Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group

My PhD defense committee: From the top left, Dr. M. Nelson (my co-advisor), Dr. M. Weigle (my advisor), Dr. M. Abdous, Dr. S. Jayarathna, Dr. J. Wu, and M. Aturban (myself).   This year has been tragic and depressing for most of us because of the pandemic, but it has not been that bad for me. I get the fruit of my hard work of almost eight years toward my PhD. I became a doctor and landed a job I love. My academic journey in the USA started around 12 years ago, where I first attended an intensive English program at Portland State University in Portland , Oregon, in 2008. About eight months later, in 2009, I moved to Las Cruces , New Mexico, where I completed my master's degree at New Mexico State University. In August 2012, I got accepted to the ODU 's PhD program. On July 23rd, I successfully (and virtually) defended my PhD dissertation entitled " A Framework for Verifying the Fixity of Archived Web Resources " ( presentation slides ). I never thought that immedia

On July 28, 2020, I defended my PhD dissertation --- Bootstrapping Web Archive Collections From Micro-Collections in Social Media --- a culmination of an 12-year journey that began when I arrived the US from Nigeria in 2007. I remain  grateful to God and many  who made this possible beginning with my father Alexander E. Nwala, my mother, Comfort C. Nwala whose vision I have realized, and my supervisors, Dr. Michael Nelson and Dr. Michele Weigle for guiding me through every paved and dirt road along my journey. I am very excited to join the Observatory on Social Media  (OSoMe) and Networks & agents Network (NaN) research group at Indiana University as a post-doc, under the supervision of Dr. Filippo Menczer . My research would focus on (mis/dis)information diffusion and the detection and countering of online manipulation. Summarizing the trajectory of my PhD research over the past six years is not an easy task. This blog post is an attempt.  2014 -- 2017: Twitter Bots, SERPs, Loca