Doina Caragea

Doina Caragea is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Kansas State University (KSU), part of the Carl R. Ice College of Engineering. She holds the Don and Linda Glaser Keystone Research Scholar appointment. Caragea earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Iowa State University (2004), with a focus on machine learning from distributed data sources. She has over 150 refereed publications and secured over $12M in extramural funding as PI/Co-PI.

Education:

• Ph.D., Computer Science, Iowa State University, 2004
• M.S., Computer Science, University of Bucharest, 1997
• B.S., Computer Science, University of Bucharest, 1996

Research Interests: Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Data Science, Bioinformatics, Digital Agriculture, and Crisis Informatics. Her work focuses on semi-supervised learning, domain adaptation, and applications to plant phenotyping, social media analysis during disasters, and genomic sequence analysis.

Notable Grants:

• NSF BIGDATA Award ($500,000): Domain adaptation for crisis-related social media analysis
• NSF PlantTransform ($1.9M): Genetic basis of maize regeneration
• USCP Sorghum Breeding Program ($1.6M): Climate-resilient crop development

Awards:

• Deployed Application Award (AAAI IAAI 2021)
• Best Insight Paper (ISCRAM 2019)
• IBM Fellowship (2002–2004)

Advising & Teaching: Supervised over 30 graduate students, including 10 Ph.D. graduates. Taught courses on Deep Learning, Data Mining, Bioinformatics, and Database Systems. Current research lab focuses on AI-driven solutions for agriculture, bioinformatics, and disaster response.

Labs/Teams: Active collaborations with the Bioinformatics Center (KSU), USDA, and industry partners like Siena Analytics. Her lab develops tools for plant phenotyping, social media crisis analysis, and secure mobile applications.