Munmun De Choudhury
Munmun.Dechoudhury@asu.edu
PhD Student/Research Assistant

• Academic Background:

  I am a 4th year Computer Science PhD Student at the Arizona State University, Tempe (ASU). My advisor is Dr Hari Sundaram. I work on knowledge mining and computational modeling of communication dynamics in online social networks. My work is also closely intertwined with the broader research goal of the Reflective Living group at AME (Arts, Media & Engineering) wherein we seek to improve the human condition based on our experiences on variagated media. Earlier, I received a Bachelor of Technology (B. Tech) in Computer Science & Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Bhopal in Bhopal, India in 2005.

• Recent Updates!

• I presented our work on "connecting media to community" at ICME 2009 (session - Social media and gaming), July 2, 2009.

• I visited Avaya Labs, Basking Ridge, NJ for an invited talk on our ASU-Avaya collaboration; and presented the work we have been doing over the past one year, June 18, 2009.

• I have joined the Microeconomics and Social Systems group at Yahoo! Research, NY as a summer research intern under Duncan Watts, May 18, 2009.

• Research Interests:

  What?
  My primary research focus revolves around computational modeling of communication dynamics in online media-rich social networks. The goal of this research is firstly, to understand how human communication on online social media impacts large-scale sociological phenomenon, such as network growth, influence propagation and community evolution, and secondly, to study the connection of media creation and sharing with individuals and communities.
  
  Why?
  Social network mining and data discovery can help personalizing search algorithms better to user needs and can also help determine interesting or authoritative people in organizations. At the macro-level, e.g. a corporation, this research can help in re-defining existing techniques of targeted advertising and enable mining collaborations and sentiments of communities with respect to external impulses. Broadly, analyzing the human communication process (on online social media) can also help understand ourselves better along with the semantics inherent in our daily lives as individuals and as collectives.
  
  How?
  I look at analysis of communication dynamics from three coupled facets:
  (a) communication and individuals (emergent local properties),
  (b) communication and online communities (emergent global properties),
  (c) communication and rich media (properties of the shared media elements centered around emergent local and global properties).

• My research summary in pdf.
• My complete CV in pdf.
• Publications

• Choudhury, M. D., Sundaram, H., John, A., and Seligmann, D. D. (2009). Social Synchrony: Predicting Mimicry of User Actions in Online Social Media. Accepted to appear in Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Social Computing (Vancouver, Canada, August 29-31, 2009), SocialCom '09. (Acceptance rate: 9%)
  (pdf)(slides)

• Choudhury, M. D. (2009). Modeling and Predicting Group Activity over Time in Online Social Media. Accepted to appear in Proceedings of the Twentieth ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia (Torino, Italy, June 29 - July 1, 2009). HT '09.
  (pdf)(poster)

• Lin, Y-R., Sundaram, H., Choudhury, M. D., Kelliher, A. (2009). Temporal Patterns in Social Media Streams: Theme Discovery and Evolution using Joint Analysis of Content and Context. Accepted to appear in Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia & Expo (Cancun, Mexico, June 28- July 3, 2009). ICME '09 (Invited Paper).
  (pdf)(slides)

• Choudhury, M. D., Sundaram, H., Lin, Y-R., John, A., and Seligmann, D. D. (2009). Connecting Content to Community in Social Media via Image Content, User Tags and User Communication. Accepted to appear in Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia & Expo (Cancun, Mexico, June 28- July 3, 2009). ICME '09. (Acceptance rate: 22%)
  (pdf)(slides)

• Choudhury, M. D., Sundaram, H., John, A., and Seligmann, D. D. (2009). What Makes Conversations Interesting? Themes, Participants and Consequences of Conversations in Online Social Media. In Proceedings of the Eighteenth International World Wide Web Conference (Madrid, Spain, April 20-24, 2009). WWW '09. (Acceptance rate: 11%)
  (pdf)(slides)

• Choudhury, M. D., Sundaram, H., John, A., and Seligmann, D. D. (2008). Multi-scale Characteriation of Social Network Dynamics in the Blogosphere. In Proceedings of the Seventeenth ACM Conference on information and Knowledge Management (Napa Valley,California, USA, October 26-30, 2008). CIKM '08. ACM, New York, NY, 1515-1516. (Acceptance rate: 16%)
  (pdf)(poster)

• Choudhury, M. D., Sundaram, H., John, A., and Seligmann, D. D. (2008). Modeling Information Roles for Understanding Stock Market Dynamics. Eighth Annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference - Poster Session (Keystone,Colorado, USA, October 1-4, 2008). GHC '08.
  (poster)

• Choudhury, M. D., Sundaram, H., John, A., and Seligmann, D. D. (2008). Can Blog Communication Dynamics be correlated with Stock Market Activity? In Proceedings of the Nineteenth ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, June 19 - 21, 2008). HT '08. (Acceptance rate: 25%)
  (pdf)(slides)

• Choudhury, M. D., Sundaram, H., John, A., and Seligmann, D. D. (2008). Dynamic Prediction of Communication Flow Using Social Context. In Proceedings of the Nineteenth ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, June 19 - 21, 2008). HT '08. (Acceptance rate: 25%)
  (pdf)(slides)

• Choudhury, M. D., Sundaram, H., John, A., and Seligmann, D. D. (2007). Contextual Prediction of Communication Flow in Social Networks. In Proceedings of the IEEE/WIC/ACM international Conference on Web intelligence (Silicon Valley, California, USA, November 02 - 05, 2007). Web Intelligence. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, 57-65. (Acceptance rate: 17%)
  (pdf)(slides)

• Choudhury, M. D., Sundaram, H., John, A., and Seligmann, D. D. (2007). Context Aware Routing of Enterprise User Communications. In Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE international Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops (White Plains, New York, USA, March 19 - 23, 2007). PERCOMW. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, 39-44.
  (pdf)(slides)

• Imminent Publications

• Choudhury, M. D., John, A., and Seligmann, D. D., Sundaram, H. (2009). Inferring User Availability for Participation in Collaborative Tasks.

• Choudhury, M. D., Sundaram, H., John, A., and Seligmann, D. D. (2009). Extraction, Characterization and Utility of Prototypical Communication Groups in the Blogosphere. Journal paper.

• Choudhury, M. D., Sundaram, H., John, A., and Seligmann, D. D. (2009). Predicting Efficient Communication Paths in Social Networks via Context Analysis. Journal paper.

• Choudhury, M. D., Sundaram, H., John, A., and Seligmann, D. D. (2009). Characterizing Social Media Elements via Dynamic Inference of their Interestingness. Journal paper.

• Thesis

• Choudhury, M. D. (2005). Pattern Recognition in Satellite Imagery using Artificial Neural Networks. B.Tech (Bachelor of Technology) Thesis, National Institute of Technology, Bhopal, India.

• Technical Reports

• Choudhury, M. D., Sundaram, H., John, A., and Seligmann, D. D. (2009). Extraction, Characterization and Utility of ‘Key’ Groups in Online Communities . AME Technical Report, Arizona State University. January '09. (pdf)

• Choudhury, M. D., Sundaram, H., John, A., and Seligmann, D. D. (2008). Modeling Social Community Dynamics at Multiple Scales . AME Technical Report, Arizona State University. November '08. (pdf)

• Choudhury, M. D., John, A., and Seligmann, D. D. (2006). Automatically Predicting Availability of Users in Enterprise User Communications . Avaya Technical Report, Avaya Labs Research. Summer '06. (pdf)

• Talks

• Dynamics of Communication in Online Social Networks. Invited talk, Avaya Labs, Basking Ridge, NJ, June 2009. (slides)

• Characteristics of Conversations in Online Social Media. CSE PhD Forum Seminar, Arizona State University, April 2009.

• Inferring Availability of Enterprise Workers based on Instant Messaging Activity. Avaya Labs Intern Presentation, August 2006.

• Genetic Algorithm Approach for Fuzzy Controllers. Cognizance 2004, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, March 2004.

• Remote Processes and Machine Control of Windows NT based systems (2000/XP). SPCTS 2003, IEEE Gujarat Section, September 2003.

• Awards and Honors

• Accepted to ACM Student Research Competition (SRC), Hypertext, 2009.

• Grace Hopper Scholarship Award 2007, 2008.

• Department Silver Medalist, NIT Bhopal, 2005.

• Jagadis Bose National Science Talent Search Scholarship, 2001.

• CSIR Programme on Youth for Leadership in Science Award (CPYLS), 1999.

• Top 1% in State Mathematical Olympiad, 1993, 1997, 1998.

• State Merit Scholarship, 1994.

• Alter-Endeavors:

  Photography: Social media research is a blooming and rich community to me; more because I can often connect my daily life pastimes - one such hobby being photography. Please find some pieces of work from me on Flickr.
  
  Blog: My research interest on social networks is inherently intertwined in my daily life and blogging occupies a central place subsuming my strong online presence. Please find here ("SeeWhoSpeaks") some ramblings about a variegated set of thoughts, ideas and opinions on topics ranging on one hand from the philosophy of science to events in some remote corner of the globe.

• Hobbies:
  Writing, Poetry, Traveling, Photography and Cooking.
• My public calendar is here.