June 2024
Cosmographer and Recent PhD Graduate Ahmed Al-Taweel Receives Staff Senate Award
The Staff Senate gives awards to recent graduates and staff members or teachers, at the annual Staff Awards Ceremony, held this year on April 19th 2024. This year, Cosmographer Ahmed Al-Taweel received one such award at the 2024 Ceremony—the Academic Excellence Award.
Ahmed has been part of COSMOS and UA Little Rock’s staff since January 2023, starting out as a graduate assistant at COSMOS and now working as a postdoctoral researcher after having received his PhD in May 2023.
CySoc 2024: Predicting Social Threats Enabled by Technology
The International Workshop on Cyber Social Threats (CySoc), co-located with the AAAI International Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2024), looks at discovering and mitigating cyber social threats. In other words, this conference is concerned with how social media platforms can negatively and detrimentally affect social contexts, that is, social threats enabled by technology. The range of topics that the conference features are thus quite extensive.
Cosmographers Win Big at 2024 DCSTEM College Awards
In this edition, COSMOS highlights the Spring 2024 end-of-year awards for our Cosmographers. Several Cosmographers received accolades and awards at the DCSTEM College Spring award ceremony held on Friday, May 3rd. Among the award winners were:
- Chinni Krishna Kongala, with the Outstanding Academic Achievement Award
- Mainuddin Shaik, with the COSMOS Outstanding Research Award
- Niloofar Yousefi, with the COSMOS Outstanding Research Award
- Mert Can Çakmak, with the COSMOS Outstanding Research Award
- Manohar Koya, with the COSMOS Outstanding Project Award
- Mayor Inna Gurung, with the 2nd place award for the DCSTEM Graduate Award
We asked them what these awards meant to them and what work went into these achievements.
Cosmographer Corner: Dr. Tuja Khaund, Data Scientist
COSMOS, in this edition of Cosmographer Corner, highlights the work of a former University of Arkansas at Little Rock graduate and Cosmographer Dr. Tuja Khaund. Dr. Khaund—who is now a data scientist for Walmart—started her graduate education as a COSMOS research assistant. She received her BS in Computer Science, MS in Information Science, and Ph.D in Computer and Information Sciences from UA Little Rock in 2015, 2017, and 2021, respectively. During that time, Dr. Khaund worked at COSMOS as a graduate assistant. We interviewed Dr. Khaund on where her career is now and what her work at COSMOS entailed, with her responses below.
Research Spotlight: Epidemiological Models
In this month’s research spotlight, COSMOS highlights recent research that uses epidemiological models to investigate the spread and mitigation of online toxicity. Specifically, the paper authored by Niloofar Yousefi and Dr. Nitin Agarwal titled “Studying the Influence of Toxicity Intensity on Its Propagation Using Epidemiological Models” uses the Susceptible-Toxic-Recovered-Susceptible (STRS) model to study toxicity. The paper will be published at the 30th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) held August 15-17, 2024 in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Cosmographers Lead Men’s Intramural Soccer Team to Victory
Outside the hallowed halls of the COSMOS Research Center, where social media research reigns supreme, a different kind of teamwork unfolded on the soccer field. Sayantan, Diwash, and Ishmam, three cosmographers, showcased their passion for soccer while navigating the complexities of graduate life. They each participated in the UA Little Rock Men’s intramural soccer league tournament for the Spring 2024 session, which involved five different teams, with their team ending up the tournament champion.