Director, Information Science and Technology Center,
Professor, Computer and Information Sciences Department,
Temple University

Profile

Zoran Obradovic, professor of computer and information sciences and the director of the Center for Information Science and Technology at Temple University in Philadelphia is an internationally recognized leader in data mining and bioinformatics. He joined Temple in 2000 from Washington State University, where he was named Researcher of the Year by the College of Engineering and Architecture. At Temple in 2008 he received College of Science and Technology Faculty Research Excellence Award and in 2009 the overall Temple University Faculty Research Award. His research focuses on improving predictive modeling and decision support through data-driven discovery and modeling of hidden patterns in large data sets. Obradovic has published more than 200 articles addressing data mining challenges in health informatics, the social sciences, environmental management and other domains. His group's pioneering research on the prediction and functional analysis of intrinsically disordered regions in proteins has provided new insight into how protein structure establishes function and the program his team developed was the best rated predictor of intrinsic disorder at three consecutive international competitions organized by protein structure prediction assessment community (CASP 5-7). Obradovic was the program chair at five, track chair at seven and program committee member at about 40 data mining conferences. He currently serves as an editorial board member at seven journals and is the executive editor for applications at Statistical Analysis and Data Mining journal.

Intellectual Challenges

• Spatial and temporal data dependency
• High dimensional data
• Data collection bias
• Data fusion from multiple modalities and multiple resolutions
• Missing/noisy/unstable attributes ...

For a review of these challenges and some of our proposed solutions see:

• Obradovic, Z. and Vucetic, S. (2004) "Challenges in Scientific Data Mining: Heterogeneous, Biased, and Large Sample," at The Next Generation Data Mining (editors: H. Kargupta, A. Joshi, K. Sivakumar, Y. Yesha), AAAI/MIT Press, pp. 381-401.

Projects

• Health Sciences
  • Bioinformatics of protein disorder (NIH, NSF)
  • Data mining in brain image databases (NIH, NSF)
  • Gene expression data analysis (NIH, PA Dept. of Health)
  • Bioinformatics core facility (PA Dept. of Health)
• Social Sciences
  • Data mining for juvenile recidivism investigation (NIJ)
• Environmental Sciences
  • Estimation of geophysical parameters from sensors on satellites (NSF)
• Other Domains
  • Text mining (Public Health, Public Affairs, Biomedical) (PA Dept. of Health)
  • Spatial-temporal data reduction (precision agriculture) (NSF, INEEL)
  • Knowledge discovery in distributed databases (agriculture) (DOE)
  • Time series analysis (deregulated electricity markets) (NSF)

Recognition

• Temple University Faculty Research Award, April 2009.
• College of Science and Technology Faculty Research Excellence Award, Nov. 2008.
• Team leader for the best rated model of intrinsically disordered protein regions at the seventh critical assessments of structure prediction experiments (CASP 7), Nov. 26-30, 2006.
• Team leader for the best predictor in protein disorder category at fifth and the sixth critical assessments of structure prediction experiments (CASP 5 and CASP 6), 2002 and 2004.
• Researcher of the Year for College of Engineering and Architecture, Annual Convocation, Washington State University, April 11, 2000.

Research grants in past ten years

• Kelsen, S., Merali, S., Obradovic, Z. (Sept 2009 - Aug 2011) "Ancillary Study: Identification of Plasma Biomarkers in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease," National Institute of Health, Grant 1RC2HL101713-01.
• Obradovic, Z. (Oct 2008 - Dec 2010) "Improving Biomedical Informatics Support at Temple Health Sciences Center," The Pennsylvania Department of Health.
• Dunker, A.K., and Obradovic, Z. (June 2008 - May 2010) "Bioinformatics Linkage of Protein Disorder and Function," National Institute of Health, Grant R56 LM007688-05A1.
• Obradovic, Z., Vucetic, S. and Z. Li (Aug 2006 - July 2010) "Collaborative Research: Data Mining Support for Retrieval and Analysis of Geophysical Parameters," National Science Foundation, NSF-IIS-0612149.
• Harris A., Obradovic, Z., Izenman, A., Mennis, J. (Sept. 2006 - Sept. 2009) "Investigating the Simultaneous Effects of Individual, Program and Neighborhood Attributes on Juvenile Recidivism Using GIS and Spatial Data Mining," National Institute of Justice, GMS Award 2006-IJ-CX-0022.
• Soprano, D.R., Soprano, K.J., Obradovic, Z. and Vucetic, S. (April 2005 - December 2009) "PBX and Retinoic Acid-Dependent Differentiation," National Institute of Health, NIH- 1 R01 DK070650-01.
  
• Megalooikonomou, V., Obradovic, Z., Boyko, O.B., Gee, J. (January 2004 - December 2007) "Large Scale Data Analysis for Brain Images," National Institute of Health, Grant NGA: 1 R01 MHO68066-01A1.
  
• Dunker, A.K., and Obradovic, Z. (September 2003 - September 2007) "Bioinformatics Linkage of Protein Disorder and Function," National Institute of Health, Grant R01 LM007688-01A1.
  
• Obradovic, Z. and Vucetic, S., (August 2002 - August 2005) "ITR/Small/Scientific Frontiers: Task-Specific Data Reduction and Mining in Spatial-Temporal Domains," National Science Foundation, Grant 0219736.
  
• Obradovic, Z. and Vucetic, S., (June 2004 - August 2004) "REU Supplement for ITR: Task-Specific Data Reduction and Mining for Spatial-Temporal Domains," National Science Foundation.
  
• Kwatny, E., Stafford, R., Megalooikonomou, V. and Obradovic, Z., (September 2001 - September 2004) High Performance Network Connection for Knowledge Discovery Research," National Science Foundation, Grant NSF-ANIR-0124390.
  
• Obradovic, Z. and Vucetic, S. (June 2004 - June 2006) "Applications of Bioinformatics Data Analysis to Cardiovascular and Cancer Research," The Pennsylvania Department of Health.
  
• Obradovic, Z. and Vucetic, S. (January 2004 - June 2004) "Research Infrastructure and Expertise for Gene Expression Data Analysis," The Pennsylvania Department of Health.
  
• Obradovic, Z., Chang, F.N., Tuszynski, G. P. and Vucetic, S. (January 2004 - June 2004) "Mining High Performance Liquid Electrophoresis Data," Temple University.
  
• Wolfgang, P., Obradovic, Z., Megalooikonomou, V. and Vucetic, S., (June 2003 - December 2003) "Visualization and Analysis of Commercial Flight Data," Lockheed Martin Corp.
  
• Obradovic, Z. (January 2003 - August 2004) "An Efficient System for Discovering Patterns and Associations at Earth Observation Databases," New Previously Unfunded Directions for Established Investigators Grant Application, Temple University.
  
• Obradovic, Z. (March 2001 - September 2001) "Data Reduction for Spatial-Temporal Knowledge Discovery," Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, LDRD Program under DOE contract DE-AC07-99ID13727.
  
• Dunker, A.K and Obradovic, Z., (May 2000 - May 2003) "Bioinformatics, Disordered Proteins and Function," The National Institute of Health, Grant 1 R01 LM06916-01, Biotechnology.
  
• Obradovic, Z. and Tomsovic, K., (August 2000 - August 2004) "Towards an Understanding of Deregulated Electricity Markets through Time Series Analysis," Power Systems and Intelligent Systems Programs, Division of Engineering, National Science Foundation, Grant ECS-9988626.
  
• Obradovic, Z. and Dunker, A.K., (June 1998 - December 2001) "Intelligent Data Analysis for Identifying Protein Disorder," cross-disciplinary funding by KDI Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence Initiative, Division of Information and Intelligent Systems and Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, National Science Foundation, Grant IIS-9711532.
  
• Obradovic, Z. and Dunker, A.K., (January 2000 - May 2001) "Supplement to Intelligent Data Analysis for Identifying Protein Disorder," Knowledge and Cognitive Systems Program, National Science Foundation.