Marian-Andrei Rizoiu

Marian-Andrei Rizoiu is a Professor of AI and Behavioral Data Science, leading the Behavioral Data Science lab at the University of Technology Sydney, and Director of the Defence Innovation Network. His interdisciplinary research crosses computer and social sciences, blending psycholinguistics, digital communication and stochastic modelling to understand human attention dynamics in the online environment, the emergence of influence and opinion polarisation. Marian-Andrei is the recipient of the prestigious Excellence Award and Academic of the Year at the 2023 Australian Defence Industry Awards, and a two-time finalist for the Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Outstanding Science in Safeguarding Australia (2024, 2025). He has secured $12.1 million in research funding, including $8.56 million from Defence's Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator, to detect and model the spread of mis- and disinformation and its weaponised counterparts – information and influence operations.

Marian-Andrei's research has made several key contributions to detecting information operations, predicting the spread of online misinformation, and understanding shortages and mismatches in labour markets. First, he developed theoretical models for online information diffusion, which can account for complex social phenomena. His models answer questions such as "Why did X become popular, but not Y?" and "How can problematic content be detected based solely on how it spreads?". Second, he shifted the detection of state-sponsored information operations from what content says to how it spreads, building behavioural models that identify coordinated actors from their propagation signatures — an approach that works across languages and platforms, and that adversaries cannot evade simply by changing their wording. Third, he built skill-based real-time occupation transition recommender systems. These systems link social media-predicted personality profiles with occupation skill requirements to construct personalised career recommendations. His recommender systems answer questions like "Are some jobs better suited to one's personality?" and "Can one be happier and more engaged with a job aligned with their personality?". Individuals can use these recommender systems to ask: "What jobs can I readily perform based on my current skills?" and "What skills should I acquire to transition to a new job?"

Marian-Andrei's research receives funding from selective funders such as Defence's Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA), the Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG), the Department of Home Affairs, Meta (Facebook) Research and the Defence Innovation Network. In addition, he publishes in the most selective venues, such as PNAS, Nature Scientific Data, PLOS ONE, PLOS Computational Biology, WWW, NeurIPS, IJCAI, AAAI and CIKM, and received the Best Paper Award at The Web Conference 2025. As a result, his work has received significant media attention—including Bloomberg Business Week, Nature Index, BBC, and World Economic Forum.

Marian-Andrei disseminates his research to the broader public by regularly contributing to The Conversation. In addition, he also leverages his research to real societal impact: his findings have been implemented in national policy and have given government agencies tools to counter the online misinformation that can lead to youth radicalisation, and he has served as an expert for the NSW government's Defamation Law Reform and provided evidence for the Australian Federal Senate inquiry into media diversity.