Overview

Short Bio

My name is Diogo F. Pacheco, and I am passionate about data; by its capacity to inform and to mislead. I am particularly interested in computational social science and modeling complex social behavior, i.e. combining the expertise of social, cognitive, and STEM scientists to develop tools to enhance our understanding about society.

I started my academic life at the University of Pernambuco (Recife-PE, Brazil) aiming to use computational intelligence to solve practical real world problems. My bachelors and masters in Computer Engineering main contribution was building a decision support system (DSS) for the sugarcane harvest problem. The DSS was empowered by an evolutionary multi-objective optimization algorithm processing leveraged information from artificial neural networks.

In 2013, after a 5-year break from Academia working in the Industry, I moved to the USA to start my Ph.D. focusing on the exploration of social media data (the digital footprints) as a proxy for understanding human behavior, at the Florida Institute of Technology. In 2018, I joined (and still affiliated) the Observatory on Social Media and Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research at Indiana University as a postdoctoral fellow. We focused our research in the misinformation arena, trying to understand the biases making us vulnerable to it, and detecting coordinated groups exploiting social media platforms.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. Computer Science, "Information Densification of Social Constructs via Behavior Analyses of Social Media Users - A Study on Twitter", Florida Institute of Technology (FIT), USA 2017.
• M.Sc. Computer Engineering, "An Evolutionary Multi-Objective Approach to Decision Support in Sugarcane Harvest", University of Pernambuco (UPE), Brazil 2008.
• B.Sc. Computer Engineering, "Decision Support in Intelligent Systems for Agricultural Crops", University of Pernambuco (UPE), Brazil 2006.

Prospective Students

I more than welcome motivated students, self-funded PhD, and postdocs to do research on Social Media Analysis and Complex Networks, specifcally, to combat misinformation and inauthentic behavior online. These links might be useful:

• (new)EPSRC PhD Studentships 21/22 entry 
• China Scholarship Council and University of Exeter Full PhD Scholarships
• PhD Studentship opportunities at Exeter
• Postgraduate research in the Computer Science department

Back to top

Publications

_{Copyright Notice: Any articles made available for download are for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the copyright holder.}

| 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 |

2024

• Prandi C, Pacheco D, Mourlas C. (2024) Preface of special issue on future generation ICT solutions for digital social innovation and sustainable development, Future Generation Computer Systems, volume 153, pages 537-538, DOI:10.1016/j.future.2023.12.019.

2023

• Pacheco D, Teixeira AS, Barbosa H, Menezes R, Mangioni G. (2023) Complex Networks XIII Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Complex Networks, CompleNet 2022, Springer.
• Pacheco D. (2023) Bots, Elections, and Controversies: Twitter Insights from Brazil's Polarised Elections. [PDF]
• Attié M, Pacheco D, Oliveira M. (2023) Getting the Boot? Predicting the Dismissal of Managers in Football, Springer Proceedings in Complexity, pages 132-140, DOI:10.1007/978-3-031-28276-8_12.

2022

• Peters G, Pacheco D. (2022) Betting the system: Using lineups to predict football scores. [PDF]
• DeVerna MR, Aiyappa R, Pacheco D, Bryden J, Menczer F. (2022) Identifying and characterizing superspreaders of low-credibility content on Twitter. [PDF]
• Poudyal B, Pacheco D, Oliveira M, Chen Z, Barbosa H, Menezes R, Ghoshal G. (2022) Dynamic predictability and spatio-temporal contexts in human mobility. [PDF]
• Chen W, Pacheco D, Yang K-C, Menczer F. (2022) Neutral bots probe political bias on social media (vol 12, 5580, 2021), NATURE COMMUNICATIONS, volume 13, no. 1, article no. ARTN 264, DOI:10.1038/s41467-021-27855-8. [PDF]

2021

• Bollenbacher J, Pacheco D, Hui P-M, Ahn Y-Y, Flammini A, Menczer F. (2021) On the challenges of predicting microscopic dynamics of online conversations, Applied Network Science, volume 6, no. 1, DOI:10.1007/s41109-021-00357-8.
• Teixeira AS, Pacheco D, Oliveira M, Barbosa H, Gonçalves B, Menezes R. (2021) Complex Networks XII Proceedings of the 12th Conference on Complex Networks CompleNet 2021, Springer.
• Pacheco D, Hui P-M, Torres-Lugo C, Truong BT, Menczer F. (2021) Uncovering Coordinated Networks on Social Media: Methods and Case Studies, The International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, Virtual, 7th - 10th Jun 2021, DOI:10.1609/icwsm.v15i1.18075.
• Chen W, Pacheco D, Yang KC, Menczer F. (2021) Neutral bots probe political bias on social media, Nature Communications, volume 12, no. 1, DOI:10.1038/s41467-021-25738-6.
• Teixeira AS, Pacheco D, Oliveira M, Barbosa H, Gonçalves B, Menezes R. (2021) Preface, Springer Proceedings in Complexity, DOI:10.1201/9781439821916.fmatt.

2020

• Pacheco D, Flammini A, Menczer F. (2020) Unveiling Coordinated Groups Behind White Helmets Disinformation, WWW '20: The Web Conference 2020, Companion Proceedings of the Web Conference 2020, DOI:10.1145/3366424.3385775. [PDF]
• Chen W, Pacheco D, Yang K-C, Menczer F. (2020) Neutral bots probe political bias on social media, Nat Commun, volume 12. [PDF]
• Pacheco D, Flammini A, Menczer F. (2020) Unveiling Coordinated Groups Behind White Helmets Disinformation. [PDF]
• Pacheco D, Hui P-M, Torres-Lugo C, Truong BT, Flammini A, Menczer F. (2020) Uncovering Coordinated Networks on Social Media: Methods and Case Studies, Proc. AAAI Intl. Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM) 2021. [PDF]

2019

• Blythe J, Ferrara E, Huang D, Lerman K, Muric G, Sapienza A, Tregubov A, Pacheco D, Bollenbacher J, Flammini A. (2019) The DARPA socialsim challenge: Massive multi-agent simulations of the Github ecosystem, Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS, volume 3, pages 1835-1837.
• Blythe J, Bollenbacher J, Huang D, Hui P-M, Krohn R, Pacheco D, Muric G, Sapienza A, Tregubov A, Ahn Y-Y. (2019) Massive Multi-agent Data-Driven Simulations of the GitHub Ecosystem, Advances in Practical Applications of Survivable Agents and Multi-Agent Systems: The PAAMS Collection, Springer Nature, 3-15, DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-24209-1_1.
• Blythe J, Bollenbacher J, Huang D, Hui P-M, Krohn R, Pacheco D, Muric G, Sapienza A, Tregubov A, Ahn Y-Y. (2019) Massive Multi-Agent Data-Driven Simulations of the GitHub Ecosystem, DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1908.05437.

2018

• Pacheco DF, Saha P, De Lima-Neto FB, Menezes R. (2018) Sensing language relationships from social media, 2017 IEEE SmartWorld Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing, Advanced and Trusted Computed, Scalable Computing and Communications, Cloud and Big Data Computing, Internet of People and Smart City Innovation, SmartWorld/SCALCOM/UIC/ATC/CBDCom/IOP/SCI 2017 - Conference Proceedings, pages 1-6, DOI:10.1109/UIC-ATC.2017.8397543.

2017

• Pacheco DF, Pinheiro D, Lima-Neto FBD, Ribeiro E, Menezes R. (2017) Characterization of Football Supporters from Twitter Conversations, Proceedings - 2016 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence, WI 2016, pages 169-176, DOI:10.1109/WI.2016.0033.
• Saha P, Pacheco D, Menezes R. (2017) Language as a measure of welfare, FLAIRS 2017 - Proceedings of the 30th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference, pages 359-364.
• Pacheco DF, Oliveira M, Menezes R. (2017) Using social media to assess neighborhood social disorganization: A case study in the United Kingdom, FLAIRS 2017 - Proceedings of the 30th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference, pages 341-346.
• Pacheco DF, Pinheiro D, Cadeiras M, Menezes R. (2017) Characterizing Organ Donation Awareness from Social Media, 2017 IEEE 33RD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DATA ENGINEERING (ICDE 2017), pages 1541-1548, DOI:10.1109/ICDE.2017.225. [PDF]

2016

• Pacheco DF, Pinheiro D, de Lima-Neto FB, Ribeiro E, Menezes R. (2016) Characterization of Football Supporters from Twitter Conversations, 2016 IEEE/WIC/ACM INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON WEB INTELLIGENCE (WI 2016), pages 169-176, DOI:10.1109/WI.2016.32. [PDF]

2015

• Pacheco D, De Lima Neto FB, Moyano L, Menezes R. (2015) Football Conversations: What Twitter Reveals about the 2014 World Cup, Anais do Brazilian Workshop on Social Network Analysis and Mining (BraSNAM), DOI:10.5753/brasnam.2015.6771.

2014

• Pacheco D, Rose D, Buarque de Lima Neto F, Menezes R. (2014) Using Interactions in the Quantification of Media Bias, 2014 ASE BIGDATA/SOCIALCOM/CYBERSECURITY Conference, Stanford Universoty, 27th - 31st May 2014, DOI:10.13140/2.1.1487.2320.

2008

• Pacheco DF, Lucas TDP, de Lima Neto FB. (2008) How Preferences Affect Productivity in the Sugarcane Harvest Problem A Comparative Study of a Two-Steps MOEA, 2008 Eighth International Conference on Hybrid Intelligent Systems, DOI:10.1109/his.2008.64.
• Pacheco DF, de Lima Neto FB. (2008) A Fair Comparison of Representations, Operators and Algorithms for the Sugarcane Harvest Problem, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, IEEE SMC'99 Conference Proceedings 1999 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (Cat No99CH37028), pages 1754-1759, DOI:10.1109/icsmc.2008.4811542.
• Pacheco DF, Oliveira RSF, Neto FBL. (2008) Including Multi-Objective Abilities in the Hybrid Intelligent Suite for Decision Support, 2008 IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence), DOI:10.1109/ijcnn.2008.4634378.

2007

• Neto FBL, Oliveira FRS, Pacheco DF. (2007) Hybrid intelligent suite for decision support, Proceedings of The 7th International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Applications, ISDA 2007, pages 94-99, DOI:10.1109/ISDA.2007.4389592.
• Pacheco DF, Lucas TDP, de Lima Neto FB. (2007) How to Obtain Fair Managerial Decisions in Sugar Cane Harvest Using NSGA-II, 7th International Conference on Hybrid Intelligent Systems (HIS 2007), DOI:10.1109/his.2007.53.
• Neto FBL, Oliveira FRS, Pacheco DF. (2007) Hybrid Intelligent Suite for Decision Support, Seventh International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Applications (ISDA 2007), DOI:10.1109/isda.2007.45.
• Pacheco DF, Lucas TDP, de Lima Neto FB. (2007) How to Obtain Fair Managerial Decisions in Sugar Cane Harvest Using NSGA-II, 7th International Conference on Hybrid Intelligent Systems (HIS 2007), DOI:10.1109/ichis.2007.4344049.

2006

• Da Silva Oliveira FR, Pacheco DF, Leonel A, De Lima Neto FB. (2006) Intelligent support decision in sugarcane harvest, Computers in Agriculture and Natural Resources - Proceedings of the 4th World Congress, pages 456-462.

Back to top