VLDB 2026 Research / reviewers in the wild / expert
Yulia R. Gel
dblp:18/1090 · also Yulia Gel
· DBLP profile ↗
29ranked-venue papers in the field
0as first author
22since 2021 · last 2026
0000-0002-4500-6495ORCID · verified
Domains — venue-derived; a paper can count in several
Data Mining & Knowledge Discovery · 20Big Data, Cloud & Distributed Data Systems · 6Database Systems & Data Management · 2Information Retrieval & Web Search · 1
| Year | Publication | Venue | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Multi-Modal Enhanced Graph Transfer Learning for Digital Finance Fraud DetectionabstractFraudulent activities on blockchain networks threaten the integrity and reliability of decentralized finance ecosystems. Accurately identifying malicious nodes such as phishing or ransomware addresses, within large-scale blockchain transaction graphs remains a critical challenge due to their dynamic, sparse, and continuously evolving topologies. Transfer learning offers a powerful paradigm for fraud detection because many fraudulent schemes, including ransomware and phishing, are often orchestrated by overlapping actor groups that share behavioral and structural patterns across networks. Leveraging these shared representations enables knowledge transfer from previously observed fraud types to emerging ones. However, the complex and multi-modal nature of digital financial systems introduces substantial challenges for graph-based transfer learning. Fraudulent activities are shaped by diverse modalities including graph structure, transaction sequences, temporal price dynamics, and textual metadata, while distributional shifts frequently occur across time and platforms. Existing graph transfer learning methods struggle to model such multi-modal dependencies and to align divergent feature distributions. To tackle these challenges, we develop a Multi-mOdal Enhanced Graph Transfer Learning (MOE-GTL) framework which incorporates graph, temporal, and textual modalities for fraudulent node detection. We further introduce Temporal-aware Maximum Mean Discrepancy (TMMD), a regularization mechanism that explicitly aligns multi-modal feature distributions between source and target graphs over time. Extensive experiments reveal that our MOE-GTL model notably improves the accuracy of fraudulent node classifications on Ethereum and Solana transaction graphs. Stephen Chan, Jeffrey Chu, Chenguang Yang 0015, Zihao Wang 0002, Yulia R. Gel |
WWW | 7 |
| 2025 | Bringing Shape to Spatio-Temporal Graph Contrastive Learning
Yulia R. Gel |
IEEE Big Data | 2 |
| 2025 | Topological Robust Reinforcement Learning
Jaidev Goel, Roshni Anna Jacob, Jie Zhang 0054, Yulia R. Gel |
IEEE Big Data | 4 |
| 2025 | Understanding the Impact of Environmental Contexts on Lung Cancer with Simplicial Representation Learning and Remote Sensing
Jiue-An Yang, Calvin P. Tribby, Loretta Erhunmwunsee, Caroline A. Thompson, Tarik Benmarhnia, Hugo Kyo Lee, Marta M. Jankowska, Yulia R. Gel |
IEEE Big Data | 9 |
| 2025 | LLM-Based Multi-Agent System and Simplicial Self-Supervised Learning Model for Regional Cancer Prevalence Estimation Using Satellite ImageryabstractTraditional cancer rate estimations are often limited in spatial resolutions and lack considerations of environmental factors. Satellite imagery has become a vital data source for monitoring diverse urban environments, supporting applications across environmental, socio-demographic, and public health domains. However, while deep learning (DL) tools, particularly convolutional neural networks, have demonstrated strong performance in extracting features from high-resolution imagery, their reliance on local spatial cues often limits their ability to capture complex, non-local, and higher-order structural information. To overcome this limitation, we propose a novel LLM-based multi-agent coordination system for satellite image analysis, which integrates visual and contextual reasoning through a simplicial contrastive learning framework (Agent-SNN). Our Agent-SNN contains two augmented superpixel-based graphs and maximizes mutual information between their latent simplicial complex representations, thereby enabling the system to learn both local and global topological features. The LLM-based agents generate structured prompts that guide the alignment of these representations across modalities. Experiments with satellite imagery of Los Angeles and San Diego demonstrate that Agent-SNN achieves significant improvements over state-of-the-art baselines in regional cancer prevalence estimation tasks. Jiue-An Yang, Calvin P. Tribby, Huikyo Lee, Loretta Erhunmwunsee, Tarik Benmarhnia, Caroline A. Thompson, Yulia R. Gel, Marta M. Jankowska |
