Filippo Menczer
Filippo Menczer, a faculty member of the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, has been appointed to the rank of Distinguished Professor by Indiana University president Michael A. McRobbie.
Menczer is the third faculty member at the Luddy School to receive the appointment, joining Distinguished Professor of Engineering and Information Science Katy Borner and Distinguished Professor of Informatics and Computing Geoffrey Fox. The distinguished professorship is the most prestigious rank bestowed by IU and honors outstanding scholarship, artistic or literary distinction, or other achievements that have won significant recognition from peers.
“I am very honored and feel that this is a recognition of years of teamwork with wonderful colleagues and amazing students and postdocs at IU,” Menczer said.
Menczer holds a Ph.D. in computer science and cognitive science from the University of California, San Diego, and is an ACM Distinguished Scientist. He also is the director of the Observatory on Social Media at IU and is the former director of the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research. His research spans computational social science, network science, Web science, and data science, with a focus on analyzing and modeling the spread of information and misinformation in social networks while detecting and countering the manipulation of social media.
“We work hard to map how misinformation spreads, model the factors that make social media vulnerable to manipulation, and build artificial intelligence tools to raise awareness in the broader community of information consumers,” Menczer said. “Although our research in the last 10 years has focused on uncovering fake news, social bots, and other kinds of online abuse, there are huge challenges ahead of us. The work has just begun.”
Menczer’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the McDonnell Foundation, and the Knight Foundation among others, and his work has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and a host of other high-profile outlets.
“Fil is richly deserving of this honor,” said Raj Acharya, dean of Luddy. “His groundbreaking work has been vital in identifying and better understanding how misinformation spreads online, and he is tackling one of the most critical issues facing our future. The faculty at the Luddy School rank among the best in the world, and Fil’s research and the impact he is having on our students and his discipline make him the perfect example of how Luddy is taking a leadership role as technology moves into tomorrow.”
Established in 2000, the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering is one of the broadest of its kind. Blending the fields of computer science, informatics, intelligent systems engineering, information and library science, and data science, the Luddy School is home to more than 3,000 students from the United States and around the world. The forward-looking School’s faculty are world-renowned experts in their respective fields and lead the way in critical areas such as artificial intelligence, complex networks and systems, bioinformatics, high performance computing, programming languages, security, healthcare, human-computer interaction, computer engineering, bioengineering, and AI-driven-engineering. Computer and information sciences research expenditures are ranked 12th in the country.