About
Daniel Acuña is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. The goal of his current research is to understand decision making in science—from helping hiring committees to predict future academic success to removing the potential biases that scientists and funding agencies commit during peer review. To achieve these tasks, Dr. Acuna harnesses vast datasets about scientific activities and applies Machine Learning and A.I. to uncover rules that make publication, collaboration, and funding decisions more successful. Simultaneously, he has created tools to improve literature search, peer review, and detect scientific fraud. He has grants from NSF, DDHS, and DARPA and his work has been featured in Nature Podcast, The Chronicle of Higher Education, NPR, and the Scientist.
Before joining Syracuse University, Acuña studied a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and was a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. During his graduate studies, he received a NIH Neuro-physical-computational Sciences (NPCS) Graduate Training Fellowship, NIPS Travel Award, and a CONICYT-World Bank Fellowship
Selected publications
- Liang., L., Acuna, DE (2020) Artificial mental phenomena: Psychophysics as a framework to detect perception biases in AI models In Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAT* ’20), pre-print version
- Líenard, JF, Achakulvisut, T, Acuna, DE, David, SV, Intellectual Synthesis in Mentorship Determines Success in Academic Careers (2018), Nature Communications, (press release in Nature Asia)
- Teplitskiy, M, Acuna, DE, Elamrani-Raoult, A, Körding, K, Evans, J (2018) The sociology of scientific validity: How professional networks shape judgement in peer review, Research Policy
- Acuna, DE, Brooks, P, Kording, P (2018) Bioscience-scale automated detection of figure element reuse BioArXiv, (related article in Nature News)
- Ramkumar P, Acuna DE, Berniker M, Grafton S, Turner RS, Körding KP. (2016) Chunking as the result of an efficiency–computation tradeoff. Nature Communication
- Acuna, DE, Berniker, M, Fernandes, H, Kording, K (2015) Using psychophysics to ask if the brain samples or maximizes, Journal of Vision
- Acuna, DE, Allesina, S., Kording, KP, (2012) Future impact: Predicting scientific success, Nature
Current projects
- PI: Daniel E. Acuna: US’s Office of Research Integrity: Large-scale High-Quality Labeled Datasets and Competitions to Advance Artificial Intelligence for Computational Research Integrity, 10/01/2020 - 09/01/2021
- co-PI: Daniel E. Acuna, PI: David Popp (Maxwell School) Sloan Foundation: Does government funding change what you do? The effects of funding on the direction and impact of academic energy research, 6/1/2020 - 5/30/2022
- co-PI: Daniel E. Acuna, co-PI: Stephen David (Oregon) NSF-SciSIP: Collaborative Research: Social Dynamics of Knowledge Transfer Through Scientific Mentorship and Publication, 10/1/2019 - 9/30/2021
- PI: Daniel E. Acuna, DDHS: Office of Research Integrity: (Conference grant) Computational Research Integrity Conference (CRI-CON), 9/1/2019 - 8/31/2020
- PI: Daniel E. Acuna, DDHS: Office of Research Integrity: Human-centered automatic tracing, detection, and evaluation of image and data tampering, 9/1/2019 - 8/31/2021
- PI: Daniel E. Acuna, DDHS: Office of Research Integrity: Methods and tools for scalable figure reuse detection with statistical certainty, Award ORI2018000296, 8/1/2018 - 7/31/2020
- PI: Daniel E. Acuna, co-PIs: Konrad Kording (UPenn), James Evans (U of Chicago) NSF-SciSIP: Optimizing Scientific Peer Review, Award #1800956, 7/1/2018 - 6/30/2021
News
- Presentation at International Conference of Social Computing (virtual)
- New grant from the US’s Office of Research Integrity: Large-scale High-Quality Labeled Datasets and Competitions to Advance Artificial Intelligence for Computational Research Integrity.
- New grant from Sloan Foundation to study the effects of funding on the direction and impact of academic energy research (as co-PI with David Popp) News
- Summer School on Science of Science postponed until next year August 2 - 6, 2021 in the iSchool of Syracuse University!
- New grant from Sloan Foundation to study the effects of funding on the direction and impact of academic energy research (as co-PI with David Popp) News
- Paper accepted for the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (ACM FAT) 2020 in Barcelona, Spain!
- Funded NSF grant to study mentorship in science.
- A research grant and a conference grant funded by ORI. Inaugual Conference on Computational Research Integrity to be announced soon.
Upcoming travel
January 27 - 30, 2020
ACM FAT Conference Barcelona, Spain
News archive
- Best poster award, Metascience 2019 conference (with Ph.D. student Han Zhuang)
October 14 - 16, 2019
A talk and poster accepted to the Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation PolicyJune 2 - 5, 2019
Oral presentation at the 6th World Conference on Research Integrity, Hong KongMay 10, 2019
Invited speaker to the 8th Annual Ethics in Biomedical Research Lecture, University of Rochester School of Medicine and DentistryMarch 31 - April 3, 2019
Short paper presentation iConference 2019, University of MarylandMarch 20, 2019
Invited talk at Symposium of Yotta Informatics, Tohoku University, Sendai, JapanFeb 14 - 15, 2019
Attending Rich Context Competition Workshop, NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public ServiceNov 2018
New publication Intellectual synthesis in mentorship determines success in academic careers in Nature Communications, press release in Nature AsiaJuly 2018
The Office of Research Integrity DDHS has generously funded our grant Methods and tools for scalable figure reuse detection with statistical certainty reportingJune 2018
NSF has generously funded our grant Optimizing scientific peer review (in collaboration with James Evans from U of Chicago and Konrad Körding from UPenn)February 2018
Nature featured our pre-print on Bioscience-scale automated detection of figure element reuse
Past travels
November 6 - 10, 2019
Data Science Leadership Summit, Santa Fe, New MexicoOctober 14 - 16, 2019
Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy, Atlanta, GeorgiaSeptember 5 - 8, 2019
Metascience 2019 Symposium, Stanford University, Stanford, CAJune 11 - 12, 2019
International Conference on Science of Science, Tsinghua University and the University of Chicago Center in Beijing, ChinaJune 2 - 5, 2019
6th World Conference on Research Integrity, Hong KongMay 22-23, 2019
2019 Research Integrity Conference, Chicago, ILMay 10, 2019
, University of Rochester, Rocherster, NYMarch 31 - April 3, 2019
, University of Maryland, College Park, MarylandMarch 20, 2019
Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan