I research AI for Security and Security for AI
I am an Assistant Professor at CSE, College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. My research expertise lies in developing AI, applied machine learning, and data mining methods. I build graph, content (NLP, multimodal), and adversarial learning methods, while utilizing terabytes of data from multiple online platforms spanning multiple modalities and languages. I innovate scalable and efficient methods for online safety by detecting and mitigating malicious actors (e.g., ban evaders, sockpuppets, coordinated campaigns, fraudsters) and dangerous content (e.g., misinformation, hate speech, fake reviews). At the same time, I develop methods to improve the security and safety of AI methods.
I have been passionate about the following research topics that comprehensively study some of the biggest threats to web safety and integrity from complementary angles:
- AI for Safety: Multi-modal, multi-lingual, and multi-platform detection methods of harmful content and users utilizing terabytes of graph and content data
- Safety of AI: Measuring and enhancing the trustworthiness and robustness of AI models
- Mitigation Solutions: Developing AI tools for end users (moderators, fact checkers, etc.) to combat cyber harms
I am passionate about putting my research into practice -- my models have been used at Flipkart (India's largest e-commerce platform, acquired by Walmart), has influenced Twitter's Birdwatch platform, and is now being deployed on Wikipedia.
Please refer to my group for my mentorship activities and to service for recent service details.
Prior to Georgia Tech, I was a visiting researcher at Google AI, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, and a PhD student at the University of Maryland. I am honored to be recognized as a NSF CAREER awardee, Kavli Fellow (by the National Academy of Sciences), Forbes 30 under 30, Rising Star in Data Science by Frontiers in Big Data, CRA Computing Innovation Mentor, Facebook Faculty Research Awardee, Adobe Faculty Research Awardee, Class of 1969 Teaching Fellow, ACM SIGKDD Doctoral Dissertation Award 2018 runner-up, WWW 2017 Best Paper Award runner-up, Larry S. Davis Doctoral Dissertation Award 2017, and Dr. B.C. Roy Gold Medal. My work has been covered in a documentary (Familiar Shapes), in a radio interview (WABE), and by popular press, including Wired, CNN, Wall Street Journal, Tech Crunch, New York Magazine, and more.