Ly Dinh, Ph.D

Assistant Professor of Information Science · University of South Florida
4202 E Fowler Avenue, CIS 2011 · Tampa, FL 33620-7800
lydinh@usf.edu

I am a computational social science researcher studying how research methods such as network analysis, social simulation models, and text analysis, can be used to advance our understanding of various social and organizational systems. My current projects place network science at the core to understand and explain a number of social and organizational phenomena ranging from egocentric networks to interagency emergency response networks. I also develop and tests new measure to capture the complexities of social interactions that can be observed at multiple levels of of the network (ego, dyad, triad, subgroup, whole network). My research has appeared in Communication Research, Scientific Reports, Communication Studies, and peer-reviewed outlets in computational social science. I am grateful to be a recipient of the 2020 Grace Hopper Scholar for Women in Computing, and a 2018 Network Science Fellow at Visible Networks Labs.

Research

Selected Publications:


Network Science

Dinh, L., Barley, W.C., Johnson, L., & Allan, B.F. (2024). Hyperauthored papers disproportionately amplify important egocentric network metrics. Quantitative Science Studies. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00307

Dinh, L., Friedman, A., & Hawley, K. (2024). Examining peer review network dynamics in higher education visual communication courses using ERGM. Computers and Education Open, 100222. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeo.2024.100222

Rezapour, R.*, Dinh, L.*, Jiang, L., & Diesner, J. (2024). Structural balance in real-world social networks: incorporating direction and transitivity in measuring partial balance. Social Network Analysis & Mining, 14, 168. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-024-01339-1 (*Equal Contribution)

Aref, S.*, Dinh, L.*, Rezapour, R.*, & Diesner, J. (2020). Multilevel structural evaluation of signed directed social networks based on balance theory. Scientific Reports 10, 15228 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-71838-6 (*Equal Contribution)

Dinh, L., & Parulian, N. (2020). COVID-19 Pandemic and Information Diffusion Analysis on Twitter. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 57(1), e252. https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.25

Crisis Informatics

Dinh, L., & Kulkarni, S. (2026). Structural mismatches between prescribed governmental response routines and actual hurricane response collaboration networks: Implications for disaster management policy. Digital Government: Research and Practice.

Dinh, L., & Walczak, S. (2025). Linguistic patterns in social media content from crisis and non-crisis zones: A case study of Hurricane Ian. Information Processing & Management, 62(3), 104061. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2025.104061

Walczak, S., & Dinh, L. (2025). A Text Mining Analytic Approach for Distinguishing Between Disaster and Non-Disaster Zones from Tweets. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 105233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2025.105233

Dinh, L., Yang, P., & Diesner, J. (2024). From plan to practice: Interorganizational crisis response networks from governmental guidelines and real-world collaborations during hurricane events. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 32, e12601. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5973.12601 Recognized as top 10 most cited paper in the journal, awarded by Wiley 2025.

Dinh, L., Sarol, J., Jeoung, S., & Diesner, J. (2023). Are we projecting gender biases to ungendered things? Differences in referring to female versus male named hurricanes in 33 years of news coverage. Computational Communication Research. https://doi.org/10.5117/CCR2023.1.006.DINH

Dinh, L., Kulkarni, S., Yang, P., & Diesner, J (2022). Reliability of Methods for Extracting Collaboration Networks from Crisis-related Situational Reports and Tweets. Proceedings of the ISCRAM Asia Pacific, 2022. Melbourne, Australia. Download PDF

Dinh, L., Yang, P., & Diesner, J. (2022). From plan to practice: Interorganizational response networks extraction from emergency management plans, situational reports, and tweets about hurricane events. Sunbelt 2022 International Network for Social Network Analysis.

Dinh, L., Akuka, I., & Diesner, J. (2021). Interorganizational collaboration networks during 2018 Hurricane Michael response. US Department of Homeland Security Centers of Excellence (COE) Summit. Fairfax, Virginia. Held online.

