June 28, 2023
The University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security (Pitt Cyber) announced today that Professor Yu-Ru Lin will serve as the Institute’s research and academic director.
Lin is an associate professor in the Department of Informatics and Networked Systems at the School of Computing and Information and a Pitt Cyber Affiliate Scholar. In her new role as Pitt Cyber’s research and academic director, Lin will lead engagement with stakeholders in the university academic community and develop cross-disciplinary research programs with Pitt Cyber affiliate scholars.
Lin succeeds political science professor Michael Colaresi, following the conclusion of his term and his appointment as the inaugural Vice Provost for Data Science. Colaresi remains director of the Pitt Disinformation Lab at Pitt Cyber and a senior scholar of Pitt Cyber.
“I’m pleased to have Yu-Ru Lin as our next research and academic director,” said David Hickton, Pitt Cyber’s founding director. “Her impactful research and thoughtful collaborations across disciplines are a model for the scholarship Pitt Cyber supports. She will further strengthen Pitt Cyber’s cross-disciplinary research programs at an especially salient moment, building on Mike Colaresi’s exceptional tenure.”
“I’m excited to be part of the Pitt Cyber team, said Yu-Ru Lin. “Pitt Cyber’s deep commitment to impactful, policy-relevant cyber work has proven to be more needed than ever. I look forward to continuing to foster and amplify the exceptional range of cyber-related research across the University.”
About Yu-Ru Lin
Yu-Ru Lin is an associate professor in the Department of Informatics and Networked Systems at the School of Computing and Information. She has secondary appointments in Political Science Department, Computer Science Department, and Intelligent Systems Program. She studies social and political networks, as well as computational and visualization methods for understanding network data. She leads the Pitt Computational Social Dynamics Lab (PISCO LAB). She also serves on the Steering Committee of the Collaboratory Against Hate at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University and served on Pitt Cyber’s Pittsburgh Task Force on Public Algorithms.
Lin is a computational social scientist who studies the ways in which networks function in society and politics, as well as the computational and visualization methods by which such data can be understood. Her research covers large-scale community dynamics, high-dimensional summarization and representation of social information. She has investigated biases in the information ecosystem, including mechanisms to counter COVID-19 misinformation and efforts to develop capabilities to capture cultural models that reflect group biases, to understand collective responses to political events and violence, as well as research to identify and combat the societal ramifications that emerged in the widespread use of AI. She has received grants from NSF, DARPA, AFOSR, ONR, Meta, Google, Adobe, Social Science Research Initiative, and more.