Spotlight On: Yas Silva
Silva, Associate Professor of Computer Science, awarded $390,000 from the NSF to support his research on cybersecurity detecton, prevention
Dr. Yas Silva, Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science in the College of Arts and Sciences at Loyola University Chicago, has been awarded a $390,000 grant from the Secure & Trustworthy Cyberspace program within the National Science Foundation to support his interdisciplinary research into the detection and prevention of cyberbullying.
“This prestigious grant allows Dr. Silva and his colleagues to pursue an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach in addressing a major societal issue of our times,” said Peter J. Schraeder, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Loyola University Chicago. “His scholarly work in the cyberspace area is innovative and undoubtedly will have a tangible impact on society.”
Read on to learn more about Dr. Silva’s work and what he has in store for this grant.
What is the focus of your work here at Loyola?
I joined the Department of Computer Science at Loyola in January this year, so I’m somewhat new. Previously, I worked at Arizona State University for over 11 years. My research focuses on data systems and data analysis, and includes work in cyberbullying and online misbehavior detection, social media analysis, scalable database systems, as well as the subject of fairness and transparency in artificial intelligence.
A key component of my day-to-day work is the BullyBlocker Project, which applies an interdisciplinary approach to combine expertise across computer science and psychology with the goal of creating models to better detect, understand, and prevent instances of cyberbullying. I started the project with two colleagues at Arizona State University (ASU), Deborah Hall in Psychology and Huan Liu in Computer Science. After joining Loyola, I transferred the four-year-long Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace grant from the National Science Foundation to Loyola and continue the collaboration with my ASU colleagues through a sub-award to ASU.
Why is it important to take an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and preventing cyberbullying with experts in psychology?
While cyberbullying has been studied for years now by psychology and computer science experts alone, it’s rare that you see these disciplines working together. Half of our team, at any point, is composed of folks from psychology and the other half is from computer science. Having expertise in both areas allows us to develop better models and algorithms for detection and prevention of cyberbullying attacks. On the computer science side, several of the predictive models we developed integrated key ideas from our psychology peers. For instance, one of our models integrates a personalized component that considers how an individual behaves and the influence from their online peers to create a more robust predictive model. On the other hand, we provided our peers in psychology with very detailed datasets that enabled the discovery and study of previously unreported patterns, such as with our study into the temporal patterns of cyberbullying on Instagram.
Working across disciplines has been a very interesting. While it sometimes took extra time to understand each other’s frameworks and the way we do research, it has been very rewarding in a technical and scientific sense. It has also been a source of pride shared by all members of the team to work in an area that has real impact on society.
What are your plans for the grant you received from the National Science Foundation?
We have already begun to use this grant, which will support us through 2024, to develop predictive models in cyberbullying and perform studies to better understand the nature of cyberbullying. We are also expanding our focus and interdisciplinary approach to related areas such as toxicity detection and discrimination.
We are also using the grant to develop ActionPoint, a mobile app aimed at helping parents and teens to develop better communication practices regarding social media use based on previous research in this domain. In this app, parents can learn about what cyberbullying is, the social media platforms their teens use and how they work, and how to best set guidelines for their teens’ social media use and behavior. We’re hoping to release this app later this year or early 2023.
We also recently received a grant supplement that will allow us to expand the research experiences for undergraduate students, 50% of which will support positions for students within underrepresented groups in computing. We’re very excited to already have undergraduate and graduate students from both Loyola and Arizona State working on the project within this interdisciplinary framework.
What else are you excited to be working on?
I am also collaborating with Neil Klingensmith, George K. Thiruvathukal, and Eric Chan-Tin, colleagues in the Department of Computer Science, to build virtualization systems that ensure more secure frameworks and infrastructure for enterprise app deployment. We recently received a grant from the National Security Agency and its National Centers for Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity that will support our efforts in this area. Neil is doing a fantastic job leading the work under this grant.
This semester, I also started collaborating with several graduate and undergraduate students in the SimCloud Project, where we are designing similarity-aware data analysis algorithms for big data, and the DBSnap Project, where we are developing a dynamic app to interact with a database system by moving and connecting visual blocks.
I am also very excited to serve as the Graduate Program Director of Data Science, a new interdisciplinary program between the departments of Computer Science and Mathematics & Statistics. The program’s goal is to train students to effectively and ethically manage, analyze, and communicate results based on large amounts of data. Our first cohort just kicked off this semester and I’m very excited to see the future of this program take shape in the College of Arts and Sciences.
