On June 11th, virtually in front of the Examination Committee – headed by Barbara Plank (IT University of Copenhagen) and with members Vito Latora (Queen Mary University of London) and Luca Aiello (Nokia Bell Labs) – Obaida Hanteer successfully defended his PhD.
Well done!
Obaida’s research took first a practical approach to community detection in the context of multilayer networks (mainly working with social media data [, ]) and then, it stepped back and looked with a critical eye at the tools and the (often implicit) assumptions made by multilayer community detection methods [, ]. His research, as acknowledged by the committee, was brave – in challenging the status quo and the assumptions of many well-established methods – and compelling helping us remembering the importance of asking questions about the tools and the methods we use.
After his experience at ITU Obaida accepted another interdisciplinary challenge by joining the Novo Nordisk Foundation – where he’ll be working on applying multi-layer networks concepts to the interactions of human’s gut microbiome. We wish Obaida all the best for his future career!
Tiago is a thriving computer scientist joining us from University of Michigan. He is interested in success and health issues online, and he has both research and industry experience. At NERDS, Tiago will research social dynamics and success using his expertise in computational social science, data mining, machine learning, social network analysis, and health informatics.