Takis Metaxas

Professor and Chair of Computer Science, Wellesley College

SCIENCE & TECH

His research interests are in Social Computing and Web Science, connecting Computer Science to Social Sciences (esp. Sociology, Political Science, Psychology, Economics) and to Natural Sciences (esp. Biology and Neuroscience). In particular, he is interested in how the Web is changing the way we think, decide, and act as individuals and members of social communities. 

 

His work has been recognized with NSF grants and four Best Paper Awards.

 

Unfortunately, he is not happy with what he finds in his research: He has been revealing online propaganda since 2005 when there was no term for "fake news" and it was not proper to criticize Google. He was also the first to point out that one cannot predict elections using social media because one can compromise elections with social media. With his Wellesley Colleagues, they discovered the first online political bots and have pointed out that the technique that was used to propagate fake news and compromise the 2016 presidential elections was identical to the technique that compromised the 2010 MA Senatorial elections. 

 

For Professor Metaxas, teaching has always been a passion of his life. He has taught and developed courses for all curricular levels. In particular, he developed an award-winning course entitled "The Art and Science of Multimedia" that became the core of the Media Arts and Science Program at Wellesley, through the collaboration of the CS and Art Departments. More recently, he developed an award-winning introductory course entitled "The Socio-Techno Web: Technologies for Communication" about the perils and opportunities in Cyberspace. In all of his courses, he brings the experience from his academic and professional life and applies pedagogical techniques that help students monitor their learning progress.

 

Professor Metaxas is a Senior Member of the ACM, the primary professional organization of Computer Scientists, and a Member of Liberal Arts Computer Science (LACS) Consortium, IEEE Computer Society, SIGWEB, SIGCSE and SIGACT's electronic publication board. He serves on several conference Program Committees and is the representative of the Computing Research Association (CRA). In the past, he has been a visiting scientist at MIT and at the Sydney University, Australia. Being interested in the applications of Computing, he worked as the Chief Technology Officer of a biotech company specializing in computerized tests for measuring the symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD), and was a Research Associate at the Developmental Biopsychiatry Research Program at McLean Hospital.