News
Welcome to our lab’s news page. Here, we highlight recent research activities, student achievements, academic presentations, and publications from our team. This section provides updates on our ongoing work and reflects our commitment to advancing research, innovation, and collaboration.
2026
03/13/2026 [Poster Acceptance] Ben Panny - Topological Phenotyping of Continuous Glucose Monitoring Data Identifies Saturated and Erratic Glycemic Phenotypes Missed by Standard Metrics. To be presented at the American Diabetes Association 2026 Scientific Sessions.
03/05/2026 [Poster Acceptance] Yuxin Liu - NET ECON Privacy-preserving Information Sharing in Oligopoly Competitions.* Authors: Yuxin Liu (University of Pittsburgh); Amin Rahimian (University of Pittsburgh). [link]
03/05/2026 [Workshop] Yuxin Liu - IOE-ISyE-MS&E Rising Stars Workshop Privacy-preserving Information Sharing in Oligopoly Competitions
* Authors: Yuxin Liu (University of Pittsburgh); Amin Rahimian (University of Pittsburgh). [link]
01/29/2026 [Publication] Ben Panny - Too many specialists: Emergent inefficiencies and bottlenecks for multi-agent ad-hoc collaboration. Accepted as an Extended Abstract at the 25th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2026). Authors: Benjamin Panny, Shashank Mehrotra, Zahra Zahedi, Teruhisa Misu, and Kumar Akash. [link]
01/28/2026 [Award] Ben Panny - Selected for the inaugural HAIL Graduate Student Awardee Program. This interdisciplinary program at Pitt focuses on responsible data science and AI development through the Spring and Summer 2026 semesters.
01/15/2026 [Publication] Ben Panny & Amin - Privacy at Scale in Networked Healthcare. Published at the 7th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Intelligent Systems (TPS). Authors: Rahimian MA, Panny B, and Joshi JBD. [link]
01/09/2026 [Conference Announcement] Yuxin Liu - “Optimal Resolution Of A Data Sharing Trilemma: Statistical Power, Sample Complexity, And Privacy Budget”, has been accepted for a poster at the 2026 Privacy and Public Policy Conference on February 9-10th (Georgetown University, February 9-10, 2026). [link]
01/09/2026 [Talk & Poster Presentation] Yuxin Liu - Title: Differential Privacy for Network Connectedness Indices. Authors: Tom A. Rutter, Yuxin Liu, and M. Amin Rahimian. Presenting Author: Tom A. Rutter, Yuxin Liu, and M. Amin Rahimian
2025
12/8/2025 [WINE 2025 Tutorial] Yuxin Liu - completed the tutorial session on 12/8 — Differential Privacy for Strategic Information Sharing and Learning — with the organizers Amin Rahimian (University of Pittsburgh), Juba Ziani (Georgia Institute of Technology), and Marios Papachristou (Arizona State University). [link]
11/20/2025 [Publication] Ben Panny - Model-based planning is unaffected by ketamine, antidepressant and internet delivered cognitive behavioural therapy treatments in depression. Published in Translational Psychiatry. Authors: Donegan, K.R., Hossein, S., Panny, B.M. et al. [link]
10/15/2025 [Poster Presentation] Ben Panny - Modeling the Public Health Impact of Vaccination Reminders and Misinformation. Presented at the ACM Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization (EAAMO) 2025 Conference.
10/8/2025 [WINE 2025 Tutorial Acceptance] Yuxin Liu got a tutorial accepted at WINE - Proposal title: Differential Privacy for Strategic Information Sharing and Learning: Foundations, Mechanisms, and Applications, time: December 8, 2025, at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA, Differential Privacy for Strategic Information Sharing and Learning: Foundations, Mechanisms, and Applications. Organizers: M. Amin Rahimian (University of Pittsburgh); Juba Ziani (Georgia Institute of Technology); Marios Papachristou (Arizona State University); Yuxin Liu (University of Pittsburgh)
10/1/2025[Travel Grant] Brian Hu won Yale FDS New Directions in Social Algorithms Research, Oct 16, 2025
9/5/2025 [PhD defense] Kushagra Tiwari is thrilled to announce that he has successfully defended his PhD dissertation titled “SOCIO–SPATIAL NETWORK DYNAMICS OF PUBLIC HEALTH CRISES IN THE US.” [LinkedIn post link]
8/1/2025 [Internship] Abdulrahman Ahmed completed his role as Data Science Intern at Citizens Bank, Columbus, OH, during June–Aug 2025. Congratulations to Abdulrahman!
