July 2024
New Cosmographer Hire: Krithish Goli Hired as Data Engineer
COSMOS just hired a new data engineer, Krithish Goli! Krithish graduated with a master’s degree in Computer Science from Arizona State University, and has now joined the COSMOS Research Center. His passion lies in understanding distributed systems and how large-scale systems operate. During his master’s program, he also gained experience as a Software Developer Intern. We spoke with Krithish about his aspirations and goals for the role, what he brings to it, and how he heard about and was attracted to COSMOS.
Cosmographer Corner: Dr. Obadimu Adewale, Site and Software Engineer
Dr. Adewale—who is now the Senior Site Reliability Engineer for Alliant Insurance Services—started his graduate education as a COSMOS research assistant in 2016, quickly rising to challenge as COSMOS’ Lead Software Developer. He received his PhD in Computer Science from UA Little Rock in 2020, and has since held a diverse range of technology positions. We interviewed Dr. Adewale on where his career is now and what his work at COSMOS entailed, with his responses below.
Cosmographers Win Big at the DCSTEM Mainstream Research Expo
Several students from the COSMOS Research Center have won awards for their research at the 2024 University of Arkansas at Little Rock Research and Creative Works Expo that was held on Friday, April 19th, 2024. The campus-wide Research and Creative Works Expo celebrates the research of students from all colleges, with awards given specifically by the DCSTEM college to DCSTEM students. At the Spring 2024 DCSTEM college end-of-year awards ceremony, held Friday, May 3rd, the college gave out several awards for the Dean’s Mainstream Expo division and for the Dean’s Elevator Speech.
Research Spotlight: Simulating Mobs
In this month’s research spotlight, COSMOS highlights recent research that looks at a multi-theoretic framework to simulate mobs. Specifically, the study authored by Dr. Samer Al-Khateeb and Dr. Nitin Agarwal titled, “Mob Simulation Guided by Social Science-based Multi-Theoretical Framework,” uses the Monte Carlo method to simulate the formation of mobs and evaluate their success. The study was published at the 33rd European Conference on Operational Research (EURO 2024) in the stream on ‘Behavioural Operation Research (OR)’ in the session on ‘Modelling social-behavioural phenomena in creative societies’ during June 30 – July 3, 2024, held at Copenhagen, Denmark.
ECIS 2024: Digital Futures Together
The 32nd European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) looks at the latest information science research. This year, the theme is “People First: Constructing Digital Futures Together.” By gathering a diverse group of scholars, ECIS 2024 seeks to pave the way for a digitally empowered future that aligns with human goals and tackles significant challenges. In today’s era of significant technological progress, the conference aims to examine how we can shape the evolving tech landscape while ensuring it benefits society.
Dr. Nitin Agarwal Presents How to Counter Socio-cognitive Threats to the Swedish Defense Research Agency
Dr. Nitin Agarwal was recently invited to present his research on combating socio-cognitive threats at the Swedish Defense Research Agency, also known as the Totalförsvarets forskningsinstitut (FOI) or the Total Defence Research Institute. The FOI is a government agency in Sweden responsible for conducting research and development in areas related to national defense and security. Its vision and mission is to research for a safer and more secure world and to provide cutting-edge research and expertise in defense and security. It also works with the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB).
NATO Publishes Dr. Nitin Agarwal’s Research on Countering Socio-Cognitive Threats in the Proceedings on Socio-Cognitive Warfare
International warfare has developed significantly through technological development, and it stands today in a unique place due to how much warfare takes place by proxy or in and through affiliated countries. In this regard, cognitive warfare has become a keystone of the modern military, and COSMOS director Dr. Nitin Agarwal’s formal research on mitigating or countering it, which he presented in November 2023, was recently published by NATO.
COSMOS to Host Cutting-Edge Social Media Analysis Training
From August 7 through 9, COSMOS will host a hybrid in-person and digital training course, taught by Dr. Nitin Agarwal and based on his current research, on social media analysis techniques; each day will have scheduled instruction from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM (US Central time zone), with lunch and coffee breaks. The training course will introduce basic social science concepts, theories, and principles that guide model development, data analysis, and inference; attendees will learn about state-of-the-art developments in mining social media to support business intelligence and decision-making, and about the emerging challenges and opportunities within social media.