A team of University of Arkansas at Little Rock students are elated after winning the most awards in program history during the National Model Arab League Conference held March 29 to April 2 in Washington, D.C. Continue reading “UA Little Rock Students Have Successful Bid at National Model Arab League Conference”
A group of Model Arab League members from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock have been recognized for their diplomatic skills during the Southeast Regional Model Arab League competition held March 17-19 at Converse University in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Continue reading “UA Little Rock Students Win Overall Outstanding Delegation Award at Southeast Regional Model Arab League”
Donaghey Scholar Caleb Mimms will graduate on May 11 with a B.A. in political science and international studies with a minor in economics. Continue reading “Graduate Student Spotlight: Caleb Mimms”
Chloe McGehee, from Bryant, Arkansas, has graduated from UA Little Rock with bachelor’s degrees in mass communication and political science. Continue reading “UA Little Rock Prepares Student Journalist to Take On the World After Graduation”
Award-winning speaker and disability rights advocate Amelia Loken will graduated this month with a Master of Public Administration degree. Prior to this, she received her undergraduate degree at UA Little Rock in Interpretation: ASL/English in 2017. Continue reading “GRADUATING STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: AMELIA LOKEN”
In celebration of Women’s History Month, UA Little Rock is profiling women in leadership positions who are making a difference at the university and in the community. Continue reading “Women to Watch at UA Little Rock 2023: Yvonne Rodriguez”
More than 20 junior high and high school students spent a week learning how to create immersive games and virtual reality content for Meta during the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s third annual virtual reality summer camp held July 31 to Aug. 4. Continue reading “Students Learn Immersive Gaming Skills During Virtual Reality Camp”
Dr. Arya Basu is a Virtual Reality/Human-Computer Interaction researcher investigating human spatial decision-making in virtual environments and its impact on translational training and skill-building. Dr. Basu completed his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Georgia focusing on designing and evaluating ubiquitous wearable Virtual Reality experiences. As part of his graduate school curriculum, Dr. Basu has designed and deployed extensive user studies in the field involving more than 100 subjects at a time.
From 2016 to 2022, Dr. Basu spearheaded the public scholarship mission through meaningful 3D visualization and effective human-computer interaction at Emory University’s Center for Digital Scholarship. As a staff research scientist, he has created and configured real-time simulations (of places/spaces of historical importance) using a variety of 3D computer modeling, simulation software, and geospatial data. He has been engaged in the active development of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality-based visualization projects in an academic setting by serving various departments ranging from art history to the School of Medicine.
Dr. Basu is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at UA Little Rock and a research fellow in the Emerging Analytics Center. Dr. Basu is passionate about creating experiential simulations of places that do not exist or hyper-realistic spaces to understand human behavior in simulated space-time.
Dr. Nitin Agarwal is the Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, director of the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS), and faculty fellow for the International Computer Science Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Nitin Agarwal’s research aims to push the boundaries of our understanding of digital and cyber social behaviors that emerge and evolve constantly in modern information and communication platforms. At COSMOS, he leads projects with a combined funding of over $25 million from an array of U.S. federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, DARPA, Department of State, and National Science Foundation. He plays a significant role in the long-term partnership between UA Little Rock and the Department of Homeland Security. He developed publicly available social media analysis tools (Blogtracker and VTracker), assisting NATO Strategic Communications and Public Affairs, European Defense agencies, Australian Defense Science and Technology agency’s strategic policy group, Singapore government, Arkansas Attorney General’s office, among others. Dr. Agarwal participates in the National Tech Innovation Hub launched by the U.S. Department of State to defeat foreign-based propaganda.
Dr. Agarwal’s research contributions lie at the intersection of social computing, behavior-cultural modeling, collective action, social cyber forensics, artificial intelligence, data mining, machine learning, smart health, and privacy. From Saudi Arabian women’s right to drive cyber campaigns to Autism awareness campaigns to ISIS’ and anti-West/anti-NATO disinformation campaigns, he is directing several projects that have made foundational and applicational contributions to social and computational sciences at COSMOS, particularly in understanding coordinated cyber campaigns. He has published 11 books and over 300 articles in top-tier, peer-reviewed forums, including NATO’s Defense StratCom Journal, Army University Press, CANSOFCOM’s Future Conflict journal, and Baltic Security, among others, with several best paper awards and nominations. His most recent book explores deviant behaviors on the Internet and is published by Springer in their series on cybersecurity. Local, national, and international media, including Bloomberg, US News, KUAR, Arkansas Business, Arkansas Times, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and many others, have covered his work. Over the last several years, Dr. Agarwal has spoken at various public and professional, national and international forums such as NATO’s StratCom COE (Riga, Latvia), DARPA, US Department of State, US Naval Space and Warfare (SPAWAR), US Pentagon’s Strategic Multilevel Assessment groups, US National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine, US Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Facebook Asia Pacific HQ, Twitter Asia Pacific HQ, US Embassy in Singapore, Singapore Ministry of Communication and Information, NATO Senior Leadership meetings, USIP, among others. He serves as technical advisor to Little Rock-based firms, including through the FinTech Accelerator.
Dr. Agarwal obtained a Ph.D. from Arizona State University with outstanding dissertation recognition in 2009. He was recognized as one of ‘The New Influentials: 20 In Their 20s’ by Arkansas Business in 2012. He was recognized with the universitywide Faculty Excellence Award in Research and Creative Endeavors by UA Little Rock in 2015 and 2021. Dr. Agarwal received the Social Media Educator of the Year Award at the 21st International Education and Technology Conference in 2015. In 2017 the Arkansas Times featured Dr. Agarwal in their special issue on “Visionary Arkansans.”
Dr. Agarwal was nominated as International Academy, Research and Industry Association (IARIA) Fellow in 2017, an Arkansas Academy of Computing (AAoC) Fellow in 2018, and an Arkansas Research Alliance (ARA) Fellow in 2018. In 2021, his research was recognized as one of the top 10 solutions for “Countering Cognitive Warfare: The invisible Threat” by NATO’s Innovation Hub out of 132 teams from the 30 NATO member nations. In 2022, his COVID-19 Misinformation tracker was recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as one of the key technological innovations globally to address the COVID-19 pandemic. IEEE, the world’s premier electrical and electronic engineering professional organization, recognized Dr. Agarwal as a senior member in 2022.
