Bot Detection in Online Social Networks

Prof. Athena Vakali (AUTH)

Free participation via MS Teams (link)

slides: pdf

video: link

Abstract: How can social bots be detected in today’s online mistrusted platforms? Prof. Vakali will reveal crucial research outcomes in the battle against social bots “in the wild”. Social bots detection under interpretable and responsible AI methods will be showcased, to open ideas and dialogues for effective online disinformation services.

About the speaker: Athena Vakali is a professor at the School of Informatics, Aristotle University, Greece, where she leads the Laboratory on Data and Web science. She holds a PhD degree in Informatics (Aristotle University), a MSc degree in Computer Science (Purdue University, USA), and BSc degree in Mathematics. Her current research interests include Data Science topics with emphasis on big data mining and analytics, Next generation Internet applications and enablers, online social networks mining, as well as on online sources data management on the cloud, the edge and decentralized settings. She has supervised 10 completed PhD theses and she has been awarded for her educational and research work which is extended with mentoring and students empowerment (ACM, ACMW). Prof. Vakali has published over than 160 papers in refereed journals and Conferences and she is in the editorial board of the “Computers & Electrical Engineering” Journal, and ICST Transactions on Social Informatics (her publications received over 8400 citations with h-index=39 according to gscholar). She has coordinated and participated in more than 25 research projects in EU FP7, H2020, international and national projects. She has served as a member in the EU Steering Committee for the EU Future Internet Assembly (2012-14) and she has been appointed as Director of the Graduate Program in Informatics, Aristotle University (2014-15). She has co-chaired major Conferences Program Committees such as : PC co-chair at the ACM/IEEE Web Intelligence Conference 2019, the EU Network of Excellence 2nd Internet Science Conference (EINS 2015), 15th Web Information Systems Engineering (WISE 2014), etc.