Leman Akoglu, Heinz College

About me

I am an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University's H. John Heinz III College of Information Systems and Public Policy since Fall 2016. I also hold courtesy appointments at the Machine Learning Department (MLD) and the Computer Science Department (CSD) of School of Computer Science (SCS).

At Heinz, I direct the Data Analytics Techniques Algorithms (DATA) Lab.

My research interests are in data mining, knowledge discovery, graph mining, machine learning, and online media analysis, with specific focus on identifying and characterizing patterns and anomalies in large-scale, time-varying, multi-modal data sources through scalable computational methods.

A short bio can be found here.

Prospective students

I am looking for PhD students! Criteria: (self-) motivated, hardworking, curious, background in stats/computer science/math.
Those interested in joining DATA Lab and/or working with my research group:

if you are at CMU: please directly contact me by email with your CV and a brief statement about your interests.
if you are not yet at CMU: please apply to (1) Heinz College's Ph.D. program in Information Systems and Management or (2) PhD Program in Machine Learning & Public Policy (joint between MLD/SCS and Heinz College).

News:

May, 2017 Our paper on promoting targeted time-limited digital coupons via purchase forecasts will appear at the Applied Data Science Track at ACM SIGKDD'17.

Mar, 2017 Awarded an Adobe University Marketing Research Grant for our project titled Real-time Detection of Online Click and Display Ad Exchange Fraud. Thanks Adobe!

I will speak at the Women in Data Science (WinDS) Workshop at SIAM SDM, April 2017

Jan, 2017 Our paper on spam URL detection to appear at PAKDD'17 and another work on explaining class differences via attributes to appear at WWW'17 Web Science Track.

Dec, 2016 Our work on Ranking in Heterogeneous Networks with Geo-Location Information will appear at SIAM SDM'17.

Sep, 2016 We are building ODDS (Outlier Detection Data Sets) -- an online data repository! Stay tuned for updates!

Sep, 2016 1 (short) paper Sequential Ensemble Learning for Outlier Detection: A Bias-Variance Perspective is accepted to ICDM'16.

Sep, 2016 Our DAMI article on a general framework for optimizing network robustness by edge rewiring is published in Volume 30, Issue 5.

Aug, 2016 I moved to CMU's Heinz College, where I will focus on data mining for societal problems through big data and computational methods. I am looking for students (PhD and MS)!

July, 2016 Talk on anomaly mining at the US Army Research Labs.

June, 2016 Talk on anomaly mining at the 2016 ICML Workshop on Anomaly Detection.

June, 2016 Talk on opinion spam detection at Flipkart Inc. and Amazon India.

May, 2016 1 paper Fast Memory-Efficient Anomaly Detection in Streaming Heterogeneous Graphs at ACM SIGKDD'16.

May, 2016 Won SIAM SDM 2016 Best Paper Runner-up award for joint work with Bryan Perozzi on scalable ranking of anomalies in attributed graphs!

Apr, 2016 Keynote speaker at the 12th International Workshop on Mining and Learning with Graphs (MLG) (co-located with KDD) on Aug 14th in San Francisco.
Apr, 2016 Invited to serve as Workshops Co-Chair of ACM SIGKDD 2017.
Apr, 2016 Invited speaker at the ICML 2016 Anomaly Detection Workshop on June 24th in NYC.
Mar, 2016 Keynote speaker at the 2016 SDM Workshop on Mining Networks and Graphs: "Fraud Detection with Networks and Beyond" on May 7th in Miami.
Mar, 2016 ACM SIGKDD 2016 Workshop ODD 4.0: Outlier Definition, Detection, and Description On-Demand, with F. Bell (Uber), E. Muller (HPI Germany), T. Senator (IARPA)
Mar, 2016 1 short paper Temporal Opinion Spam Detection by Multivariate Indicative Signals to appear at ICWSM'16)
Feb, 2016 Invited to serve as Workshops Co-Chair of SIAM SDM 2017.
Feb, 2016 Our work on social security fraud detection with V. Van Vlasselaer, T. Eliassi-Rad, M. Snoeck, and B. Baesens is to appear in the Management Science Journal.
Jan, 2016 Invited Associate Editorship for the IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE) Journal.
Jan, 2016 Invited to the Editorial Board of the Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery (DMKD) Journal.
Jan, 2016 Our work on building anomaly ensembles is to appear in the Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data (TKDD) Journal.
Dec, 2015 3 papers on attributed graph anomalies and opinion spam at SIAM SDM'16.
Nov, 2015 1 paper Optimizing Network Robustness by Edge Rewiring: A General Framework at Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery (DAMI) (To appear at ECML PKDD'16)
Nov, 2015 SIGKDD 2016 Student Travel Awards Co-chair
Nov, 2015 ECML PKDD 2016 PhD Forum Co-chair
Nov, 2015 Talk on "3D's of Anomaly Mining" at University of Illinois at Chicago
Nov, 2015 Talk on "Semi-supervised Learning with Multi-Graphs" at Tepper School of Business at CMU
Oct, 2015 Talk on "3D's of Anomaly Mining" at KU Leuven
Oct, 2015 Attending Workshop on Information Networks (WIN) at NYU Business School (1 paper and 1 poster presentation).
Sep, 2015 Invited speaker at the NII Shonan Meeting on "Analytics on Complex Networks: Scalable Solutions for Empirical Questions" Japan, Feb 2016.
July, 2015 DARPA grant joint with IBM, Northwestern, UIC, and Stony Brook. Thanks DARPA!
July, 2015 Offering a new course: Data Science Fundamentals this Fall.
June, 2015 1 paper Discovering Opinion Spammer Groups by Network Footprints at ECML/PKDD'15.
May, 2015 Received a Facebook Faculty Gift. Thanks Facebook!
May, 2015 1 paper Collective Opinion Spam Detection: Bridging Review Networks and Metadata at ACM SIGKDD'15.
Apr, 2015 Best Research Paper at SIAM SDM 2015. Congrats Hau and Shuchu!
Apr, 2015 KDD 2015 tutorial "Graph-Based User Behavior Modeling: From Prediction to Fraud Detection" with Alex Beutel and Christos Faloutsos.
Apr, 2015 Co-chairing KDD 2015 Workshop on Outlier Definition, Detection, and Description (ODDx3). Submit your work!
Mar, 2015 NSF CAREER award (2015-2020). Thanks NSF! [Project_page]
Feb, 2015 1 paper Correlation of Node Importance Measures: An Empirical Study through Graph Robustness at WWW'15 (Web Science Track).
Jan, 2015 Invited talk at Workshop on Statistical and Computational Challenges in Networks, Web Mining, and Cybersecurity, Montreal, Canada (May 4-8).
Dec, 2014 2 papers Less is More: Building Selective Anomaly Ensembles and Where Graph Topology Matters: The Robust Subgraph Problem at SIAM SDM'15.
Nov, 2014 Invited talk at Huawei Technologies R and D, Santa Clara, CA.
June, 2014 1 paper Guilt-by-Constellation: Fraud Detection by Suspicious Clique Memberships at HICSS'15.
Sep, 2014 Slides and Software for our SIGKDD 2014 paper is now online.
Sep, 2014 New course Data Mining meets Graph Mining this Fall.
July, 2014 Invited talk at NICTA Sydney, AU
July, 2014 Best paper award at ADC'14.
June, 2014 1 paper Fast Nearest Neighbor Search on Large Time-Evolving Graphs at ECML/PKDD'14.
June, 2014 2 papers Watch Your Tags: Analysis of Question Response Time in StackOverflow and Joint Voting Prediction for Questions and Answers in CQA at IEEE/ACM ASONAM'14.
May, 2014 1 paper Focused Clustering and Outlier Detection in Large Attributed Graphs at ACM SIGKDD'14.
April, 2014 DAMI Survey on Graph-based Anomaly Detection
April, 2014 ODD^2 @ KDD2014: Workshop on Outlier Detection and Description under Data Diversity
Mar 20, 2014 Attend Facebook Machine Learning Open House, Menlo Park, CA
Mar 19, 2014 Invited talk at Twitter Inc., San Francisco, CA
Mar 17, 2014 Invited talk at University of California, Santa Barbara
Mar, 2014 1 (full) paper Quantifying Political Polarity based on Bipartite Opinion Networks is accepted to ICWSM'14.
Mar, 2014 1 (full) paper ConnotationWordNet: Learning Connotation of the Word+Sense Network at ACL'14 for presentation.
Feb, 2014 SDM Early Career Travel Grant, thanks SIAM!
Jan, 2014 1 paper User Churn in Focused Q&A Sites: Characterizations and Prediction is accepted to WWW'14 WebSci for presentation.
1 (full) paper Make It or Break It: Manipulating Robustness in Large Networks is accepted to SIAM SDM'14.
Apr 7, 2014 Full-day Workshop BGM @ WWW 2014 on Big Graph Mining
1 (short) paper on External Evaluation of Topic Models: A Graph Mining Approach is accepted to ICDM'13.
Teaching Machine Learning this Spring!
1 paper on Sex Differences in the Human Connectome is accepted to BHI'13.
Tutorial on Big Graph Mining at this year's ASONAM. Slides right here
Check out my new course Networks and Data Mining Techniques

Research interests

Large-scale graph mining
Anomaly, event, and fraud detection
Statistical data analysis and applied machine learning
Social and information media & network analysis
Recommender systems

Selected Honors and Awards

NSF CAREER Award, 2015-2020
Best Research Paper Runner-up Award, SIAM SDM 2016
Best Research Paper Award, SIAM SDM 2015
Army Research Office Young Investigator Award, 2013
Best Paper Award, PAKDD 2010
Best Knowledge Discovery Paper Award, ECML/PKDD 2009

Background

I got my Ph.D. from the Computer Science Department (CSD) at Carnegie Mellon University in Aug. 2012 (I defended this). I was extremely fortunate to have Prof. Christos Faloutsos as my Ph.D. advisor. During my doctoral studies, I also worked at IBM T. J. Watson Research Labs (two summers) and Microsoft Research at Redmond (one summer).
I hold a B.S. in Computer Science from Bilkent University, where I was fortunate to be advised by Prof. Ozgur Ulusoy.