DIS welcomes new faculty in Data Science and Library and Information Science

The Department of Information Science is pleased to announce that eight new faculty members will be joining the department for the fall semester.

"I am excited to welcome our eight new faculty members who were carefully selected and are dedicated to teaching and scholarly research in data science and information science," said Jiangping Chen, department chair. "With the addition of our new faculty, we will continue our legacy to produce top-notch information and data science professionals, and to contribute new knowledge to the world in the broad field of Information Science.”

Sharad Sharma
             Sharad Sharma


Dr. Sharad Sharma is a professor in the Department of Information Science. Prior to joining UNT, he was a professor in the Department of Computer Science and director of the Virtual Reality Laboratory at Bowie State University (BSU). He has won the 2018 University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Research. He has also won the Presidential Achievement Award for Distinguished Achievement in Research & Grants in 2022 at BSU. He is a recipient of the DHS Scientific Leadership Award. He specializes in modeling human behavior during evacuations due to emergency and terror events. He is merging data science and virtual reality for advanced visualization. Sharma has published in more than 100 peer-reviewed conferences, journals, and books edited/ book chapters. He has acquired several research grants from various funding agencies such as the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Army Research Laboratory, and the National Science Foundation.

 

 


    Gahangir Hossain

Dr. Gahangir Hossain joins the department as an associate professor. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the University of Memphis, TN and worked at the Purdue School of Engineering and Texas A&M University at the Kingsville and Canyon campuses. Hossain has received more than 2M in research funding from Microsoft, the Department of Energy (DoE), and research grants from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Office of Naval Research (ONR). He teaches courses related to information systems design, information security, decision sciences, intelligent interaction, and he has extensive experience in mentoring and coaching master's and doctoral research students. His research interests include artificial intelligence, machine learning applications, data science, cognitive neuroscience, cybersecurity management, and cyber-human interaction. His peer-reviewed research articles have been published in several reputed journals and conference proceedings. He is also the author of two IT books and several book chapters. Hossain is serving as an active member for several international conference program committees and an ABET program evaluator for computer science and data science programs.

 


Mohammed Aledhari
    Mohammed Aledhari

 

Dr. Mohammed Aledhari joins the Department as an assistant professor. He is a founder and director of the Computational Healthcare and Biotechnology (COHB) Lab. His research interests and expertise are in artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, computational medicine and biology, bioinformatics, and computer vision. Aledhari has more than six years of professional and industry experience as a software engineer team lead before earning his Ph.D. and Postdoc. He has published in more than 45 journals and conferences in top venues, and his work qualities are reflected in more than 8120 citations. He is also an awardee of the 2022 NSF Game Changer Academies for Advancing Research Innovation program, awardee of the 2022 CRA best mentor in North American colleges and universities for mentoring diverse students on high-risk and high-reward projects, and awardee of the 2022 NASA STEM Enrichment and Leadership Enhancement programs.

 

 


Ana Roeschley
    Ana Roeschley

 

Dr. Ana Roeschley will be joining the Department as an assistant professor. Previously, she was the assistant professor of professional practice in the School of Library & Information Science at Louisiana State University. She earned her Ph.D. from the College of Information at UNT where her dissertation focused on participatory archives. Roeschley’s wider research agenda is focused on the relationships between people and archives in an ever-changing world. Before beginning her academic career, Roeschley worked in the Downs-Jones Library and Archives at Huston-Tillotson University. She has won the University of North Texas Information Science Academic Excellence Ph.D. Award and was the inaugural winner of the Dewey E. Carroll Graduate Fellowship.

 

 


Muhammad "Tuan"
             Amith

Dr. Muhammad “Tuan” Amith is a new tenure-track addition to the department within the health informatics specialization. Dr. Amith received his Ph.D. in Biomedical Informatics from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth), and holds a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science and Software Engineering. Previously, he served as an Assistant Professor at UTHealth with the School of Biomedical Informatics. His research involves the use of ontology-supported artificial intelligence in service of human computer interaction tools to improve HPV vaccination rates through conversational agents. His work (ranging from usability, mHealth, social network analysis, natural language processing, etc.) has been recognized with several distinctions from the research community, including the International Medical Informatics Association, International Semantic Web Conference, American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). He has been a recipient and Co-I for past National Institute of Health research grants, and is currently a Co-I for an ongoing Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT)-funded study to further expand the use of AI-based agents for HPV vaccination counseling in Texas. His dissertation which served as the basis of the CPRIT grant was honored by the AMIA as a finalist for best dissertation. He has mentored several graduate and undergraduate students resulting in publication outputs, and he is always interested in independent, enthusiastic students to work with. His collaborative research has also been highlighted by the US Surgeon General, Time magazine, CNBC, and other media outlets. He has mentored several graduate and undergraduate students resulting in publication outputs, and he is always interested in independent, enthusiastic students to work with. Aside from work his personal interests range from action videography, tinkering with technology projects, American muscle cars, elevated hiking, and traveling. Dr. Amith is looking forward to joining the department to help enrich its capacity and will be teaching future health informatics courses.


Tozammel Hossain
  Tozammel Hossain

 

Dr. Tozammel Hossain joins the department as an assistant professor. Before joining UNT, he received his Ph.D. in computer science at Virginia Tech, pursued postdoctoral training at the University of Southern California -Information Sciences Institute, and worked as an assistant research professor at the University of Missouri - Institute for Data Science and Informatics. His research interests broadly lie in applied machine learning and data science, emphasizing solving problems in bioinformatics, health informatics, social and news media, and cybersecurity. He has earned experience working on several projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), IAPRA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). His research has appeared in peer-reviewed conferences and journals, including ACM SIGKDD, IEEE ICDM, AAAI, ACM BCB, IEEE/ACM TCBB, DAMI, and AMIA. His research has also received press coverage in The Conversation, ACM TechNews, and Health & Medicine Week.

 


Brady Lund
        Brady Lund

Dr. Brady D. Lund received his Ph.D. and MLS degrees from Emporia State University. His research focuses on information behavior, user experience, and diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in scholarly communications and library and information science. He is particularly passionate about combatting inequities for researchers in the Global South, improving information access for rural populations, and expanding disability and mental health awareness and inclusion in library and information science. Brady has authored or co-authored over 100 publications, including four books and articles in top journals including JASIS&T, Journal of Information Science, Journal of Documentation, Library Quarterly, Library and Information Science Research, Accountability in Research, and JAMA Network Open. He is active and serves leadership roles in several library science (American Library Association, Association for Rural and Small Libraries), information science (ASIS&T, UXPA), and LIS education (ALISE) associations.

 


Wael Korani
            Wael Korani

 

Dr. Wael Korani is an active researcher in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) including machine learning, data mining, and optimization since 2003. He joins the department as a clinical assistant professor. He is also an Oracle database certified professional. He has proposed several AI problems’ solutions in different research areas, including computer science, engineering, and medical sciences. He proposed a hybrid algorithm that combines Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Bacterial Foraging (BF) algorithms to tackle one of the challenging engineering applications (tuning PID controller). He is the author of a nature inspired algorithm called Mother Tree Optimization (MTO) algorithm. He used his proposed MTO algorithm to tackle several AI problems such as traveling salesman problem and constraint satisfaction problems. He used MTO along with neural network system to propose a diagnostic breast cancer tool. In 2021, he used MTO method to develop a Creative Artificial Intelligence in Interactive Mobile Systems in a cooperation between Mitacs and Ericsson Canada.