PSA Conference Travel Report 2012

PSA Conference Travel Report 2012

First of all, I am most grateful to the Postgraduate Students' Association (PSA) for the 2012 PSA Conference Travel Award. It has allowed me to register and attend the 2012 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence at Macau, China from 04 to 07 Dec 2012. My research on the Twitter social network forms part of my Master's thesis on "The Identification of Like-minded Communities on Online Social Networks". The paper that I presented is titled "Tweets Beget Propinquity: Detecting Highly Interactive Communities on Twitter using Tweeting Links", and it describes one of the proposed methodologies in my Master's thesis where we attempt to detect communities on Twitter that communicate frequently about a common interest (product/service). This research would be important for companies trying to utilize social media as new outlets for their targeted advertising and viral marketing efforts. Furthermore, the opportunity to present my paper at the conference has allowed me to obtain valuable feedback to further improve my work.

In addition to obtaining valuable feedback, I also had the opportunity to discuss my current work and some future research ideas with many leading experts in my field. As a result of the many fruitful discussions and feedback, I am in the final stages of my thesis writing and would be submitting my thesis in Jan 2013 (finishing approximately 9 months ahead of schedule). This conference has also offered me a great opportunity to network with academics from other institutes. In particular, I have been offered an appointment as a research enginner at the Living Analytics Research Centre, Singapore Management University and will be commencing in Jan 2013. Once again, I thank PSA for the travel award which has greatly facilitated my Master's research and enhanced my future research career.

Kwan Hui Lim

Master of Science (By Research) Candidate

School of Computer Science and Software Engineering