Panagiotis Metaxas

Panagiotis Metaxas is Professor and Chair of Computer Science at Wellesley College. He previously served as Faculty Director of the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs (2017-2019) and holds affiliate positions at Harvard's Center for Computation and Society and Oxford's Centre for Technology and Global Affairs. He received his B.S. from the National University of Athens and both M.S. and Ph.D. from Dartmouth College.

Research Focus: Professor Metaxas specializes in Web Science and Social Computing, examining how digital technologies influence human cognition and societal behavior. His pioneering work in online misinformation detection includes early identification of political propaganda techniques (2005), discovery of political bots, and analysis of election manipulation patterns connecting the 2010 MA Senatorial and 2016 Presidential elections. His interdisciplinary approach connects computer science with sociology, political science, psychology, and neuroscience.

Notable Contributions: Developed award-winning courses including 'The Art and Science of Multimedia' (core of Wellesley's Media Arts and Science Program) and 'The Socio-Techno Web'. Created research tools like TwitterTrails for rumor verification and holds a U.S. patent for parallel dithering techniques.

Awards & Recognition:

• Four Best Paper Awards (2008, 2009, 2010 +1)
• NSF research grants
• Course development awards for pedagogical innovation

Professional Affiliations: Senior ACM Member; IEEE Computer Society; Liberal Arts Computer Science Consortium; Served on CRA Board of Directors; Program committees for WWW, AAAI-Web, ICWSM conferences.

Industry Experience: Former CTO of biotech company developing FDA-approved ADHD diagnostic tools; Research Associate at McLean Hospital's Developmental Biopsychiatry Program.