Thang N. Dinh's Homepage

Recent News

July 2019: [ScalingBitcoin'19] Paper BackPackers: A New Paradigm for Secure and High-performance Blockchain , accepted. See you in Tel, Aviv in Sep.

Mar. 2019: [IEEE ICDCS] Paper Optimal Transactions Placement for Scalable Blockchain Sharding, accepted

Mar. 2019: [IEEE TKDE] Paper Blocking Self-avoiding Walks Stops Cyber-epidemics: A Scalable GPU-based Approach, accepted

June 2018: [IEEE Comp. Magazine] Paper AI & Blockchain: A Disruptive Integration, accepted

May. 2018: [BlockSEA'18] Organizing a Workshop on Blockchain and Sharing Economy Applications (BlockSEA) at IEEE ICDM'18, Singapore. Please submit your good work.

Mar. 2018: [Lab-B] Excited to introduce our new Blockchain lab Lab-B, co-directed by Hong-sheng Zhou.

Feb. 2018: [ACM MobiSys'18] Paper "TYTH-Typing On Your Teeth..." accepted (AC rate 37/138=26.8%).

Nov. 2017: [INFOCOM'18] Paper "Adaptive Crawling with Multiple Bots..." accepted(AC 309/1606=19.2%)

Aug. 2017: [IEEE ICDM'17] Paper Importance Sketching... accepted as a regular paper (AC rate 72/778=9.25%). Selected for Best Papers of ICDM

Jul. 2017: [ACM SenSys'17] Paper PhO2: Phone-base blood oxygen level measurement... accepted. (AC rate 26/151=17.2%)
Nominated for Best Paper Award

Apr. 2017: [ACM TOIS'17] Paper Social Influence Spectrum... accepted.

Mar. 2017: [Sigmetrics'17] Paper "Outward Influence..." accepted (AC rate ~ 13.5%)

Mar. 2017: [IEEE/ACM ToN'17] Paper "A Billion-scale..." accepted.

Feb. 2017: Invited for 2 NSF Panels.

Jan. 2017: [IEEE Access'17] Paper "Transitivity Demolition and the Falls of Social Networks", accepted.

Aug. 2016: NVIDIA Hardware Grant Award (NVIDIA Coorporation)

July 2016: [ACM CIKM'16] Full paper Multiple Infection Sources... accepted (AC rate ~17.6%)

May 2016: Invited to TPC of ICC'17 - Big Data Net. Symp.

Apr. 2016: INFOCOM'16 Presentation Award: Best-in-Session for Network Science 1

Apr. 2016: Invited for an NSF Panel

Apr. 2016:[SIGMOD'16] A full paper accepted to the research track.

Apr. 2016: Congrats Hung on winning double awards: Outstanding Research Award (1st place), School of Eng. and Outstanding Early-career Research Award, CS Dept.!

Mar. 2016: Invited to TPC of IEEE INFOCOM 2017, a premier conference in comm. networks.

Feb. 2016:[BigSecurity'16] Paper on Targeted Cyber-attacks" is accepted to The INFOCOM BigSecurity Workshop.

Nov. 2015:[INFOCOM'16] Paper "Cost-aware Targeted Viral Marketing in Billion-scale Networks" has been accepted to INFOCOM'16 (AC rate 18.3%). And a Wordle on the INFOCOM 2016's topics.

Sep. 2015: Serve as a PC Co-chair for COCOON'16 conference in Hochiminh city, Vietnam

Aug. 2015:[ICDM'15] Paper "Network Clustering via Maximizing Modularity: Approximation Algorithms and Theoretical Limits" has been accepted to the ICDM 2015 conference as a full paper (acceptance rate 8.4%).

May 2015: Thang Dinh will serve as an NSF panelist.

Mar. 2015: Thang Dinh is invited to serve as a TPC member of IEEE INFOCOM 2016, a premier conference in communication networks.

Nov. 2014::[INFOCOM'15] Our paper "Assessing Attack Vulnerability in Networks with Uncertainty" has been accepted to the INFOCOM 2015 conference.

Nov. 2014:: Thang Dinh is invited to serve on the WIDN workshop in INFOCOM 2015.

