DAC Student Spotlight: MD Momen Bhuiyan

MD Momen Bhuiyan, a Ph.D. student in computer science at the Discovery Analytics Center, is focusing his research on social computing. He is currently working on news consumption issues in relation to social media, trying to solve problems of fake news through computation and design.

“The problem of fake news is endemic in our social feeds,” Bhuiyan said. “As a solution, I am using design as a way of helping users identify problematic information sources.”

In November, he presented a poster, “Feed Reflect: A Tool for Nudging Users to Assess News Credibility on Twitter,” at the 2018 ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing in New York City. Collaborators included his advisor Tanushree Mitra.

Bhuiyan holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. He was attracted to the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech because of its diverse faculty and great reputation in Human Computer Interaction (HCI).

As an undergraduate, he was primarily interested in the application of computing tools and most of his exposure was to data mining and natural language processing.  “My undergraduate experience helped me build a repertoire for their applications in graduate school,” he said.

“My research at DAC has allowed me to connect with a students in other fields who work on interconnected problems,” Bhuiyan said. “This opportunity is valuable in doing graduate work.”

Bhuiyan, on track to graduate in Spring of 2020, said he would like to apply his skills in an industry position where he could make a meaningful contribution.