Department of Computer Science, UNC - Charlotte
430E Woodward Hall
9201 University City Blvd. Charlotte NC 28269
I am an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department in the College of Computing and Informatics at the University of North Carolina - Charlotte (UNCC). I have a joint appointment with the Department of Psychology as an Assistant Professor in Cognitive Science. I am also an affiliate faculty member of the School of Data Science.
I direct the SoLID Social Language and Intelligent Dialogue Agents Lab at UNCC.My research interests are in the areas of Natural Language Processing, Data Science, Computational Sociolinguistics, Cognitive Science, and Artificial Intelligence.
I have extensive experience working in these areas of research through federally-funded grants as a Senior Research Scientist at the Research Foundation of SUNY.
I received my PhD in Computer Science from the University at Albany - State University of New York in 2016. For my dissertation, I created a persuasive virtual chat agent, capable of changing people's opinion in online discussions.
This research on persuasion,chatbots and sociolinguistics has resulted in several active funded projects (DARPA, ARO, ONR and NSF) for which I currently serve as a PI and co-PI.