SIGSPATIAL/GIS | 8 |
| 2024 | Firecast Zigzag Convolutional Network for Wildfire PredictionabstractEach year wildfires result in billions of dollars in property damage. Being one of the major natural hazards, wildfires nowadays are also a global affair whose negative impact is particularly devastating in developing countries. As wildfires are expected to become more frequent and severe, more accurate models to predict wildfires are vital to mitigating risks and developing more informed decision-making. Artificial intelligence (AI) has a potential to enhance wildfire risk analytics on multiple fronts. For example, deep learning (DL) has been successfully used to classify active fires, burned scars, smoke plumes and to track the spread of active wildfires. Since wildfire spread tends to exhibit highly complex spatio-temporal dependencies which often cannot be accurately described with conventional Euclideanbased approaches, we postulate that the tools of topological and geometric deep learning, specifically designed for non-Euclidean objects such as manifolds and graphs, may offer a more competitive solution. We validate the proposed methodology to predict wildfire occurrences in Greece and several regions of Africa. Our results indicate that the Firecast Zigzag Convolutional Network (F-ZCN) outperforms the current baseline methods for wildfire prediction and opens a path for more accurate wildfire risk analytics, even in scenarios of limited and noisy data records. Joel Chacón Castillo, Huikyo Lee, Yulia R. Gel |
IEEE Big Data | 4 |
| 2024 | Fragile Earth: Generative and Foundational Models for Sustainable DevelopmentabstractThe Fragile Earth Workshop is a recurring event in ACM's KDD Conference on research in knowledge discovery and data mining that gathers the research community to find and explore how data science can measure and progress climate and social issues, following the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework. Emre Eftelioglu, Bistra Dilkina, Naoki Abe, Ramakrishnan Kannan, Yulia R. Gel, Kathleen Buckingham, Auroop R. Ganguly, James Hodson 0003, Jiafu Mao |
KDD | 6 |
| 2024 | Revisiting Link Prediction with the Dowker Complex
Jae Won Choi, José Frías, Joel Chacón Castillo, Yulia R. Gel |
PAKDD (2) | 5 |
| 2024 | Graphical Model-Based Lasso for Weakly Dependent Time Series of Tensors
Dorcas Ofori-Boateng, Jaidev Goel, Ivor Cribben, Yulia R. Gel |
ECML/PKDD (5) | 4 |
| 2023 | Fragile Earth: AI for Climate Sustainability - From Wildfire Disaster Management to Public Health and BeyondabstractThe Fragile Earth Workshop is a recurring event in ACM's KDD Conference on research in knowledge discovery and data mining that gathers the research community to find and explore how data science can measure and progress climate and social issues, fol- lowing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework. Naoki Abe, Kathleen Buckingham, Bistra Dilkina, Emre Eftelioglu, Auroop R. Ganguly, Yulia R. Gel, James Hodson 0003, Ramakrishnan Kannan, Huikyo Lee, Jiafu Mao, Rose Yu |
KDD | 7 |
| 2023 | Topological Graph Convolutional Networks Solutions for Power Distribution Grid Planning
Miguel Heleno, Alexandre Moreira, Yulia R. Gel |
PAKDD (1) | 4 |
| 2023 | H2-Nets: Hyper-hodge Convolutional Neural Networks for Time-Series Forecasting
Yulia R. Gel |
ECML/PKDD (5) | 3 |