Jul. 2014:: Thang Dinh is invited to serve on TPCs for IEEE ICC'15 SAC, and ICNC'15, Social Computing and Semantic Data Mining (SCSD) symposium.

May. 2014:: Thang Dinh is invited to serve as a TPC Co-Chair for the 3rd Workshop on Computational Social Networks, Hawaii, Dec. 2014

Apr. 2014::[COCOON'14] The paper "Optimal Inspection Points for Malicious Attack Detection in Smart Grids" is accepted to The 20th International Computing and Combinatorics Conference (COCOON'14)!

Apr. 2014:: Invited to serve on the TPC for the 10th International Conference on Mobile Ad-hoc and Sensor Networks (MSN 2014)

Mar. 2013::[ToN] The paper "Network under Joint Node and Link Attacks: Vulnerability Assessment Methods and Analysis" is accepted to IEEE/ ACM Transactions on Networking!

Nov. 2013:: Thang Dinh is now serving on the Editorial Board of Computational Social Network Journal, published by Springer.

Oct. 2013::[ToN] The paper "Cost-effective Viral Marketing for Time-critical Campaigns in Large-scale Social Networks" is accepted to IEEE/ ACM Transactions on Networking!

Sep. 2013::[ICDM'13] The paper "Least Cost Influence in Multiplex Social Networks: Model Representation and Analysis" is accepted to IEEE ICDM 2013 as a regular paper. The acceptance rate is 11.6%!

Aug. 2013::[JOCO'13] The paper "A Near-optimal Adaptive Algorithm for Maximizing Modularity in Dynamic Scale-free Networks" is accepted to Journal of Combinatorial Optimization!

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Thang N. Dinh: Associate Professor (2019-present),
Department of Computer Science
Virginia Commonwealth University

Education:

2013-2019: Assistant Professor, Virginia Commonwealth Univ., USA
2008-2013: Ph.D, Computer Engineering, Univ. of Florida, USA
2003-2007: B.S, IT, Vietnam National Univ., Hanoi, Vietnam

Research Interests:

Blockchain Optimization
Social Networks and Billion-scale Graph Mining
Network Security and Resiliency
Approximation Algorithm

Position Available: I am looking for self-motivated and hardworking students who are interested in tackling challenges in the areas of Blockchain, Social networks, Cyber-security, and Combinatorial optimization. .

[Google Scholar][DBLP] [Scopus]- My Erdos number is 3 via the following path: Paul Erdos - Ronald Graham - Panos Pardalos.

Email:

Phone: (804)-827-4007
Fax: (804)-828-2771, attn: Dinh

401 W. Main St. Rm E4244
P.O. Box 843019,
Richmond, VA 23284-3019

Selected Honors and Awards
Selected for Best Papers of ICDM 2017 Best Paper Award Nominee, ACM Sensys'17 Best Paper Award, ACM MobiCom 2017 - S3 Workshop Best-in-Session Presentation Award, INFOCOM 2016 Best Paper Award, 4th Int. Conf. on Computational Social Networks, 2015 Travel Awards: SIGWEB '12, MILCOM '11; UF CISE '11 and '12. Outstanding International Student Award, Col. of Engineering, Univ. of FL 2011 Alumni Fellowship Award, University of Florida, 2008 The Honda Young Engineer and Scientist Award, Honda Foundation and NIST, 2007 Distinguished Academic Achievement Award, Vietnam National University, 2007 Microsoft Scholarship, By Bill Gates for Top 10 Outstanding Vietnamese Students, 2006 Bronze Medal, 15^th Int. Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), US, 2003
Selected Publications \| Full list of publications
(My students are marked with ) Book T. N. Dinh, and M. T. Thai(Eds.), Computing and Combinatorics, Springer Publisher, 2016, ISBN: 978-3-319-42633-4 Journal articles [IEEE TKDE'19] HT Nguyen, A Cano, V Tam, TN Dinh Blocking Self-avoiding Walks Stops Cyber-epidemics: A Scalable GPU-based Approach IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering [IEEE Computer'18] T. N. Dinh and M. T. Thai, AI & Blockchain: A Disruptive Integration, IEEE Computer Magazine, Issue on Future of AI (to appear), 2018 [ACM POMACS'17] H. T. Nguyen, T. P. Nguyen, T. N. Vu, and T. N. Dinh, Outward Influence and Cascade Size Estimation in Billion-scale Networks, Journal Proc. ACM Meas. Anal. Comput. Syst., 2017 (presented at SIGMETRICS'17). [ACM TOIS'17] H. T. Nguyen, P. Ghosh, M. L. Mayo, and T. N. Dinh, Social Influence Spectrum at Scale: Near-optimal Solutions for Multiple Budgets at Once, ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 2017. (IF: 2.3) [PDF](accepted) [Scientific Report'17] J. Nalluri, P. Rana, V. Azevedo, D. Barh, T. N. Dinh, V. Vladimirov, and P. Ghosh, Determining causal miRNAs and their signaling cascade in diseases using an influence diffusion model, Nature Scientific Report, 8, 2017. (IF: 4.3) (accepted) [IEEE/ACM ToN'17] H. T. Nguyen, M. T. Thai, T. N. Dinh, A Billion-scale Approximation Algorithm for Maximizing Benefit in Viral Marketing, IEEE/ ACM Transactions on Networking, 2017. (IF: 3.4) [Source code] [IEEE Access'17] H. T. Nguyen, N. Nguyen, T. N. Vu, H. X. Hoang, T. N. Dinh, Transitivity Demolition and the Falls of Social Networks, IEEE Access Journal, 2017. (IF: 3.2) [IEEE/ACM ToN'15] T. N. Dinh and M. T. Thai, Network under Joint Node and Link Attacks: Vulnerability Assessment Methods & Analysis, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 2015. (IF: 2.2) [PDF] [Internet Maths'15] T. N. Dinh and M. T. Thai, Towards Optimal Community Detection: From Trees to General Weighted Networks, Internet Mathematics, 2015[PDF]. [IEEE/ACM ToN'14] T. N. Dinh, H. Zhang, Y. Shen, D. T. Nguyen, and M. T. Thai, Cost-effective Viral Marketing for Time-critical Campaigns in Large-scale Social Networks, IEEE/ ACM Trans. on Networking, 2014. (IF: 1.8) [PDF] [PloS ONE'14] N. P. Nguyen, T. N. Dinh, Y. Shen, and My T. Thai, Dynamic social community detection and its appications, 2014. (IF: 3.2) [IEEE JSAC'13] T. N. Dinh and M. T. Thai, Community Detection in Scale-free Networks: Approx. Algorithms for Maximizing Modularity, IEEE J. on Selected Areas in Com.: Spec. Iss. on Network Science, 2013. (IF: 4.1) [PDF] [Source code]. [IEEE TMC'13] R. Tiwari, T. N. Dinh, and M. T. Thai, On Centralized and Localized Approx. Algos. for Interference-Aware Broadcast Scheduling, IEEE Transaction on Mobile Computing, 2013. (IF: 2.9) [IEEE/ACM ToN'12] T. N. Dinh, Y. Xuan, M. T. Thai, and P. M. Pardalos, On New Approaches of Assessing Network Vulnerability: Hardness and Approximation, IEEE/ ACM Transactions on Networking, 2012. (IF: 2.0) [PDF] [JOCO'12] T. N. Dinh, Y. Shen, D. T. Nguyen, M. T. Thai, On the Approximability of Positive Influence Dominating Set in Social Networks, Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, 2012. Refereed Conference Papers [ScalingBitcoin'19] Phuc D. Thai, Hong-sheng Zhou, Jonathan Katz, Lei Fan, and Thang N. Dinh BackPackers: A New Paradigm for Secure and High-performance Blockchain Scaling Bitcoin Workshop, Tel Aviv, 2019 [ICDCS'19] Lan Nguyen, Truc Nguyen, Thang Dinh and My Thai OptChain: Optimal Transactions Placement for Scalable Blockchain Sharding, The 39th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems [SENSYS'18] Hoang Truong, Shuo Zhang, Ufuk Muncuk, Phuc Nguyen, Nam Bui, Anh Nguyen, Qin Lv, Kaushik Chowdhury, Thang Dinh, and Tam Vu CapBand: Battery-free Successive Capacitance Sensing Wristband for Hand Gesture Recognition, ACM Conf. on Embedded Net. Sensor Sys., 2018.(AC rate 15.6%) Best Paper Award Nominee [MOBISYS'18] P. Nguyen, N. Bui, A. Nguyen, H. Truong, A. Suresh, M. Whitlock, D. Pham, T. Dinh, and T. Vu TYTH-Typing On Your Teeth: Tongue-Teeth Localization for Human-Computer Interface The 16th ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services [INFOCOM'18] X. Li, J. Smith, T. Dinh, and M. Thai Adaptive Crawling with Multiple Bots: A Matroid Intersection Approach in Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Computer Com., 2018 (AC 19.2%). [SIGMETRICS'17] H. T. Nguyen, T. P. Nguyen, T. N. Vu, and T. N. Dinh, Outward Influence and Cascade Size Estimation in Billion-scale Networks, ACM SIGMETRICS Int. Conf. on Measurement and Modeling of Comp. Sys., 2017 (Abstract, Acceptance rate 13.5%, Full-paper published in ACM POMACS Journal). [ICDM'17] H. T. Nguyen, T. P. Nguyen, H. Phan, and T. N. Dinh, Importance Sketching of Influence Dynamics in Billion-scale Networks, The IEEE International Conference on Data Mining series, 2017 (AC 9.25%) ICDM Best Papers, Invited to KAIS Journal Special Issue [SENSYS'17] N. Bui, A. Nguyen, P. Nguyen, H. Truong, A. Ashok, T. Dinh, R. Deterding, T. Vu, PhO2: Optical 3D printed elements and NIR/R light extraction techniques for phone-base blood oxygen level measurement, ACM Conf. on Embedded Net. Sensor Sys., 2017(AC rate 17.2%) Best Paper Award Nominee, 2nd Price ACM MobiCom 2017 App Contest. [MOBICOM-S3'17] N. Bui, A. Nguyen, P. Nguyen, H. Truong, A. Ashok, T. Dinh, R. Deterding and T. Vu, Photometry based Blood Oxygen Estimation through Smartphone Cameras, ACM MobiCom 2017 - S3 Workshop Best Paper Award [SIGMOD'16] H. T. Nguyen, M. T. Thai, and T. N. Dinh, Stop-and-Stare: Optimal Sampling Algorithms for Viral Marketing in Billion-scale Networks, in Proc. of the annual ACM SIGMOD/PODS Conf., 2016 [PDF][Source code]. (There are errors in the conference version that have been fixed in our exteneded version) Also, a summary of errors and corrections [CIKM'16] H. T. Nguyen, P. Ghosh, M. Mayo, and T. N. Dinh, Multiple Infection Sources Identification with Provable Guarantees, in Proc. of the 25th ACM Int. Conf. on Info. and Knowledge Management, 2016 (AC 17.6%) [INFOCOM'16] H. T. Nguyen, M. T. Thai, and T. N. Dinh, Cost-aware Targeted Viral Marketing in Billion-scale Networks, in Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Computer Com., 2016 (AC 18.3%). [Source code] Best-in-session Present. Award [ICDM'15] T. N. Dinh, X. Li, and M. T. Thai, Network Clustering via Maximizing Modularity: Approx. Algorithms and Theoretical Limits, The IEEE Int. Conf. on Data Mining, 2015. (AC 8.4%)[PDF] [INFOCOM'15] T. N. Dinh and M. T. Thai, Assessing Attack Vulnerability in Networks with Uncertainty, in Proceedings of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Computer Communications, 2015 [PDF](AC 19%). [CSoNet'15] T. N. Dinh, H. T. Nguyen, P. Ghosh and M. Mayo, Social Influence Spectrum with Guarantees: Computing More in Less Time, Int. Conf. on Comp. Soc. Networks, LNCS, 2015 [Extended version-ACM TOIS] [Source code]. Best Paper Award [ICDM'13] D. Nguyen, H. Zhang, S. Das, M. Thai, and T. Dinh, Least Cost Influence in Multiplex Soc. Nets.: Model Representation and Analysis, The IEEE Int. Conf. on Data Mining, 2013 (AC 11.6%).