8/1/2025 [Internship] Ben Panny completed a Summer Research Internship at the Honda Research Institute in San Jose, working with Shashank Mehrotra, Kumar Akash, and Zahra Zahedi during May–Aug 2025. Congratulations to Ben!
7/16/2025 [Project] Ethan Furr presented at the MCSI Summer Sustainability Research Symposium, sharing his work titled: Techno-Economic and Environmental Impact Analysis of Solar Panel End-of-Life. Congratulations to Ethan!
7/1/2025 [Project] Ben Panny joined the AI-READI program for a one-year term (Aug 2025–July 2026). From the AI-READI page: AI-READI is one of the data generation projects of the NIH-funded Bridge2AI Program. The project aims to create and share a flagship dataset on type 2 diabetes, optimized for AI/ML analysis to uncover critical insights and illuminate salutogenic pathways from diabetes to health. Congratulations to Ben!
7/1/2025 [Internship] Owen Spencer - attends the Cornell, Maryland, Max Planck Pre-doctoral Research School in Computer Science (CMMRS 2025) Date: July–August 2025
6/30/2025 [Publications] Yuxin Liu - Structural Dynamics of Harmful Content Dissemination on WhatsApp accepted at ICWSM May 28 2026.
6/30/2025 [Travel Grant] Yuxin Liu - 22nd INFORMS Applied Probability Conference, June,30, 2025.
6/30/2025 [Presentations / Conferences] Yuxin Liu - Differentially Private Sequential Learning - 22nd INFORMS Applied Probability Conference, June,30, 2025.
6/4/2025 [Travel Grant] Yuxin Liu - Symposium on the Foundations of Responsible Computing (FORC), June, 4, 2025.
6/4/2025 [Presentations / Conferences/Publications] Yuxin Liu - Differentially Private Sequential Learning - Symposium on the Foundations of Responsible Computing (FORC), June, 4, 2025.
5/12/2025 [PHD Proposal Exam] Abdulrahman Ahmed - Passed the proposal exam
The title "Addressing computational burdens in agent-based simulation and optimization of interventions for the opioid epidemic in the US".
3/3/2025 [Presentations / Conferences] Yuxin Liu - Differentially Private Sequential Learning - The 6th AAAI Workshop on Privacy-Preserving Artificial Intelligence, March,3, 2025, Philadelphia, PA.
3/3/2025 [Travel Grant] Yuxin Liu - The 6th AAAI Workshop on Privacy-Preserving Artificial Intelligence (2025).
2024
10/18/2024 [2024 INFORMS talk] Kushagra Tiwari is invited to present his work on "Measuring Network Dynamics of Drug Overdose Deaths in the United States", at the 2024 INFORMS, special session on Data-Driven Modeling for Opioid and Substance-Related Public Health Challenges #INFORMS2024 [Twitter/X Link]
8/23/2024 [Presentations / Conferences] Yuxin Liu -Virality of Information Diffusion on WhatsApp - 10th International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2), July, 18, 2024, Philadelphia, PA.
8/20/2024 [Presentations / Conferences] Yuxin Liu - Differentially Private Sequential Learning - Theory and Practice of Differential Privacy (TPDP), Aug, 20, 2024, Boston, MA.
7/18/2024 [Presentations / Conferences] Yuxin Liu -Virality of Information Diffusion on WhatsApp - 10th International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2), July, 18, 2024, Philadelphia, PA