| 2022 | Evaluating Distribution System Reliability with Hyperstructures Graph Convolutional NetsabstractNowadays, it is broadly recognized in the power system community that to meet the ever expanding energy sector’s needs, it is no longer possible to rely solely on physics-based models and that reliable, timely and sustainable operation of energy systems is impossible without systematic integration of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Nevertheless, the adoption of AI in power systems is still limited, while integration of AI particularly into distribution grid investment planning is still an uncharted territory. We make the first step forward to bridge this gap by showing how graph convolutional networks coupled with the hyperstructures representation learning framework can be employed for accurate, reliable, and computationally efficient distribution grid planning with resilience objectives. We further propose a Hyperstructures Graph Convolutional Neural Networks (Hyper-GCNNs) to capture hidden higher order representations of distribution networks with attention mechanism. Our numerical experiments1show that the proposed Hyper-GCNNs approach yields substantial gains in computational efficiency compared to the prevailing methodology in distribution grid planning and also noticeably outperforms seven state-of-the-art models from deep learning (DL) community. Miguel Heleno, Alexandre Moreira, Yulia R. Gel |
IEEE Big Data | 5 |
| 2022 | Learning on Health Fairness and Environmental Justice via Interactive VisualizationabstractThis paper introduces an interactive visualization interface with a machine learning consensus analysis that enables the researchers to explore the impact of atmospheric and socioeconomic factors on COVID-19 clinical severity by employing multiple Recurrent Graph Neural Networks. We designed and implemented a visualization interface that leverages coordinated multi-views to support exploratory and predictive analysis of hospitalizations and other socio-geographic variables at multiple dimensions, simultaneously. By harnessing the strength of geometric deep learning, we build a consensus machine learning model to include knowledge from county-level records and investigate the complex interrelationships between global infectious disease, environment, and social justice. Additionally, we make use of unique NASA satellite-based observations which are not broadly used in the context of climate justice applications. Our current interactive interface focus on three US states (California, Pennsylvania, and Texas) to demonstrate its scientific value and presented three case studies to make qualitative evaluations. Abdullah al-Raihan Nayeem, Ignacio Segovia-Dominguez, Huikyo Lee, Dongyun Han, Zhiwei Zhen, Yulia R. Gel, Isaac Cho |
IEEE Big Data | 7 |
| 2022 | Tlife-GDN: Detecting and Forecasting Spatio-Temporal Anomalies via Persistent Homology and Geometric Deep Learning
Zhiwei Zhen, Ignacio Segovia-Dominguez, Yulia R. Gel |
PAKDD (2) | 4 |
| 2022 | TopoAttn-Nets: Topological Attention in Graph Representation Learning
Elena Sizikova, Yulia R. Gel |
ECML/PKDD (2) | 3 |
| 2021 | Data Science on BlockchainsabstractBlockchain technology garners an ever-increasing interest of researchers in various domains that benefit from scalable cooperation among trust-less parties. As blockchains and their applications proliferate, so do the complexity and volume of data stored by Blockchains. Analyzing this data has emerged as an important research topic, already leading to methodological advancements in information sciences. Cuneyt Gurcan Akcora, Murat Kantarcioglu, Yulia R. Gel |
KDD | 3 |
| 2021 | Does Air Quality Really Impact COVID-19 Clinical Severity: Coupling NASA Satellite Datasets with Geometric Deep LearningabstractGiven that persons with a prior history of respiratory diseases tend to demonstrate more severe illness from COVID-19 and, hence, are at higher risk of serious symptoms, ambient air quality data from NASA's satellite observations might provide a critical insight into which geographical areas may exhibit higher numbers of hospitalizations due to COVID-19, how the expected severity of COVID-19 and associated survival rates may vary across space in the future, and most importantly how given this information, health professionals can distribute vaccines in a more efficient, timely, and fair manner. Ignacio Segovia-Dominguez, Huikyo Lee, Michael J. Garay, Krzysztof M. Gorski, Yulia R. Gel |
KDD | 6 |
| 2021 | Alphacore: Data Depth based Core DecompositionabstractCore decomposition in networks has proven useful for evaluating the importance of nodes and communities in a variety of application domains, ranging from biology to social networks and finance. However, existing core decomposition algorithms have limitations in simultaneously handling multiple node and edge attributes. Friedhelm Victor, Cuneyt Gurcan Akcora, Yulia R. Gel, Murat Kantarcioglu |
KDD | 3 |
