I am an Assistant Professor at the Technology, Policy, and Management (TPM) faculty at TU Delft. I am also an Associated Researcher with the Max Planck Institute for Informatics (MPI-INF) and a core member of the International Data-driven Research for Advanced Modeling and Analysis Lab (iDrama Lab).

Research

Overall, my research focuses on applying machine learning and data-driven quantitative analysis to understand emerging phenomena on the Web such as the spread of false information and hateful rhetoric. I am also interested in understanding algorithmic recommendations on social media platforms. My research has been published at top-tier conferences such as WWW, ICWSM, ACM CCS, and IEEE S&P. My co-authors and I have received a distinguished paper award at ACM IMC 2018, best paper honorable mention awards at ICWSM 2020 and CSCW 2021, and a best paper honorable mention at ACM CCS 2022.

News

Throughout the academic journey, there are a lot of ups and downs, with a large number of rejections. To reflect a better picture of my academic journey and help early stage researchers to understand that rejection is normal, this news section contains both positive and negative news (like paper rejections, grant rejections, etc.)

  • October 2024: The funding curse is officially broken! Happy to receive (with Rolf van Wegberg) an unrestricted gift for $100K from Google’s Academic Research Award Program (1/8 in research grant proposals :))
  • October 2024: Two papers early rejected by Usenix Security 2025!
  • September 2024: One paper desk rejected by Usenix Security 2025 after the introduction of pioneering policies to transform the future and reproducibility of security research!
  • September 2024: One paper rejected by IEEE S&P 2025.
  • August 2024: One paper early rejected by NDSS 2025.
  • July 2024: Two papers rejected by IEEE S&P 2025.
  • July 2024: Two papers rejected by AAAI ICWSM 2025.
  • July 2024: One paper rejected during the second round by ACM CCS 2024.
  • June 2024: Delighted that our paper entitled “Auditing Algorithmic Explanations of Social Media Feeds: A Case Study of TikTok Video Explanations” won the best paper honorable mention award at AAAI ICWSM 2024! Congratulations Sep!
  • May 2024: One paper early rejected by ACM CCS 2024.
  • May 2024: One paper rejected by ICML 2024.
  • April 2024: Marie Curie Doctoral Networks Grant proposal rejected! 0/7 in grant proposals! We scale!
  • March 2024: Three papers accepted at AAAI ICWSM 2024! Congrats to Moonis, Sepehr, and Josemi for their hard work and for getting their papers accepted at ICWSM! The papers focus on how Incels discuss self-harm online, auditing TikTok algorithmic explanations, and understanding the use of Google Maps and Tripadvisor during the Russia-Ukraine war.
  • March 2024: One paper rejected by IEEE S&P 2024.
  • March 2024: Another grant proposal rejected by NWO. 0/6 in grant proposals. Legit loser’s queue.
  • February 2024: One paper early rejected by ACM CCS 2024.
  • January 2024: Two papers accepted at The Web Conference 2024! The papers focus on studying news exposure on social media via data donations and analyzing personalization on TikTok! Congrats to Salim and Karan for leading the efforts!
  • January 2024: Our paper studying user engagement on TikTok using data donations got (conditionally) accepted at CHI 2024. See you in Hawai! :)
  • November 2023: Three papers accepted at AAAI ICWSM 2024! Congrats to Mohamad, Daniel, and Philipe for leading the efforts and getting their papers accepted at ICWSM! The papers focus on various aspects of information dissemination and attacks happening on messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram!
  • October 2023: Another grant proposal bites the dust! Google 2023 Trust & Safety proposal rejected. 0/5 in funding proposals…
  • September 2023: I will join the TPC of The Web Conference 2024 (Social Networks, Social Media, and Society Track)!
  • August 2023: I will join the TPC of ICLR 2024!
  • August 2023: One paper rejected in R2 by ACM IMC 2023. Time to move on and avoid engaging with the IMC community again. The community is not friendly (related meme)!
  • July 2023: One paper early rejected by ACM IMC 2023. Preparing the popcorn for the reviews that will arrive next week!
  • July 2023: One paper rejected by AAAI ICWSM 2024.
  • July 2023: Our paper investigating the capabilities of LLMs for detecting and mitigating toxic content using prompt tuning has been accepted to IEEE S&P 2024!
  • June 2023: Humbled and honored to be listed as one of the Best Senior Program Committee members for AAAI ICWSM 2023!
  • June 2023: One paper early rejected by ACM CCS 2023. Received a set of constructive and useful reviews though :)
  • May 2023: Our paper studying the generation of unsafe images from Text-to-Image models got accepted at ACM CCS 2023! Congrats to the Chinese dream team (Yiting, Xinyue, and Xinlei) for carrying!
  • April 2023: I will join the TPC of Usenix Security 2024!
  • April 2023: One paper rejected by SIGIR 2023. Interesting set of reviews highlighting the flaws of our paper, including the fact that we had a long abstract, no novelty, and no interesting results!
  • March 2023: I will join the TPC of NeurIPS 2023!
  • March 2023: Two papers rejected by AAAI ICWSM 2023.
  • March 2023: Marie Curie Doctoral Networks proposal rejected. 0/4 in submitted research grants!
  • January 2023: Our paper investigating QAnon on Telegram got accepted at WebSci’23! Congrats Mohamad for the hard work through multiple rejections!
  • January 2023: One paper rejected from Usenix Security 2023! Interesting journey: After getting desk-rejected for being out of scope and subsequently getting resurrected, the paper was killed by Reviewer D in Round 2 :)
  • January 2023: One paper rejected from The Web Conference 2023! Our paper “died” after being held in a hostage situation for one month! :)
  • January 2023: I will join the TPC of ACM IMC 2023!
  • January 2023: Starting the year strong! Meta 2022 Foundational Integrity Research proposal rejected. 0/3 in funding proposals. We scale!
  • December 2022: I will join the TPC of ICML 2023. Officially an AI expert!
  • December 2022: I will join the TPC of ACM CCS 2023 (Usability and Measurement Track).
  • December 2022: Two papers accepted at IEEE S&P 2023: 1) Studying the evolution of hateful memes using Contrastive Learning and 2) Flagging candidate posts for soft moderation on Twitter. Congrats to Yiting and Pujan for carrying!
  • November 2022: Our paper entitled “Non-Polar Opposites: Analyzing the Relationship Between Echo Chambers and Hostile Intergroup Interactions on Reddit” has been accepted at AAAI ICWSM 2023. Congrats Alexandros!
  • November 2022: Our paper on Measuring and Triggering Toxic Behavior in Open-Domain Chatbots got a Best Paper Honorable Mention at ACM CCS 2022. One CCS Honorable Mention thats enough!
  • November 2022: VENI pre-proposal rejected by NWO.
  • October 2022: One paper rejected by ACM CSCW 2023.
  • September 2022: I will join the TPC of The Web Conference 2023 (Web & Society Track).
  • August 2022: Happy to share that our paper studying the generation of toxic language from open-domain chatbots has been accepted at ACM CCS 2022. One CCS, One Oakland, that’s enough for 2022.
  • August 2022: Another one bites the dust. One paper rejected by ACM IMC 2022.
  • July 2022: Happy to share that we got two papers accepted at ICWSM 2023. These are the results of two summer internships at MPI-INF. Preprints available here and here. Congrats Cici and Felipe!
  • July 2022: One paper rejected by ACM CCS 2022.
  • July 2022: Kicking off the tenure-track research grants’ hunting journey with a…“future success.” One individual grant proposal (50K Euros) rejected by NWO.
  • June 2022: I will join the TPC of WSDM 2023.
  • June 2022: Honored to be named one of the Best Senior Program Committee members at ICWSM 2022.
  • March 2022: Mission with code name “Barcelona” failed! Two paper submissions rejected by WebSci 2022.
  • March 2022: Our paper investigating Anti-Chinese sentiments on the Web has been accepted at ICWSM 2022!
  • March 2022: One paper submission early rejected by Usenix Security 2022.
  • February 2022: I will join the TPC of Usenix Security 2023.
  • January 2022: Mission Failed We’ll Get Em Next Time. Three paper submissions rejected by the Web Conference 2022.
  • November 2021: Our paper on detecting state-sponsored trolls on Reddit got accepted at IEEE S&P 2022. Officially a security expert!
  • November 2021: Two paper submissions rejected by ICWSM 2022.
  • October 2021: Our paper investigating the effectiveness of community bans after cross-platform migrations received a Best Paper Honorable Mention Award at CSCW 2021.
  • August 2021: I will join the TPC of The Web Conference 2022 (Web & Society Track).
  • July 2021: Two papers rejected: First one submitted at IMC 2021, second one submitted at CSCW 2022.