On Friday, November 12 the Bloustein School hosted a virtual workshop, “Public Informatics for a Better Future: Textual Analytics with R and Social Media Data.”
Led by Dr. Jim Samuel, Executive Director of the Bloustein School’s Master of Public Informatics, the workshop provided an interactive introduction to textual analytics and natural language processing. In addition to Dr. Samuel’s presentation, a 30-minute interactive work-along demonstration for textual analytics was held using R-Studio. Participants learned to generate insights from social media data related to current events or issues of public importance.
Dr. Samuel joined the Bloustein School as an Associate Professor of Practice in September 2021. He is an information and artificial intelligence (AI) scientist, with significant industry experience in finance, technology, entrepreneurship and data analytics.
His primary research covers human and artificial intelligences’ interaction, and information philosophy, while his applied research focuses on the optimal use of big data and smart data driven AI applications, textual analytics, natural language processing and artificially intelligent public opinion informatics. Dr. Samuel’s expertise extends to socioeconomic implications of AI, applied machine learning, social media analytics, AI education and AI bias.
The workshop is the first of a series of interactive informatics seminars and workshops, Intelligent Informatics @ Bloustein, on the use of data science and artificial intelligence for urban, public policy, healthcare, and organizational analytics.