| 2021 | TLife-LSTM: Forecasting Future COVID-19 Progression with Topological Signatures of Atmospheric Conditions
Ignacio Segovia-Dominguez, Zhiwei Zhen, Rishabh Wagh, Huikyo Lee, Yulia R. Gel |
PAKDD (1) | 5 |
| 2021 | Topological Anomaly Detection in Dynamic Multilayer Blockchain Networks
Dorcas Ofori-Boateng, Ignacio Segovia-Dominguez, Cuneyt Gurcan Akcora, Murat Kantarcioglu, Yulia R. Gel |
ECML/PKDD (1) | 5 |
| 2021 | GraphBoot: Quantifying Uncertainty in Node Feature Learning on Large NetworksabstractIn recent years, as online social networks continue to grow in size, estimating node features, such as sociodemographics, preferences and health status, in a scalable and reliable way has become a primary research direction in social network mining. Although many techniques have been developed for estimating various node features, quantifying uncertainty in such estimations has received little attention. Furthermore, most existing methods study networks parametrically, which limits insights about necessary quantity of queried data, reliable feature estimation, and estimator uncertainty. Uncertainty quantification is critical for answering key questions, such as, given a limited availability of social network data, how much data should be queried from the network?, and which node features can be learned reliably? More importantly, how can we evaluate uncertainty of our estimators? Uncertainty quantification is not equivalent to network sampling but constitutes a key complementary concept to sampling and the associated reliability analysis. To our knowledge, this paper is the first work that sheds light on uncertainty quantification and uncertainty propagation in social network feature mining. We propose a novel non-parametric bootstrap method for uncertainty analysis of node features in social network mining, derive its asymptotic properties, and demonstrate its effectiveness with extensive experiments. Furthermore, we develop a new metric based on dispersion of estimations, enabling analysts to assess how much more information is needed for increasing prediction reliability based on the estimated uncertainty. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our new uncertainty quantification methodology with extensive experiments on real life social networks, and a case study of mental health on Twitter. Cuneyt Gurcan Akcora, Yulia R. Gel, Murat Kantarcioglu, Vyacheslav Lyubchich, Bhavani Thuraisingham |
IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng. | 2 |
| 2020 | LFGCN: Levitating over Graphs with Levy FlightsabstractWe propose a new Lévy Flights Graph Convolutional Networks (LFGCN) method for semi-supervised learning, which casts the Lévy Flights into random walks on graphs and, as a result, allows both to accurately account for the intrinsic graph topology and to substantially improve classification performance, especially for heterogeneous graphs. Furthermore, we propose a new preferential P-DropEdge method based on the Girvan-Newman argument. That is, in contrast to uniform removing of edges as in DropEdge, following the Girvan-Newman algorithm, we detect network periphery structures using information on edge betweenness and then remove edges according to their betweenness centrality. Our experimental results on semi-supervised node classification tasks demonstrate that the LFGCN coupled with P-DropEdge accelerates the training task, increases stability and further improves predictive accuracy of learned graph topology structure. Finally, in our case studies we bring the machinery of LFGCN and other deep networks tools to analysis of power grid networks - the area where the utility of GDL remains untapped. Yulia R. Gel, Konstantin Avrachenkov |
ICDM | 2 |
