Hello👋

This is my personal website, that I should use to publish work but always forget. I coded it from scratch using Next.js and Tailwind CSS.

Who am I?

Zaur

I'm a PhD student at University College Dublin (UCD) in the School of Information & Communication Studies, researching Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) under the supervision of Dr. Brendan Spillane and co-supervision of Dr. Benjamin R. Cowan, funded by a scholarship from the ADAPT Centre.
I've obtained degrees in Economics, Computer Science, and Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. I was awarded an AI scholarship by the European Union for my postgraduate education. I'm passionate about open-source intelligence (OSINT), and began working as a freelancer after graduating with a master's degree in CS. They say client satisfaction is often a good indicator of one's proficiency, and I have repeatedly worked with international clients on various intelligence projects with success.
In 2023, I decided to extend my experience to crime (*queue the Breaking Bad soundtrack*), and did a short pit stop working for An Garda Síochána (Ireland's National Police and Security Service) as a Crime & Data Analyst in the Garda Síochána Analysis Service (GSAS), contributing to the analysis of national crime statistics, investigations and intelligence. In 2024, I started a PhD! Outside of education and work, I've got a strong interest in security and defence, especially cyber. I currently serve as a reservist in the Irish Defence Forces with the Communications & Information Services Corps (2CIS RDF).

Memberships

  • International Association of Crime Analysts (IACA)
  • Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
  • European Association of Crime Analysts (EACA)
  • Royal Statistical Society (RSS)
  • Association of Crime & Intelligence Analysts (ACIA)
  • Information Systems Security Association (ISSA)
  • International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts (IALEI)

Interests

  • Disinformation: Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI)
  • Digital Communication: Computational Propaganda, Social Media Manipulation
  • Security Studies: Hybrid Warfare, Counterintelligence, Geopolitical Risks
  • Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Text Analytics, Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT)
  • Cyberspace: Cyberwarfare, Cyber Operations, Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI)

Latest Projects

Abusive Language Detection: Efficiency of Large Language Models

Published a research paper in HCAI-EP 2024 with Dr. Rajesh Jaiswal on LLMs to detect abusive language online (doi.org/10.1145/3701268.3701269)

Predictive Models with XAI: Association of Computing Machinery

Proceedings of the 2023 Conference on Human Centered Artificial Intelligence: Education and Practice · December 2023 · (doi.org/10.1145/3633083.3633189)

Media Website Bias Checker / React App

I built an application that allows users to search over 2000+ media websites to discover their political ideology, factual reporting, bias score and MBFC classification.

Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference GIS Map

I'm a geek for visualisations and geographical information systems (GIS), so I developed a map visualising FIMI in Europe. Built using leaflet (JS).

Contact Me