Esra Akbas

B.S., Computer Science, TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Turkey, 2010
M.S., Computer Science, Bilkent University, Turkey, 2012
Ph.D., Computer Science, Florida State University, 2017

Data mining and management, big data analytics, graph mining, social network analysis, graph neural networks, health data analytics, bioinformatics, text mining

As an assistant professor in Georgia State University’s Department of Computer Science, I lead the Data Engineering Lab (DELab) and its team of Ph.D., M.S., and undergraduate students. Prior to joining GSU, I worked as an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University. In DELab, we work on a variety of problems ranging from the algorithmic side of machine learning to applications for solving real-world problems.

My research is in machine learning and data mining with a focus on relational data. Specifically, I work on graph mining, graph machine learning, network science, and social network analysis and their applications in social, biological, and medical domains. I develop novel graph compression and GNN models. My work has spanned various applications, including drug-drug interaction prediction, sequence classification, and analyzing social media data for public health issues like Covid-19 and opioid addiction.