Thank you for visiting my personal webpage.

I am currently an Innovation Lead & Senior Research Scientist with the Social and Cognitive Computing Department at the Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC), a flagship interdisciplinary research institute of A*STAR, which is a leading science, tech and research organisation in Singapore. I also serve as an Adjunct Assistant Professor with the NUS Business School (Dept. of Analytics and Operations) where I have designed a number of graduate and executive-level courses on AI, business analytics, and network science.

My research bridges topics and methods from network science, behavioral analytics, and psychometric modeling to relevant AI applications in emerging markets. The following are some examples of problems that I am particularly interested in:

i. Modeling user behavior on large and complex social networks using fine-grained observational data, and understanding the network effects that drive such behavior in a variety of contexts spanning finance, healthcare, and education. (Skim through this and this for two very interesting instances of this line of research).

ii. Building computational models of cognition (e.g. attitudes or motivations) and affective behavior (e.g. emotional expressions) using fine-grained data from digital platforms, and studying the effectiveness of emerging applications e.g. empathetic AI, using such data. Did you know that there could be as many as 27 distinct types of quantifiable emotional experiences?

iii. Answering causal inference problems in emerging business contexts using observational time-series data. This is particularly important in the context of impact/intervention evaluation problems where randomized experiments (e.g. A/B tests) are not feasible to conduct. See this for a good example of when this is super-important.

I have over 11 years of combined academic, industry and research consulting experience in addressing complex and real-world business problems using behavioural analytics, network science, and causal inference approaches. I have worked/collaborated extensively with industry partners in AI, digital media, education, finance and online search industries. Through these research collaborations, I have generated actionable insights on user behavior in online platforms and helped organizations create quantifiable value from their analytics investment. I also actively participate in designing and conducting training programmes for senior analytics and AI professionals in Asia.

Think there’s something we can chat about? Drop me an e-mail.