Sarol, J.*, Dinh, L.*, & Diesner, J. (*Equal contribution). Variation in Situational Awareness Information of Crisis Events due to Human Choices about Data Sources, Summarization Methods, and Algorithm Implementation. Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Web and Social Media, ICWSM 2021. Atlanta, GA. https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/18087

Science of Science

Dinh, L., Barley, W.C., Johnson, L., & Allan, B.F. (2023). Diversity Measures for Scientific Collaborations. Proceedings of the International Conference on Information. Springer, Cham, 2022. 🏆 Winner: Lee Dirks Best Short Paper Award at iConference 2023.

Barley, W.C., Dinh, L., Johnson, L.P., & Allan, B.F. (2025). Membership in team science institute enhances diversity of researchers' collaboration networks. PLoS One, 20(5): e0322943. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0322943

Barley, W. C., Dinh, L., Workman, H., & Fang, C. (2020). Exploring the Relationship Between Interdisciplinary Ties and Linguistic Familiarity Using Multilevel Network Analysis. Communication Research, 0093650220926001. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0093650220926001

Pilny, A., Proulx, J. D., Dinh, L., & Bryan, A. L. (2017). An adapted structurational framework for the emergence of communication networks. Communication Studies, 68(1), 72-94. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10510974.2016.1262886

Scholarly Communication

Dinh, L., Sarol, J., Cheng, Y. Y., Hsiao, T. K., Parulian, N., & Schneider, J. (2019). Systematic examination of pre- and post-retraction citations. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 56(1), 390-394. https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pra2.35

Ge, Y., Dinh, L., Liu, X., Su, J., Wang, A., & Diesner, J. (2021, June). BACO: A Background Knowledge- and Content-Based Framework for Citing Sentence Generation. In Proceedings of the 59th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL). https://aclanthology.org/2021.acl-long.116/

Lab Members

Lab Group Photo
Current Members
  • Tharak Koneni — M.S. Student · Computer Science
  • Chandar Rathala — M.S Student · Business Analytics & AI
  • Bala Pranavi Gollamari — M.S Student · Business Analytics & AI
  • Man (Jolie) Nguyen — B.S Student Computer Science
  • Toan Le — B.S Student Business Analytics & AI
Alumni
  • Kai Quander — M.S. in Business Analytics & AI Current: DoD CyberCorps SFS Scholar
Join the Lab

I am always looking for motivated students interested in computational social science, network analysis, and crisis informatics. If you are interested in joining the lab, please send an email to lydinh@usf.edu with your CV, a brief statement of your research interests, and any relevant experience.

Education

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Doctor of Philosophy
Information Science

GPA: 3.97

August 2016 - May 2022

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Master of Arts
Communication

GPA: 4.00

August 2014 - May 2016

University of Southern California

BACHELOR OF ARTS
Communication, Cinematic Arts & Entrepreneurship (double minors)

GPA: 3.92

August 2010 - May 2014

Teaching

Programming Languages & Tools
Classes

Grants

Current
  • USF Human-Centered AI and Robotics Consortium (USF-HARC)
    Funding Agency: Multi-User Research Capital Investment Award (MuRCIA) · Role: Co-PI · $10,000 (collaborative total: $150,000) · 2025–Present
Completed
  • Climate Change and Conflict Index Study for USCENTCOM's Area of Responsibility (AOR)
    Funding Agency: USCENTCOM · Role: Co-PI · $23,000 (collaborative total: $10 million blanket purchase agreement) · 2024–2025
  • Senior Safe AI Project: Development of an AI-based Chatbot to Assist Senior Citizen Victims of Cybercrime
    Funding Agency: Cyber Florida · Role: Co-PI · $12,000 · 2024–2025

Awards & Certifications

  • 2022 Berner-Nash Memorial Award for Outstanding Dissertation
  • 2020 Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing
  • 2018 Visible Networks Labs Fellow
  • Graduate Teacher Certificate, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • 2nd Place - Association for Library & Information Science Education (ALISE) Doctoral Poster Competition
  • 1st Place - Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) Design Competition
  • 1st Place - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's iSchool Research Showcase Poster Competition
  • 1st Place - Marcia Israel Award for Best Feasibility Study in Entrepreneurship, University of Southern California
  • People's Choice - Image of Research Competition, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign