborative and dynamic nature, he is very passionate in research on data analysis and information management to further enhance his career to become a successful business information specialist in future.
Ifeanyi Joshua umoga is a Master of information science with a Bachelors degree in Electrical and electronics engineering. He worked as an IT Support Engineer at EHealth4everyone a Digital Health informatics company. Joshua is passionate about Data engineering, Data analysis and software Engineering. Joshua plays soccer during his free time.