Zakaria Kurdi

Dr. Zakaria Kurdi is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Lynchburg. He joined the institution in 2016 and specializes in interdisciplinary research at the intersection of artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, and data science. His work spans text and data mining, intelligent tutoring systems, social network analysis, and cognitive modeling of spoken language.

Education:

• PhD in Computer Science, Joseph Fourier University, France
• MS in Software Engineering, École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint Étienne, France
• MS in Cognitive Science, Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, France
• BA in Linguistics, Université Lumière, France

Research Interests: Dr. Kurdi’s research focuses on applying computational methods to linguistic and healthcare challenges. Key areas include analyzing spoken language disfluencies, developing adaptive educational tools for ESL learners, and leveraging machine learning for dementia detection through language analysis. He also explores bioinformatics applications, such as studying bacterial protein distributions, and social network analysis using datasets like Enron’s emails.

Recent Research Trends: His publications (2024–2017) highlight a strong focus on interdisciplinary AI applications, with recent emphasis on medical diagnostics via natural language processing and computational biology. Earlier work includes foundational contributions to spoken language understanding systems and text complexity classification.

Labs/Teams: While no specific lab is named, his affiliations imply involvement in interdisciplinary teams within the University of Lynchburg’s Computer Science department, collaborating on projects blending linguistics, AI, and biomedical data analysis.