Prof speaks “spooky”

A University of Arizona professor spoke to students and faculty Thursday about the “spooky… A University of Arizona professor spoke to students and faculty Thursday about the “spooky stuff” involved with information science.

Hsinchun Chen lectured students and faculty at the School of Information Sciences on research in medical and security informatics, the science of collecting information.

The “spooky stuff” Chen was referring to was his COPLINK project. COPLINK enables law enforcement agencies to organize and interpret information such as criminal records and the social network and structure of narcotic rings.

“Basically, it’s a Google for cops,” Chen said.

The system has been adopted by more than 150 law enforcement and intelligence agencies and was recommended to be the national model.

Chen, who is a McClelland Professor of Management Information Systems at the University of Arizona, is also the founding director of the university’s Artificial Intelligence Lab and Hoffman E-Commerce Lab.

In addition to COPLINK, he has expanded his research to border control (BorderSafe) and terrorism informatics research (DarkWeb).

His terrorism research projects aim to develop techniques to analyze terrorist behavior and networks. Through systems such as DarkWeb, Chen says intelligence agencies are able to inkblot – or superimpose one terrorist’s message with another.

“If you do a good job putting in research and analysis, good things can happen,” Chen said.

Chen’s research projects are funded by the National Science Foundation, the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security.

Chen’s lecture was part of the Digital Library Colloquium Series presented by Pitt’s School of Information Sciences, University Library System, Department of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University and its libraries and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.