Korean scientist Meeyoung Cha becomes new Director at MPI-SP Bochum and strengthens the interdisciplinary focus of the Institute

Finding patterns in massive heterogeneous data with the vision of pioneering data science for humanity

Algorithmic detection of outliers has been a recurring research theme for Meeyoung Cha (also called “Mia”), who joins the Max Planck Society as Scientific Director and is with the MPI for Security and Privacy (MPI-SP) as of December 2023.

“I’ve always been fascinated by socially relevant information. It’s fascinating when algorithms start to detect patterns of fake news, hate speech, tax fraud, and even poverty from massive amounts of text and images. I am extremely excited to be interacting with scientists from different disciplines at MPG,” says the newly appointed Director.

Prior to joining, Meeyoung worked as a faculty member at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in South Korea. She was a visiting professor at Facebook and a postdoctoral researcher at the MPI for Software Systems (MPI-SWS). Meeyoung is now affiliated with the Human Sciences Section (HSS) at the MPG.
 
Her research group will specialize in computer science and social sciences, leveraging the power of big data for understanding social information and human-machine interactions. Research includes innovative methods in the areas of security, health, transparency, and inclusion. Groundbreaking experiments address topics such as misinformation, health behavior, and AI safety. More recently, she has been committed to developing computational methods using AI and satellite imagery in the context of poverty mapping and environmental security. Her research vision is “data science for humanity” and aims to advance computational methods for tackling the pressing challenges in complex social systems.

MPI-SP