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

Profile

Zoran Obradovic is Director of the Center for Information Science and Technology and a Professor of Computer and Information Sciences at Temple University in Philadelphia. His research interests focus on developing data mining and statistical learning methods for knowledge discovery at large databases. He has authored about 200 articles addressing data analysis challenges in bioinformatics, medical informatics, earth sciences, social sciences and other domains. Obradovic is team leader for the best rated predictor of intrinsically disordered protein regions at three consecutive worldwide biannual competitions organized by protein structure prediction assessment community (CASP 5-7). Obradovic serves as journal editorial board member at Advances in Bioinformatics; International Journal of Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology; Statistical Analysis and Data Mining; International Journal of Parallel, Emergent and Distributed Systems; International Journal of Data Mining and Bioinformatics; and Multiple Valued Logic and Soft Computing. He was track chair at seven and program committee member at about 40 data mining conferences. Obradovic was recently co-chair at 39th Symposium on the Interface of Statistics, Computing Science and Applications, ACM First International Workshop on Text Mining in Bioinformatics and IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine. Currently he serves as the steering committee member of 2008 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine and is program co-chair of 2009 SIAM International Conference on Data Mining.

Mission

• Motivation:
  • Traditional decision support technologies are retrospective
    (they answer what happened in the past)
  • There is demand for descriptive and prospective decision support
    (addressing why things happen and what is likely to happen next)
• Mission:
  • Developing a strong interface between prospective information management/retrieval/analysis and applied disciplines
• Research Tasks:
  • Data-driven discovery and modeling of hidden patterns in large data sets
    (anomaly detection, prediction, pattern discovery, summarization, trend)

Contribution Summary

• Published about 200 data mining articles addressing data mining challenges in
  • health informatics,
  • social sciences,
  • environmental management and other domains.
• Team leader for the best rated predictor of protein disorder
  • at three consecutive worldwide biannual competitions CASP 5-7 (year 2003-Present)
• Editorial board member at 6 journals.
• Track chair at 7 and program committee member at 40 conferences.
• Recently co-chaired
  • 39th Symp. Interface of Statistics, Computing Science and Applications
  • ACM First International Workshop on Text Mining in Bioinformatics
  • IEEE International Conf. Bioinformatics and Biomedicine.
• Currently program co-chair: 2009 SIAM International Conference on Data Mining
• Currently steering committee member: 2008 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine

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

• 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.

Research grants in past six years

• Dunker, A.K., and Obradovic, Z. (June 2008 . May 2009) "Bioinformatics Linkage of Protein Disorder and Function," National Institute of Health, Grant R56 LM007688-05A1 $441,508.
• Obradovic, Z., Vucetic, S. and Z. Li (Aug. 2006 - July 2009) "Collaborative Research: Data Mining Support for Retrieval and Analysis of Geophysical Parameters," National Science Foundation, $600,404 ($400,207 to Temple University).
• Harris A., Obradovic, Z., Izenman, A., Mennis, J. (Sept. 2006 - Sept. 2008) "Investigating the Simultaneous Effects of Individual, Program and Neighborhood Attributes on Juvenile Recidivism Using GIS and Spatial Data Mining," National Institute of Justice, $316,714.
• Harris A., Obradovic, Z., Izenman, A., Mennis, J. (July 2006 - Dec. 2006) "Investigating the Simultaneous Effects of Individual, Program and Neighborhood Attributes on Juvenile Recidivism Using GIS and Spatial Data Mining," Institute of Public Affairs, Temple University, $16,320.
• 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, $1,586,250.
  
• 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, $1,284,246.
  
• 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, $1,291,356.
  
• 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, $210,120.
  
• 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, $12,000.
  
• 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, $353,100 ($ 150,000 from NSF).
  
• Obradovic, Z. and Vucetic, S. (June 2004 - June 2006) "Applications of Bioinformatics Data Analysis to Cardiovascular and Cancer Research," The Pennsylvania Department of Health, $250,000 (direct costs).
  
• Obradovic, Z. and Vucetic, S. (January 2004 - June 2004) "Research Infrastructure and Expertise for Gene Expression Data Analysis," The Pennsylvania Department of Health, $70,000 (direct costs).
  
• Obradovic, Z., Chang, F.N., Tuszynski, G. P. and Vucetic, S. (January 2004 - June 2004) "Mining High Performance Liquid Electrophoresis Data," Temple University, $8,000 (direct costs).
  
• Wolfgang, P., Obradovic, Z., Megalooikonomou, V. and Vucetic, S., (June 2003 - December 2003) "Visualization and Analysis of Commercial Flight Data," Lockheed Martin Corp., $49,000.
  
• 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, $30,000.
  
• 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, $50,000.
  
• 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, $984,026.
  
• 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, $240,000.
  
• 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, $379,910.
  
• 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, $50,858.