Qatar Computing Research Institute
Discovery to Delivery
Social Computing
The evolution of the Web from a technology platform to a social milieu has resulted in an unprecedented reliance of users on the Web to assist them in a variety of tasks. Information on the (Social) Web is massive and is characterized by a combination of factual data, behavioral data, and opinion data in the form of user-generated comments, tags, ratings and reviews.
Users are both content providers and content consumers. Accounting for their preferences and biases is key to the effective exploration of (social) content and a building block for region-specific research. As a result, new semantics for information access, scalable solutions for mining, search personalization, context-sensitive recommendation, and novel information exploration paradigms, are emerging.
At QCRI, we conduct research that extracts and refines information from the social web to fuel time-sensitive applications, including the analysis of current news and natural disasters. We use methods that help us extract credible, relevant and timely information. We draw from techniques in several areas, including databases, machine learning, large-scale data mining, and information retrieval. We work closely with the Distributed System center to develop our solutions on top of a robust architecture, with the Data Analytics center to leverage scalable and efficient processing of large data volumes, and with the Arabic Language Technologies center to generate scientific work that is locally relevant to the region and has global impact in our research communities.
We are hiring!
As of April 2013 the Social Computing team includes:
- Gautam Das, Principal Scientist- Patrick Meier, Director of Social Innovation
- Carlos Castillo, Senior Scientist
- Ingmar Weber, Senior Scientist
- Sofiane Abbar, Senior Software Engineer
- Dr. Muhammad Imran, Post Doc Researcher
- Kiran GVR, Software Engineer
- Naeemul Hassan (Research Associate)
- Zhe Liu (Research Associate - Pennsylvania State University, USA)
- Habibur Rahman (Research Associate - University of Texas at Arlington, USA)
- Jakob Rogstadius (Research Associate - Madeira University, Portugal)
- Diego Saez (Research Associate - Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain)
- Saravanan Thirumuruganathan (Research Associate - University of Texas at Arlington, USA)
- Noora Al-Emadi (Research Assistant)
We are looking for scientists with a strong background in computational social science, information retrieval, machine learning, data mining, human-computer interaction, graph theory, text mining, or other topics, and that are passionate about social media data and applications.
Contact us at qcricareers@qf.org.qa including "Social Computing" in the subject line if you would like to learn more.
Principal Scientist
Dr. Gautam Das
I have been impressed by the vision and growth potential of a world-class research institute in this part of the world.
In the News
QCRI scientists recognized with best paper at ISCRAM 2013
22/05/2013
Extracting Information Nuggets from Disaster Related Messages in Social Media authored by QCRI's Muhammad Imran, Carlos Castillo, Patrick Meier, former QCRI post-doc Shady Elbassuoni and Fernando Diaz of Microsoft Research was recognized as the best paper at this year's ISCRAM conference.
Crisis Maps: Harnessing the Power of Big Data to Deliver Humanitarian Assistance
19/05/2013
Dr. Patrick Meier talks about QCRI's work to solve major humanitarian challenges in Forbes.
Research proposal receives QNRF NPRP award
15/05/2013
Dr. Halima Bensmail, QCRI Scientific Computing, is a key investigator on a research proposal awarded by QNRF's sixth NPRP cycle for the proposal titled: Quantitative mapping of HIV incidence among stable couples and evaluation of impact of interventions targeting sero-discordant couples.
Upcoming Events
2013
29/05/2013,
Rhodes Island, Greece
Dr. Halima Bensmail, Senior Scientist of QCRI's Scientific Computing team, is an Invited speaker at the PETRAE, giving a talk on “Time course and Neural Representation of Memorability: faces and places: an alpha-sparse model for classifying memorability regions”
For more info on PETRAE please visit www.petrae.org
09/06/2013 - 14/06/2013,
Atlanta, Georgia USA
The North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (NAACL) Annual Conference takes place in Atlanta, Georgia (USA) from June 9 - 14, 2013.
22/06/2013 - 27/06/2013,
New York, New York, USA
Our Data Analytics team will be at 2013 SIGMOD / PODS in New York. The team will present two papers.
Press Releases
QCRI invites applicants for summer internships
08/05/2013
Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) will be kicking off its 2013 summer internship program soon, and invites computer science and computer engineering students to apply. The intensive two-month internship program provides students with the opportunity to work closely with top researchers, and receive practical work experience based on their studies. Applications will be accepted until May 12, 2013.
Presenting a Vision for the Future of Humanitarian Technology
31/03/2013
Dr Patrick Meier, Director of Social Innovation at Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) and the world’s foremost expert on humanitarian technology, explores the rise of digital humanitarian response and how new technologies are reshaping the humanitarian space in an upcoming talk.
QCRI and Boeing to collaborate on Data Analytics Research
24/03/2013
Joint project will seek to identify patterns in large data streams
Research collaboration broadens Boeing engagement in Qatar, strengthens relationship with Qatar Foundation
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