Research


Funded Research Projects

  • Research Experience for Undergraduates,  PI, National Science Foundation, $16,000. August 1, 2016 – September 30, 2020.

Supervised Doctoral Dissertations

  • Wenlong Sun, “Studying and Handling Iterated Algorithmic Biases in Human and Machine Learning Interaction” (PhD. 2019) (Data Scientist at Sojern)
    • Winner of the Best Paper Award for the paper “Iterated Algorithmic Bias in the Interactive Machine Learning Process of Information Filtering”, in the International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Information Retrieval (KDIR), Seville, Spain, 2018.
  • Gopi Chand, Nutakki, “A framework for text clustering and adaptive topic tracking on social media data streams” (PhD. Dec. 2017), currently at App Labs.
  • Behnoush, Abdollahi, “Accurate and justifiable : new algorithms for explainable recommendations” (PhD. Aug. 2017), currently a Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Walmart Labs.
  • Mahsa, Badami, “Peeking into the other half of the glass : handling polarization in recommender systems” (PhD. May. 2017), currently at Apple Inc.
    •  PhD Dissertation Winner (Guy Stevenson Award)
    • Best graduate poster at the 6th Annual Graduate Research Symposium.
    • Best graduate poster at the Kentucky Women in Computing Conference
  • Abdullin, Artur, “An Inter-Domain Supervision Framework for Collaborative Clustering of Data with Mixed Types” (PhD. Dec. 2013), currently at Facebook.
  • Hawwash, Basheer, “STREAM-DASHBOARD: A Big Data Stream Clustering Framework with Applications to Social Media Streams” (PhD. May. 2013), currently at Quintiles.
  • Durak, Nurcan, “ Coronal Loop Detection from Solar Images and Extraction of Salient Contour Groups from Cluttered Images” (PhD. Aug. 2011).
    • Currently at Sojern (after RocketFuel and a postdoc at Sandia National Labs).
    • Won second place at Grand Finals of ACM Research Competitions 2011.
  • Esin Saka, “Swarm Intelligence for Clustering Dynamic Data Sets for Web Usage Mining and Personalization” (PhD. Dec. 2011), currently at Microsoft Search & Advertising.
  • Leyla Zhuhadar, “Automated Discovery, Categorization, and Retrieval of Personalized Semantically Enriched E-Learning Resources” (PhD. 2009), currently an Associate Professor at Western Kentucky University.
  • Carlos Rojas, “Pattern Discovery from Evolving Transactional Data Streams” (PhD. 2009), currently at Nokia Labs (after a postdoc at Oak Ridge National Labs).
  • Zhiyong Zhang, “Focused Image Search in the Social Web” (PhD. 2008), currently at Apple Inc. (after four years at Yahoo Inc).
  • Elizabeth Leon, “Scalable and Adaptive Evolutionary Clustering for Noisy and Dynamic Data” (PhD. 2005), currently Assistant Professor at National University of Colombia.

Supervised Masters Thesis

  • Ankita Sahu, “An interactive interface for nursing robots”, 2017. (Co-supervised with Dr. Dan Popa, ECE)
  • A. Cagla Acun Sener, “A data science pipeline for educational data: A case study using learing catalytics in the active learning classroom”, 2017.
  • Aneseh Alvanpour, “Uncovering Exceptional Predictions Using Exploratory Analysis of Second Stage Machine Learning”, May 2017.
  • Nick A. Miles, “Architecture Analysis of Peer-To-Peer Network Structure And Data Exchanges For Distribution of Contraband Material”, 2010, currently at Tenable Network Security.
  • Derek Reese, “Dynamic Probe Positioning Within Peer-To-Peer Networks For Mining Contraband File Exchanges”, 2010, currently at Humana.
  • Heba Elgazzar, “Data Mining Approach To Detect Solar Loops”, 2007, continued to PhD.
  • Basheer Hawwesh, “Mining and Tracking Evolving Web User Trends from Very Large Web Server Logs”, 2008, continued to PhD.
  • Pavuluri, Mrudula, “A Study of New Intelligent Recommender Systems for Web Personalization”, 2004 (University of Memphis)
  • Rojas, Carlos, “Clustering using a Robust Estimator”, 2004 (University of Memphis), continued to PhD.
  • Cardona, Cesar, “A New Immune System Model to Cluster Data Streams”, 2004 (University of Memphis), currently at Lexis Nexis. He is currently a National Science Foundation Doctoral Fellow at University of Chicago (after several years at ChoicePoint and LexisNexis).
  • Goswami, Suchandra, “A Generalized Framework for Discovering Localized Error Tolerant Frequent Patterns using Dynamic Error Tolerance”, 2004 (University of Memphis), continued to PhD.
  • Leon, Elizabeth, “Investigation of New Evolutionary Clustering Models and application to Unsupervised Anomaly Detection”. Spring 2004 (University of Memphis), continued to PhD.
  • Petenes, Christopher, “An Intelligent Web Personalization System with a Fuzzy Recommendation Engine”, 2003 (University of Memphis), currently at Mallory Alexander International Logistics.

Supervised Masters Projects

  • Cerwinske, Jeff, “Investigation of a Real time Recommender System based on Mining Evolving Web Clickstreams”
  • Parupudi, Kiran, “Text Clustering Analysis of Web Snippets from Yahoo Search Results”.
  • Noru, Madan, “ Clustering of Nucleotide Gene Sequences using Hierarchical Unsupervised Niche Clustering ”.
  • Yarramsetti, Ravi , “An Integrated Tool for Hierarchical Unsupervised Niche Clustering”
  • Jammi, Snigdha, “Web Usage Mining with Kohonen’s Self Organizing Feature Maps”.
  • Ealla, Vidyasagar, “Java Implementation of Hierarchical Clustering Algorithms for Data and Web Mining”
  • Dakuri, Ratna, “Web Usage Mining – Association Rules Discovery from World Wide Web Transactions”
  • Dunna, Satish, “Design of an Optimal Classifier for Automatic Web Recommendations”.
  • Nibbaragandla, Kiran, “An Intelligent Web Agent for Automatic Taxonomy Generation”.
  • Vishnubhatla, Venkat, “Data Mining of the ACT and Enrollment Data at the University of Memphis”.
  • Tiruvanallur, Gautam, “Design of a Flexible Web Log Preprocessing System”.
  • Valluripari, Chakradar, “VHDL Design of an Artificial Immune System Prototype”.

Supervised Undergraduate Projects

  • Shaver, Billy, “Keyword Search in a Text Corpus”

Supervised Undergraduate Research

  • Garrett Ridge: “Principal Curve Extraction from Solar Images”
    • Honorable Mention by Computing Research Association (CRA) for outstanding undergraduate research.
    • Winner: Best poster at Speed School’s Engineering Expo.
    • Currently Doctoral fellow at UCLA.
  • Roger Mendes: “Feature Extraction for Coronal Loop Mining”
  • David Chase Childers: “Web Personalization with Open Source Search and Indexing Software”. He is currently at Amazon after an internship at Apple.
  • Gurmit Kaur: “Dynamic Visualization of Swarm-based Clustering”
  • Mihir Kotwal: “A Cloud-Based Framework for Web Usage Mining”