Nitin Agarwal

Biography

Nitin Agarwal, PhD, is a Research Affiliate at ICSI. At the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, he is the Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Donaghey Distinguished Professor and Director of the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS) Research Center. Prof. Agarwal serves on the Arkansas AI Taskforce nominated by Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. 

Dr. Agarwal’s research focuses on social computing, data mining, and knowledge discovery in social media, modeling social dynamics, big “social” data analytics, and privacy. At COSMOS, he leads projects with over $30 million in funding from U.S. federal agencies focused on computational social science, leveraging AI, data mining, and network analysis to study cyber behaviors, social movements, and cognitive threats. He has developed an interdisciplinary research program on social computing with both foundational and applied contributions. On the applied side, his research covers event analysis, cyber threat and cyberterrorism monitoring, smart health, social media in education, and socially aware mobile networks. 

Dr. Agarwal developed the publicly available social media analysis tools, Blogtracker and VTracker, which support NATO Strategic Communications, European defense agencies, Australia’s Defense Science and Technology agency, Singapore’s government, and the Arkansas Attorney General’s office, among others. He is also involved in the National Tech Innovation Hub, launched by the U.S. Department of State to combat foreign propaganda. As chief technical advisor for Bond.AI, a Little Rock-based FinTech company, he contributes to developing AI-driven financial behavioral models.

Dr. Agarwal has published 12 books and over 300 articles in top-tier peer-reviewed publications, and his work has been covered by a wide array of local, national, and international media. He has spoken at various public and professional, national, and international forums such as the NATO StratCom COE (Riga, Latvia), DARPA, U.S. Department of State, U.S. Naval Space and Warfare (SPAWAR), U.S. Pentagon Strategic Multilevel Assessment groups, U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Facebook Asia Pacific HQ, Twitter Asia Pacific HQ, U.S. Embassy in Singapore, Singapore Ministry of Communication and Information, NATO Senior Leadership meetings, and USIP. He obtained a PhD from Arizona State University with outstanding dissertation recognition.

Publications

Selected Honors & Awards

• COVID-19 Scam Tracker recognized by the World Health Organization as a key technological innovation globally to address the COVID-19 pandemic (2022)
• Research recognized as a top 10 solution for “Countering Cognitive Warfare: The Invisible Threat” by NATO’s Innovation Hub (2021)
• University-wide Faculty Excellence Award in Research and Creative Endeavors (2015, 2021), University of Arkansas – Little Rock
• Nominated as an Arkansas Research Alliance (ARA) Fellow (2018)
• Nominated as an Arkansas Academy of Computing (AAoC) Fellow (2018)
• Featured in the Arkansas Times special issue on “Visionary Arkansans” (2017)
• Social Media Educator of the Year Award, 21st International Education and Technology Conference (2015)
• Recognized as one of ‘The New Influentials: 20 In Their 20s,’ Arkansas Business (2012)

Selected Leadership Activities

• Fellow, International Academy, Research, and Industry Association (IARIA)
• Fellow, Arkansas Research Alliance
• Member, Association for Information Systems (AIS)
• Member, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Senior Member, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
• Member, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
• Member, International Network of Social Network Analysis (INSNA)

ICSI Activity