| 2020 | Dissecting Ethereum Blockchain Analytics: What We Learn from Topology and Geometry of the Ethereum Graph?abstractThe Blockchain technology and, in particular blockchain-based cryptocurrencies, offer us information that has never been seen before in the financial world. In contrast to fiat currencies, all transactions of crypto-currencies and crypto-tokens are permanently recorded on distributed ledgers and are publicly available. This allows us to construct a transaction graph and to assess not only its organization but to glean relationships between transaction graph properties and crypto price dynamics. The goal of this paper is to facilitate our understanding on horizons and limitations of what can be learned on crypto-tokens from local topology and geometry of the Ethereum transaction network whose even global network properties remain scarcely explored. By introducing novel tools based on Topological Data Analysis and Functional Data Depth into Blockchain Data Analytics, we show that Ethereum network (one of the most popular blockchains for creating new crypto-tokens) can provide critical insights on price changes of crypto-tokens that are otherwise largely inaccessible with conventional data sources and traditional analytic methods. Umar Islambekov, Cuneyt Gurcan Akcora, Ekaterina Smirnova, Yulia R. Gel, Murat Kantarcioglu |
SDM | 5 |
| 2019 | ChainNet: Learning on Blockchain Graphs with Topological FeaturesabstractWith emergence of blockchain technologies and the associated cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, understanding network dynamics behind Blockchain graphs has become a rapidly evolving research direction. Unlike other financial networks, such as stock and currency trading, blockchain based cryptocurrencies have the entire transaction graph accessible to the public (i.e., all transactions can be downloaded and analyzed). A natural question is then to ask whether dynamics of the transaction graph impacts price of the underlying cryptocurrency. We show that standard graph features such as degree distribution of the transaction graph may not be sufficient to capture network dynamics and its potential impact on fluctuations of Bitcoin price. In contrast, topological features computed from the blockchain graph using the tools of persistent homology, are found to exhibit higher utility for predicting Bitcoin price dynamics. Nazmiye Ceren Abay, Cuneyt Gurcan Akcora, Yulia R. Gel, Murat Kantarcioglu, Umar Islambekov, Yahui Tian, Bhavani Thuraisingham |
ICDM | 3 |
| 2018 | Blockchain Data AnalyticsabstractOver the last couple of years, Bitcoin cryptocurrency and the Blockchain technology that forms the basis of Bitcoin have witnessed an unprecedented attention. Designed to facilitate a secure distributed platform without central regulation, Blockchain is heralded as a novel paradigm that will be as powerful as Big Data, Cloud Computing, and Machine Learning. The Blockchain technology garners an ever increasing interest of researchers in various domains that benefit from scalable cooperation among trust-less parties. As Blockchain data analytics further proliferates, a need to glean successful approaches and to disseminate them among a diverse body of data scientists became a critical task. As an inter-disciplinary team of researchers, our aim is to fill this vital role. In this tutorial, we offer a holistic view on Blockchain Data Analytics. Starting with the core components of Blockchain, we will discuss the state of art in Blockchain data analytics for privacy, security, finance, and management domains. We will share tutorial notes and further reading pointers on the tutorial website blockchaintutorial.github.io. Cuneyt Gurcan Akcora, Murat Kantarcioglu, Yulia R. Gel |
ICDM | 3 |
| 2018 | Forecasting Bitcoin Price with Graph Chainlets
Cuneyt Gurcan Akcora, Asim Kumer Dey, Yulia R. Gel, Murat Kantarcioglu |
PAKDD (3) | 3 |
| 2018 | Deep Ensemble Classifiers and Peer Effects Analysis for Churn Forecasting in Retail Banking
Yulia R. Gel, Vyacheslav Lyubchich, Todd Winship |
PAKDD (1) | 2 |
| 2017 | CRAD: Clustering with Robust Autocuts and DepthabstractWe develop a new density-based clustering algorithm named CRAD which is based on a new neighbor searching function with a robust data depth as the dissimilarity measure. Our experiments prove that the new CRAD is highly competitive at detecting clusters with varying densities, compared with the existing algorithms such as DBSCAN, OPTICS and DBCA. Furthermore, a new effective parameter selection procedure is developed to select the optimal underlying parameter in the real-world clustering, when the ground truth is unknown. Lastly, we suggest a new clustering framework that extends CRAD from spatial data clustering to time series clustering without a-priori knowledge of the true number of clusters. The performance of CRAD is evaluated through extensive experimental studies. Yulia R. Gel |
ICDM | 2 |