Dr. Esra Akbas

Bio Sketch

I am an assistant professor in the Computer Science department at Georgia State University  Before joining Georgia State, I was an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Oklahoma State University. I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science at Florida State University.

I lead the Data Engineering Lab (DELab) with a team of Phd, MS, and UG students. In DELab, we work on different problems from the algorithmic side of machine learning to applications on different 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 compressing 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.

Funded Projects & Awards:

1. PI: Esra Akbas, Co-PI; Mehmet Aktas, NSF REU Site: Multidisciplinary Graph Data Analytics, 

National Science Foundation, 1/2024-1/2027, $372,360. 

2. PI: Esra Akbas, NSF REU Supplement: III: Structure-aware Graph Compressing: From Algorithms to Applications,

National Science Foundation, 6/2023 -5/2024, $16,000

3. PI: Esra Akbas, NSF CRII: III: Structure-aware Graph Compressing: From Algorithms to Applications, 

National Science Foundation, 8/2021 -7/2024, $174,337

4. PI: Esra Akbas, Co-PI; Chris Crick, NSF REU Site: Big Data Analytics at Oklahoma State University,

 National Science Foundation, 3/2021-8/2022, $402,772.

5.  Junior Faculty Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Natural Sciences, Oklahoma State University, 2021 

6. OSU A&S ASR+1: Graph compressing for expediting graph analysis, 2020, $11,111.

7. Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) Faculty Scholarship, 2019