From September 18 to 20, 2024, the 17th annual International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral Cultural Modeling & Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation (SBP-BRiMS) was held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, co-chaired by Dr. Agarwal. 

With the help of generous travel funding from the US Army Research Office, several researchers from around the world were able to attend the conference to present their research and learn from colleagues. Dr. Agarwal, the PI of the grant, states this as “an incredible honor to serve the scientific community by helping researchers attend the conference, and one of the most rewarding experiences is seeing how students who were once funded by the travel awards are now faculty, bringing their own students to the conference.”  

Cosmographers presented research from a range of topics such as online toxicity, social movements, flash mobs, YouTube recommendation bias, and YouTube narratives.

Each year, SBP-BRiMS leads academic research that combines interdisciplinary methods from both social computing, cultural behavioral modeling and simulation. This historic conference features highly selective research focusing on complex social/cultural behaviors, patterns, and their outcomes, and covers various levels of analysis that span fields such as engineering, computational sciences, social sciences, and health sciences. This conference was born by the joining of what were originally two conferences, Social Computing, Behavioral Cultural Modeling & Prediction (SBP) and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation (BRiMS). SBP was co-founded by Dr. Huan Liu (Arizona State University) and Dr. Agarwal in 2008. Since their synthesis, this conference has grown from a small computer science subfield conference to a major conference of social computing bringing multiple disciplines and experts from around the world. It has evolved into a significant event where academics, researchers, and industry professionals from fields such as social sciences, behavioral modeling, and data science come together to share their work in areas like public health, cybersecurity, and national defense. 

Dr. Agarwal said, “We celebrate our students’ success at the conference, the financial support that allowed them to attend, and express our deepest gratitude to the government funding from organizations like the US Army Research Office. Looking forward to next year’s conference, I encourage any student interested in attending SBP-BRIMS to apply for travel scholarships, so that they can join this thrilling academic pursuit.”