Dr. Emilio Ferrara is Professor of Computer Science & Communication and Associate Director of Applied Data Science at the USC, Research Team Leader at the USC Information Sciences Institute, and Principal Investigator at the USC/ISI Machine Intelligence and Data Science (MINDS) group.

Ferrara's research interests include using AI for modeling and predicting human behavior in techno-social systems. Ferrara has published over 150 articles on social networks, machine learning, and network science, appeared in venues like Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, Communications of the ACM, Physical Review Letters, and his research has been featured on all major news outlets.

He was named 2015 IBM Watson Big Data Influencer, he received the 2016 DARPA Young Faculty Award, the 2016 Complex Systems Society Junior Scientific Award, the 2018 DARPA Director's Fellowship, and the 2019 Viterbi Scientific Award. His research is supported by DARPA, IARPA, Air Force, and Office of Naval Research.