Dr. Fillia Makedon received a $500K grant from the National Science Foundation
Sep. 14, 2007
Dr. Fillia Makedon has received a $500K grant from the National Science Foundation as the
principle investigator to study trustworthy recommendation systems.
Recommendation systems have played a role with increasing importance and prominence in various
online systems, particularly ones related to electronic commerce. These systems are used as a
means of reducing "information overload" for users by filtering a potentially overwhelming
number of options (such as all the products available from a seller) to identify those calculated
to be of greatest interest.
This project extends research on collaborative recommendation systems, which base recommendations
for an individual on the preferences expressed by other people, by investigating the problem of
malicious manipulation of these systems.
Dr. Makedon is the chairperson of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the
director of the Heracleia Human-Centered Computing Lab at UTA. She is collaborating with
researchers at the University of California at Davis on this project.