Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group

This summer,  I was thrilled to have the opportunity to deliver  an invited talk at the Digital Business Day event organized by the SPiRIT research group at Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences , Germany. I was invited for this talk by Dr. Michael Herzog , head of the SPiRIT research group, guest faculty at the Computer Science department at ODU , collaborator with Neuro-Information Retrieval and Data Science (NIRDS) lab , and good friend of Web Science and Digital Libraries (WS-DL) research group . This was my second visit to Magdeburg-Stendal University to present our latest eye-tracking research to the SPiRIT research group. Digital Day Event at Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences, Summer 2025 First Visit: SPiRIT Lecture Series (Summer 2023) In summer 2023, I traveled to Germany to attend the Eye Tracking Research and Applications (ETRA) 2023 conference held in Tübingen, Germany. Following the conference, I extended my trip to eastern Germany to...

  DAAD RISE Professional scholarship holders at RISE Professional conference in Kassel, Germany This summer, I had the privilege of being selected for the RISE (Research Internships in Science and Engineering) Professional program organized by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) . During the RISE Professional research internship, I worked at  Petanux GmbH in Bonn, Germany, under the supervision of Prof. Mahdi Bohlouli . DAAD RISE has two programs that offer summer research internships in Germany to students from the North America, Great Britain, and Ireland. RISE Germany program offers internships to undergraduate students at German universities and research institutions, while RISE Professional program offers internships to graduate students at German companies and research institutions with strong relations to the industry. This year, 246 North American, British, and Irish students applied for 122 internship positions and 70 scholarships were awarded for RISE Pro...

From July 24-29, 2022, I had the honor of participating in the Ernst Strüngmann Forum on Digital Ethology , held in Frankfurt, Germany at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) on the campus of Goethe University . (This was a reschedule of an event that was originally planned to take place in Fall 2020.) Julia Lupp, Director of the Ernst Strüngmann Forum , describes these events as more of an "intellectual retreat" than a conference. Typically, about 40 scholars and experts from various fields are invited to spend a week in discussions around various aspects of a common topic. Results of the discussions are later published in book form (and online) by MIT Press through the Strüngmann Forum Reports . The forum on Digital Ethology was chaired by Tomáš Paus  and Hye-Chung Kum . The aim of the forum was to "explore how digital ethology — the study of human behavior as captured by its digital footprint — can be used to quantify the human environment and facilita...

"Dad, he is pushing random doorbell buttons", Dr. Herzog 's daughter complained about her brother while we were walking back home late night after having dinner in the city center of Potsdam. Dr. Herzog smiled and replied, "it's rather a cool idea, let's all do it". Repeating the TPDL 2015 tradition , Dr. Michael Herzog's family was hosting me ( Sawood Alam ) at their place after the TPDL 2016 conference in Hannover . Leaving some cursing people behind (who were disturbed by false doorbells), he asked me, "how was your conference this year?" Day 1 Between the two parallel sessions of the first day, I attended the Doctoral Consortium session as a participant. The chair Kjetil Nørvåg , Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway, began the session with the formal introduction of the session structure and timeline. Out of the seven accepted Doctoral Consortium submissions, only five could make it to the workshop. Õnne...

Dr. Herzog : This large green area on your left is Sanssouci Park . It has 11 palaces in it. Yasmin : I want to visit this park after we are back from the university, can we? Dr. Herzog : We sure can... I think we will be back before sunset. Yasmin : I love beautiful things. Dr. Herzog : Who doesn't? Sawood : [Smiles] The three souls were heading to the Hochschule Magdeburg-Stendal University from Potsdam, Germany in Dr. Michael Herzog 's car for a lunch lecture on the topic of Digital Preservation. Yasmin and Sawood from the Web Science and Digita Libraries Research Group of the Old Dominion University , Norfolk, Virginia were invited for the talk by Dr. Herzog at his SPiRIT Research Group . The two WSDL members have presented their work at TPDL 2015 in Poznan, Poland then on their way back home they ware halted and hosted by Dr. Herzog in Germany for the lunch lecture. You may also enjoy the TPDL 2015 trip report by Yasmin . Passing by beautiful landsc...