日 期 : 114年06月05日(四)
時 間 ：18:00 ~ 19:30
地 點 ：語文館LAN007
主講人 ：Chang-Tien Lu (呂昌田) is a Professor of Computer Science, Curriculum Lead at the Innovation Campus, and Associate Director of the Sanghani Center for AI and Data Analytics at Virginia Tech.
講 題 ：Future Insights: Harnessing AI and Social Media for Advanced Event and Epidemic Forecasting
Abstract:
In an era where information flows rapidly through digital platforms, social media data offers a powerful tool for predicting and responding to global challenges. This talk presents advanced techniques for forecasting societal events and epidemics by leveraging social media data. I will introduce an automated system that analyzes open-source data from platforms such as Twitter, blogs, and news articles to predict events like natural disasters and public demonstrations, addressing challenges like unstructured text and dynamic relationships. Additionally, I will discuss SimNest, a deep learning framework that integrates computational epidemiology with social media data to enhance real-time disease outbreak monitoring and improve epidemic response strategies. Finally, I will explore a multi-task learning framework that improves event forecasting across regions by addressing issues such as data imbalances and geographic differences, with notable success demonstrated using Twitter data from Latin America. These approaches highlight the power of combining social media and machine learning to improve prediction accuracy and enable timely interventions for both societal events and health crises.
Bio:
Chang-Tien Lu is a Professor of Computer Science, Curriculum Lead at the Innovation Campus, and Associate Director of the Sanghani Center for AI and Data Analytics at Virginia Tech. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 2001. An ACM Distinguished Scientist and IEEE Fellow, Dr. Lu’s research spans spatial informatics, urban computing, artificial intelligence, and intelligent transportation systems. He has authored over 250 publications in top-tier journals and conferences, with research supported by the NSF, NIH, DoD, and DoE. He serves as an Associate Editor for ACM Transactions on Spatial Algorithms and Systems, Data & Knowledge Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Big Data, and GeoInformatica. Dr. Lu has held leading roles in organizing major conferences, including serving as General Co-Chair of ACM SIGSPATIAL (2009, 2020, 2021), SSTD (2017), IEEE Big Data (2024), and IEEE ICDM (2025). He also served as Secretary (2008–2011) and Vice Chair (2011–2014) of ACM SIGSPATIAL, actively contributing to the advancement of the field and the broader computing community.