Cuneyt Gurcan Akcora

Cuneyt Gurcan Akcora is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Central Florida (UCF) and an Adjunct Professor in Computer Science and Statistics at the University of Manitoba, Canada. He holds a Ph.D. from Università degli Studi dell’Insubria (Italy) and an M.S. from SUNY Buffalo (USA) as a Fulbright Scholar. His research focuses on data science applied to complex networks and graph mining, particularly in blockchain and online social networks. He has collaborated with institutions like Yahoo! Research Barcelona, Qatar Computing Research Institute, and Huawei.

Education:

• PhD in Computer Science, 2014 – Università degli Studi dell’Insubria, Italy
• MEng in Computer Science, 2010 – SUNY Buffalo, USA
• BSc in Electrical & Electronics Engineering, 2008 – Karadeniz Technical University, Turkey

Research Interests:

• Explainable AI and Graph Machine Learning
• Topological Data Analysis (TDA) for Blockchain Networks
• Large-Scale Graph Analysis and Anomaly Detection
• Nonparametric Statistical Methods

Key Contributions:

His work includes developing chainlet theory for Bitcoin price prediction, scalable TDA algorithms for blockchain forensics, and interdisciplinary grants exploring blockchain applications in insurance. Notable projects include the Chartalist Dataset for blockchain network analysis and ChainNet, a topological graph learning framework.

Awards & Grants:

• NSERC Discovery Grant (2020)
• UCF Interdisciplinary Grant for Blockchain in Insurance (2020)
• Fulbright Scholarship (M.S., SUNY Buffalo)

Labs & Teams: Active in UCF’s FData Lab and leads blockchain data analytics initiatives. His work bridges academia and industry through collaborations with Huawei, QCRI, and others.