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Talal Rahwan

Welcome to my webpage. I am an Associate Professor of Computer Science, and Director of the Data Science and AI Lab at New York University Abu DhabiI received my Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2007 from the University of Southampton in the UK. My research interests include: Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, and Computational Social Science. Click here to download my CV.

Selected publications

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Awards & media coverage

Citation manipulation

  • We went under cover, contacted a "citation boosting service", and managed to buy citations that appeared in a Scopus-Indexed journal. Our undercover operation provided conclusive evidence that citations can be bought in bulk. The study got covered by Nature (here) and by Science (here and here).

Recognition at IC2S2

  • I was invited as a keynote speaker at IC2S2 (the International Conference on Computational Social Science).

  • We received the Best Parallel Talk award for our paper evaluating ChatGPT on university-level homework.

  • We also received the Best Poster award for our paper examining the dominance of Big Tech companies.

Gender inequality among editors

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Bias in YouTube's recommendation algorithm

Weaponizing disinformation

Transparency in human-bot interaction

Ethnic diversity & scientific collaboration

Hiding in social networks

AI's 10 to watch

  • I was selected by IEEE Computer Society as one of AI's 10 to WatchThe list is published every two years by IEEE Intelligent Systems in recognition of the 10 most promising, young Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers in the world.

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Meet the team

Here are the talented researchers whom I am proud to call my team:

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Marcin Waniek

Postdoctoral Associate.

Works on identifying ways in which private information can be hidden from attribute inference algorithms. His work got published in Nature Human Behaviour and Scientific Reports; see Marcin's webpage.

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Balaraju Battu

Postdoctoral Associate.

Interested in human machine interaction in the context of social and ethical dilemmas. His work got published in Scientific Reports and in Royal Society Open Access. See Balaraju's Google Scholar profile.

Sid Benabderrahmane

Postdoctoral Associate.

Examines social phenomena through the lens of Machine Learning and Data Mining. See Sid's Google Scholar profile.

Fengyuan (Michael) Liu

PhD student:

Studies scientific collaborations an journal editors. His work got published in PNAS and Nature Human Behaviour

Lab alumni

Here are the talented researchers and students whom I was fortunate enough to work with as part of my lab. 

Bedoor AlShebli

Previously a postdoc in my lab, now an Assistant Prof. at NYU Abu Dhabi. She published in Nature Communications, PNAS, and Science Advances; see Bedoor's webpage.

Mayada Oudah

Following her PhD under my supervision, Mayada joined New York University Abu Dhabi as a Postdoctoral Associate. Her work on Human-Bot interaction got published in Nature Communications.

Maria Sahakyan

Formerly a postdoc at my lab, now a Postdoctoral Associate at New York University Abu Dhabi. Her research falls at the intersection of Explainable AI and Computational Social Science.

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Russell Coke

After working as a research engineer in my lab, Russell joined the Computer Networks Lab at New York University Abu Dhabi. His work focused on improving web-access for users in developing regions.

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