Nitin Agarwal

About

Dr. Nitin Agarwal is the founding director of the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS). He is the Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science at the University of Arkansas – Little Rock. He is a faculty fellow at International Computer Science Institute at University of California - Berkeley.

Dr. Agarwal's research aims to push the boundaries of our understanding of digital and cyber social behaviors that emerge and evolve constantly in the modern information and communication platforms. At COSMOS, he is leading projects with a combined funding of over $25 million from an array of U.S. federal agencies including the Department of Defense, DARPA, Department of State, National Science Foundation and plays a significant role in the long-term partnership between UA Little Rock and the Department of Homeland Security. He developed publicly available social media analysis tools (Blogtracker and YouTubeTracker), assisting NATO Strategic Communications and Public Affairs, European Defense agencies, Australian Defense Science and Technology Agency, Singapore government, Arkansas Attorney General’s office, among others. Dr. Agarwal participates in the National Tech Innovation Hub launched by the U.S. Department of State to defeat foreign-based propaganda. He is the chief technical advisor for Bond.AI, a Little Rock-based FinTech company, helping in developing financial behavioral models using Artificial Intelligence.

Dr. Agarwal’s research contributions lie at the intersection of social computing, behavior-cultural modeling, collective action, social cyber forensics, Artificial Intelligence, data mining, and machine learning. From Saudi Arabian women's right to drive cyber campaigns to Autism awareness campaigns to ISIS and anti-West/anti-NATO disinformation campaigns, at COSMOS, he is directing several projects that have made foundational and applicational contributions to social and computational sciences, particularly in understanding coordinated cyber campaigns. He has published 10 books and over 300 articles in top-tier peer-reviewed forums including the NATO’s Defense StratCom Journal, with several best paper awards and nominations. His most recent book explores the deviant behaviors on the Internet and is published by Springer in their series on cybersecurity. His work has been covered by local, national, and international media including Bloomberg, US News, KUAR, Arkansas Business, Arkansas Times, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and many others. Over the last several years, Dr. Agarwal has spoken at various public and professional, national, and international forums such as the NATO’s StratCom COE (Riga, Latvia), DARPA, US Department of State, US Naval Space and Warfare (SPAWAR), US Pentagon’s Strategic Multilevel Assessment groups, US National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine, US Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Facebook Asia Pacific HQ, Twitter Asia Pacific HQ, US Embassy in Singapore, Singapore Ministry of Communication and Information, NATO Senior Leadership meetings, USIP, among others.

Dr. Agarwal obtained Ph.D. from Arizona State University with outstanding dissertation recognition in 2009. He was recognized as one of 'The New Influentials: 20 In Their 20s' by Arkansas Business in 2012. He was recognized with the University-wide Faculty Excellence Award in Research and Creative Endeavors by UALR in 2015 and 2021. Dr. Agarwal received the Social Media Educator of the Year Award at the 21st International Education and Technology Conference in 2015. In 2017 the Arkansas Times featured Dr. Agarwal in their special issue on "Visionary Arkansans”. Dr. Agarwal was nominated as International Academy, Research and Industry Association (IARIA) Fellow in 2017, an Arkansas Academy of Computing (AAoC) Fellow in 2018, and an Arkansas Research Alliance (ARA) Fellow in 2018. He was recognized with the student advocate award in 2019 by UALR. Visit https://profiles.ualr.edu/na10/ for more details.

Employment

• University of Arkansas at Little Rock Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor
  2009 - Present

Education

• Arizona State University Ph.D.
  2003 - 2009
• Indian Institute of Information Technology Allahabad Bachelors of Technology
  1999 - 2003

Projects & Funding

Projects & funding information is unavailable.

Publications (1)

• Please visit https://sites.google.com/ualr.edu/prof-nitin-agarwal/publications for full list of publications
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