Social Computing in the Middle East - the QCRI Experience
Jaideep Srivastava
Professor, IEEE Fellow
Director of the Social Computing division at QCRI, University of Minnesota
Abstract: Qatar Computing Research Institute (http://www.qcri.com/) is a unque experiment to establish a world-class computing research lab in a place not traditionally known for high-technology. In a short time it has made significant advances in selected areas, social computing being one of them. The AIDR platform for digital volunteering (http://irevolution.net/2013/10/01/aidr-artificial-intelligence-for-disaster-response/) is widely used in many operational deloyments, and has been mentioned by UN-OCHA as one of the top 10 technologies relevant for the future of humanitarian response. News and Social Media analytics technologies are used by major media organizations such as Al Jazeera, and analytics technologies for behavioral data from wearable devices is being used to address challenging health issues like obesity and diabetes. In this talk we will provide an overview of the Social Computing group at QCRI, and introduce our various projects. QCRI is part of the Qatar Foundation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_Foundation).
Bio: Jaideep Srivastava is the Director of the Social Computing division at QCRI. He is on leave from the University of Minnesota, where he directs a laboratory focusing on research in Web Mining, Social Analytics, and Health Analytics. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), has been an IEEE Distinguished Visitor, and is a Distinguished Fellow of Allina’s Center for Healthcare Innovation. He has been awarded the Distinguished Research Contributions Award of the PAKDD, for his lifetime contributions to the field of data mining. He has supervised 36 PhD dissertations, and over 63 MS thesis. He has authored or co-authored over 360 papers in journals and conferences, and filed 8 patents. Six of his papers have won best paper awards.
Dr. Srivastava is currently co-leading a multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary project in the rapidly emerging area of social computing (http://vwobservatory.com/). His research has been supported by a broad range of government agencies, including NSF, NASA, ARDA, DARPA, IARPA, NIH, CDC, US Army, US Air Force, and MNDoT; and industries, including IBM, United Technologies, Eaton, Honeywell, Cargill, Allina and Huawei.