Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science
Georgia Southern University
ssazzed@georgiasouthern.edu
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science
Georgia Southern University
ssazzed@georgiasouthern.edu
I am a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Georgia Southern University. I am a recipient of the prestigious NSF CISE CRII award (2025), which supports my current research initiatives.
Prior to joining Georgia Southern, I served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Memphis (2023–2024). I earned my Ph.D. in Computer Science from Old Dominion University in December 2023, where I was mentored by Dr. Jing He and Dr. Willy Wriggers. My academic background is complemented by six years of industry experience as a Software Engineer, specializing in iOS SDK and Game Development. I hold both a BS (2009) and an MS (2011) in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh.
My research encompasses various sub-areas of artificial intelligence (AI), including natural language processing, computer vision, and machine learning to the fields of bioinformatics, health informatics and social computing.
My recent works (since 2022 ) involve-
Biological Structure Determination from Cryo-(EM/ET) Images
Mental Health Research by Analyzing Social Media Health Texts
Behavioral-Cultural Modeling and Discourse Analysis through Social Media Texts
News:
Feb 2026: Invited to serve as a pre-submission mentor for the ACL 2026 Student Research Workshop (SRW), providing guidance to students preparing their submissions.
Jan 2026: Awarded Georgia Southern University’s largest internal grant (~35K), the Impact Area Accelerator Grant, as Principal Investigator to advance AI-driven modeling of complex biological structures.
Jan 2026: Multiple Research Assistantship positions are available for undergraduate and graduate students for Spring 2026 and Summer 2026. Applicants must be enrolled at Georgia Southern University. Please email me as soon as possible if you are interested.
Sep 2025: My paper 'Psychosocial challenges and substance use among suicidal autistic individuals on social media: LLM-assisted keyword generation with human-in-the-loop refinement' has been published in the International Journal of Medical Informatics, a top journal in the field of health informatics.
August 2025: I am the program co-chair of the Computational Structural Bioinformatics Workshop 2025 (CSBW 2025), which will be co-located with the leading bioinformatics conference, ACM BCB (ACM SIGBio), in Philadelphia, PA, from October 11–15, 2025.
August 2025: 2 PhD students will be recruited for Spring-26 (requirements). Thank you to everyone who has reached out for Fall 2025 opportunities. If I find a strong match between your background and the requirements, I will get back to you. The interview process will begin in August or September. (Note: Due to the large number of inquiries and limited capacity, I may not be able to respond to every email. I will reach out if your background aligns with my lab’s research focus. )
June 2025: NSF CRII Grant Awarded: My NSF CRII grant proposal (~175K), “AI-Driven Modeling of Protein Secondary Structures in Medium-Resolution Cryo-EM Map Combining Structure Fitting Scores with Curriculum Learning,” has been funded. Thank you, NSF. Link
*2025: Invited to Serve as a Panel Reviewer for Multiple NSF Funding Panels: I am honored to be invited to serve as a panel reviewer for multiple NSF funding panels (CISE IIS, S & CC). Thank you, NSF, for this honor.
Jun 2025: Update on PhD recruitment: Thank you to everyone who has reached out. I will get back to you if I find a good match between your background and the requirements. As Fall 2025 is very close, it is possible that enrollment will be deferred to Spring 2026 (Deferred to Spring-26).
May 2025: I have an opening for a PhD position starting in Fall 2025. If you're interested, please review the requirements. If you find a good alignment with your background and interests, feel free to get back to me.
Mar 2025: I will be reviewing for ACL Rolling Review (ARR)/ ACL- 2025 submissions.
Feb 2025: I am seeking several hardworking and motivated Master's students to join my research team in Summer/Fall 2025. Successful MS candidates will receive a full tuition waiver and a stipend of ~$16,000 per year with the potential to transition to the PhD program later, along with a significantly higher stipend, depending on performance. Statesboro, one of the most affordable cities in the USA, offers an excellent living environment as a college town. Please first first review the requirements and check my recent works to see how they align with your experience and interests. If you find a good match, feel free to email me with the necessary documents. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I may not be able to reply to everyone. However, if your research skills align with the requirements, I will get back to you. (HIRED)
Jan 2025: Two papers related to social computing have been accepted to IEEE BigData 2024 and are now available on IEEE Xplore (Paper 1, Paper 2).
Jan 2025: My BIBM 2024 paper- 'Unraveling Affective Responses and Core Determinants in Health and Trauma-Driven Suicidal Narratives' available in IEEE Xplore.
August 2024: I am excited to announce that I will be joining Georgia Southern University (GSU) as a tenure-track assistant professor. GSU is a public research university in the process of transitioning to an R1 institution within the next few years. It is currently ranked #352 in National Universities and #1551 in Best Global Universities by US News, and 1201–1500th by Times Higher Education (THE), with over 27,000 students. The Computer Science department is ranked 601-800 globally by THE ranking.
July 2024: One paper accepted in the 17th International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling & Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation (SBP-BRiMS).
July 2024: I will be reviewing for ACL Rolling Review (ARR), Jun / EMNLP 2024 submissions.
Jun 2024: I will serve on the program committee of the 17th International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling & Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation (SBP-BRiMS).
May 2024: I will be on the program committee of the 14th Workshop on Computational Approaches to Subjectivity, Sentiment & Social Media Analysis (WASSA) at ACL-2024.
May 2024: One paper accepted in a American Chemical Society (ACS) Journal, ACS Omega (IF: 4.1). Link
Feb 2024: I have been invited to review ACL-2024 submissions.
Feb 2024: I have been invited to serve in the program commitee of 8th Workshop on Online Abuse and Harms (WOAH) at NAACL- 2024.
Dec 2023: Officially received my PhD.
Oct 2023: Successfully defended my PhD defense.
Sep 2023: Three papers have been accepted to ICMLA-2023.
Aug 2023: Joined University of Memphis as a Visiting Assistant Professor.