[PDF] [ICDCS'13] H. Zhang, T. N. Dinh, and M. T. Thai, Maximizing the Spread of Positive Influence in Online Social Networks, The 33rd Int. Conf. on Distributed Computing Systems, 2013 (AC 13.1%).[PDF] [INFOCOM'13] T. N. Dinh, N. P. Nguyen, and M. T. Thai, An Adaptive Approx. Algorithm for Community Detection in Dynamic Scale-free Networks, Proc. of the 32nd Int. Conf. on Computer Com. Mini-Conference, 2013 (Main+mini AC 25%) [CIKM'12] T. N. Dinh, Y. Shen, and M. T. Thai, The Walls Have Ears: Optimize Sharing for Visibility and Privacy in Online Social Networks, Proc. of the 21st Int. Conf. on Inf. & Know. Management, 2012 (full paper). [PDF] (AC 13.4%) [CIKM'12] Y. Shen, T. N. Dinh, H. Zhang, and M. T. Thai, Interest-Matching Information Propagation in Multiple Online Social Networks, Proc. of the 21st Int. Conf. on Inf. & Know. Management, 2012 (short paper) [PDF] [MOBICOM'12] N. P. Nguyen, T. N. Dinh, S. Tokala, and M. T. Thai, Overlapping Communities in Dynamic Networks: Their Detection and Mobile Applications, Proc. of the 17th Annual Int. Conf. on Mobile Computing and Networking 2011. (AC 13.6%) [INFOCOM'11] N. P. Nguyen, T. N. Dinh, Y. Xuan, M. T. Thai, Adaptive Algorithms for Detecting Community Structure in Dynamic Social Networks, Proc. of the IEEE Conf. on Computer Com., 2011. (AC 16%) [INFOCOM'10] T. N. Dinh, Y. Xuan, M. T. Thai, E. K. Park, and T. Znati, On Approximation of New Optimization Methods for Assessing Network Vulnerability, in Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Communications, 2010. (AC 17.5%)
Research projects
Human Resiliency of Enterprise Networks: Assessing and Strengthening Goals: Measure susceptibility of Enterprise system against Targeted Cyber-attack Modeling infiltration behaviors of attackers and characteristics of automated attack tools such as social bots. Novel Intention-discovery system to detect social-engineering infiltration attempt to automatically isolate the threats. Security hardening strategies to increase human resiliency
Fighting Misinformation and Covert Terrorism Groups on Social Media Goals: Investigate how the misinformation propagate so quickly and widely into the network What about Twitter and Facebook makes people so gullible and willing to believe anything? Why do we feel the need to share information so rapidly without checking if it's true? Monitoring scheme to spot viral misinformation at its early stage Efficient strategies to limit misinformation propagation and to inject correcting information automatically. Uncover covert pro-terrorist accounts, monitor and rank those accounts based on their influence. Determine the order in which the accounts should be taken down to minimize the bad influence while keeping the false negative rate in range
Critical Infrastructures Resiliency and Interdependency Goals: Identify critical components of critical infrastructure and the most devastating failure scenarios and their likelihood Measure and model the interdependency among the network systems, e.g. effect of failures on power grid to communication systems and vice versa Model and analyze cascading failures propagating inter- and intra- critical infrastructures Network design to enhance the resiliency of the interdependent systems.
Smart Information Sharing in Online Space: Privacy vs. Visibility Goals: Visualization tools to understand how sensitive information leak through online social networks Smart solutions to aid users in whether or not she/he should share a certain information Provide social networks users multiple trade-off levels between privacy and visibility Automatically suggest an optimal set of friends to share the information that maximize the visibility while minimize the leakage risk.
Source Code