About the College of Arts and Sciences
The College of Arts and Sciences is the oldest of Loyola University Chicago’s 15 schools, colleges, and institutes. More than 150 years since its founding, the College is home to 20 academic departments and 37 interdisciplinary programs and centers, more than 450 full-time faculty, and nearly 8,000 students. The 2,000+ classes that we offer each semester span an array of intellectual pursuits, ranging from the natural sciences and computational sciences to the humanities, the social sciences, and the fine and performing arts. Our students and faculty are engaged internationally at our campus in Rome, Italy, as well as at dozens of University-sponsored study abroad and research sites around the world. Home to the departments that anchor the University’s Core Curriculum, the College seeks to prepare all of Loyola’s students to think critically, to engage the world of the 21st century at ever deepening levels, and to become caring and compassionate individuals. Our faculty, staff, and students view service to others not just as one option among many, but as a constitutive dimension of their very being. In the truest sense of the Jesuit ideal, our graduates strive to be “individuals for others.”
About the College of Arts and Sciences
The College of Arts and Sciences is the oldest of Loyola University Chicago’s 15 schools, colleges, and institutes. More than 150 years since its founding, the College is home to 20 academic departments and 33 interdisciplinary programs and centers, more than 450 full-time faculty, and nearly 8,000 students. The 2,000+ classes that we offer each semester span an array of intellectual pursuits, ranging from the natural sciences and computational sciences to the humanities, the social sciences, and the fine and performing arts. Our students and faculty are engaged internationally at our campuses in Rome, Italy, and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, as well as at dozens of University-sponsored study abroad and research sites around the world. Home to the departments that anchor the University’s Core Curriculum, the College seeks to prepare all of Loyola’s students to think critically, to engage the world of the 21st century at ever deepening levels, and to become caring and compassionate individuals. Our faculty, staff, and students view service to others not just as one option among many, but as a constitutive dimension of their very being. In the truest sense of the Jesuit ideal, our graduates strive to be “individuals for others.” For further information about the College of Arts and Sciences, please visit our website.
Silva, Associate Professor of Computer Science, awarded $390,000 from the NSF to support his research on cybersecurity detecton, prevention
Dr. Yas Silva, Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science in the College of Arts and Sciences at Loyola University Chicago, has been awarded a $390,000 grant from the Secure & Trustworthy Cyberspace program within the National Science Foundation to support his interdisciplinary research into the detection and prevention of cyberbullying.
“This prestigious grant allows Dr. Silva and his colleagues to pursue an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach in addressing a major societal issue of our times,” said Peter J. Schraeder, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Loyola University Chicago. “His scholarly work in the cyberspace area is innovative and undoubtedly will have a tangible impact on society.”
Read on to learn more about Dr. Silva’s work and what he has in store for this grant.
About the College of Arts and Sciences
The College of Arts and Sciences is the oldest of Loyola University Chicago’s 15 schools, colleges, and institutes. More than 150 years since its founding, the College is home to 20 academic departments and 37 interdisciplinary programs and centers, more than 450 full-time faculty, and nearly 8,000 students. The 2,000+ classes that we offer each semester span an array of intellectual pursuits, ranging from the natural sciences and computational sciences to the humanities, the social sciences, and the fine and performing arts. Our students and faculty are engaged internationally at our campus in Rome, Italy, as well as at dozens of University-sponsored study abroad and research sites around the world. Home to the departments that anchor the University’s Core Curriculum, the College seeks to prepare all of Loyola’s students to think critically, to engage the world of the 21st century at ever deepening levels, and to become caring and compassionate individuals. Our faculty, staff, and students view service to others not just as one option among many, but as a constitutive dimension of their very being. In the truest sense of the Jesuit ideal, our graduates strive to be “individuals for others.”
About the College of Arts and Sciences
The College of Arts and Sciences is the oldest of Loyola University Chicago’s 15 schools, colleges, and institutes. More than 150 years since its founding, the College is home to 20 academic departments and 33 interdisciplinary programs and centers, more than 450 full-time faculty, and nearly 8,000 students. The 2,000+ classes that we offer each semester span an array of intellectual pursuits, ranging from the natural sciences and computational sciences to the humanities, the social sciences, and the fine and performing arts. Our students and faculty are engaged internationally at our campuses in Rome, Italy, and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, as well as at dozens of University-sponsored study abroad and research sites around the world. Home to the departments that anchor the University’s Core Curriculum, the College seeks to prepare all of Loyola’s students to think critically, to engage the world of the 21st century at ever deepening levels, and to become caring and compassionate individuals. Our faculty, staff, and students view service to others not just as one option among many, but as a constitutive dimension of their very being. In the truest sense of the Jesuit ideal, our graduates strive to be “individuals for others.” For further information about the College of Arts and Sciences, please visit our website.