*WARNING: We will not be responsible for any loss or damage caused by using these codes* [SSA/D-SSA Source Code] for SIGMOD'16 paper "Stop-and-Stare: Optimal Sampling Algorithms for Viral Marketing in Billion-scale Networks" (paper) [BCT Source Code] for INFOCOM'16 paper "Cost-aware Targeted Viral Marketing in Billion-scale Networks" (paper) [LISA Source Code] for CSoNet'15 paper "Social Influence Spectrum with Guarantees: Computing More in Less Time" (paper). [LDF Source Code] for JSAC paper "Community Detection in Scale-free Networks: Approximation Algorithms for Maximizing Modularity" (paper).
Students
Current students Hung T. Nguyen (PhD student, Fall'14) Tri Nguyen (PhD student, Spring'16)	Alumni Kevin Bender (Highschool student, Summer'16) Chase Keech (BS) Marcangelo S. Dilinila (BS) Carl Miranda (BS) Symone' Berry (BS) Ethan Cason (BS) Steven Dayley (BS) Mathew Hill (BS) Taymon Coleman (Highschool student)
Teaching
CMSC 491: Social Network Analysis & Cybersecurity Risks (Fall 2016) CMSC 691: Advanced Social Network Analysis & Security (Spr 2016) CMSC 501: Advanced Algorithms (Fall 2015) EGNR 491: Advanced Problem Solving Techniques (ACM Programming) (Fall 2015) CMSC 691: Advanced Social Network Analysis & Security (Spr 2015) CMSC 491: Social Network Analysis & Cybersecurity Risks (Fall 2014) CMSC 491: Complex Systems & Social Network Analysis (Fall 2013)
Professional Services
Associate Editor: Computational Social Networks Journal, Springer, (2013-present) Guest Editor: A special issue of Journal of Combinatorial Optimization on Social Networks PC Co-chairs: The 22nd International Computing and Combinatorics Conference (COCOON'16), International Workshop on Computational Social Networks 2014 Registration chair: ACM Hypertext 2018 Session Chairs: IEEE INFOCOM '16 - Game Theory, IEEE BigSecurity'16 NSF Panelist: 2015, 2016, 2017 (2) TPC member: IEEE ICC'18, IEEE ICNC'18, COCOA'18 IEEE INFOCOM '17, IEEE ICC'17, IEEE ICNC'17, INFOCOM BigSecurity'17 Wkshp IEEE INFOCOM '16, IEEE SOCIALCOM'16, COCOA '16, ICCN'16 (CCM & SNC) IEEE ICC '15 SAC, IEEE MSN'15, INFOCOM WIDN'15 Wkshp, COCOA '15 IEEE GLOBECOM '14, IEEE MSN '14, INFOCOM DySON'14 Wkshp, WiMan '14, CoNeD '14, IEEE SocialCom'13, SocialComNet '13 Reviewer: Ad Hoc Networks IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing Cities: The International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems (THMS) IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE) IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (ToN) IEEE Transactions on Distributed and Parallel Systems (TPDS) Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies (TETT) Information Science Journal of Combinatorial Optimization (JOCO) Neural Computation (NECO) Optimization: A J. of Math. Prog. & Oper. Res. Optimization Letters Social Network Analysis and Mining (SNAM) Theoretical Computer Science (TCS) Algorithmica
Miscellany
Links: Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student, by Professor Manuel Blum MIT Open Courseware - Electrical Engineering and Computer Science The last lecture: Randy Pausch: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams (Video on Youtube) Connected: How Kevin Bacon cured Cancer (A nice introduction to Network Science) Writing Tips and Styles (Prof. J. Cole Smith) Quotations: "You Ain't Gonna Need It" "Stay hungry, stay foolish" - Steve Jobs "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." - Randy Pausch "We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done." - Alan Turing "I never did a day's work in my life. It was all fun". - Thomas A. Edison

Book

Journal articles

Refereed Conference Papers

Human Resiliency of Enterprise Networks: Assessing and Strengthening

Goals:

Fighting Misinformation and Covert Terrorism Groups on Social Media

Goals:

Critical Infrastructures Resiliency and Interdependency

Goals:

Smart Information Sharing in Online Space: Privacy vs. Visibility

Goals:

Current students

Alumni

Links:

Quotations: