CCNI Workshop

GTA³ 3.0: The 3rd workshop on Graph Techniques for Adversarial Activity Analytics

December 9th, 2019 | Westin Bonaventure - Los Angeles, CA

For past GTA3 workshops, please visit our archive page.

Theme & Purpose

Networks are natural analytic tools in modeling adversarial activities (e.g., smuggling, illegal arms dealing, illicit drug production) in different contexts. However, such activities are often covert and embedded across multiple domains. They are generally not detectable and recognizable from the perspective of an isolated network, and only become apparent when multiple networks are analyzed in a joint manner. Thus, one of the main research topics in modeling adversarial activities is to develop effective techniques to align and fuse information from different networks into a unified representation for global analysis. Based on the combined network representation, an equally important research topic is on detecting and matching indicating patterns to recognize the underlining adversarial activities in the integrated network. Furthermore, more sophisticated activities could potentially involve attempts at covering their tracks by attacking and changing networks. Thus, a developing area of interest is focused on attacking the commonly used graph models, which has led towards then using these insights to develop robust models that are resilient to these attacks.

Three key challenge problems involved in the modeling process include:

  • Network alignment and merging: develop accurate and scalable methods for mapping of nodes across heterogeneous networks based on various associational and causal dependencies.
  • Sub-graph detection and matching: develop robust and efficient algorithms for richly attributed networks to support detection and recognition of complex query patterns for networks.
  • Attack and defense on graph data: develop imperceptible adversarial attack algorithms against existing graph models and develop resilient graph models that are robust against state-of-the-art attack methodologies.

The focus of this workshop is to gather together the researchers from all relevant fields to share their experience and opinions on addressing the three fundamental graph mining problems – “Connecting the dots”, “Finding a needle in a haystack”, and “Defending against attacks” in the context of adversarial activity analytics.

In addition, this workshop also aims to provide a forum for discussing research challenges and novel approaches in synthesizing realistic networks that those observed in the real-worlds. Numerous approaches have been proposed in the past for generating networks (e.g., exponential random graphs, stochastic Kronecker graphs). However, few research has been conducted on systematically injecting and embedding subtle signals (e.g., covert activities) to these “background” networks. In addition, new methods for generating synthetic data in other domains (e.g., Computer Vision) with deep generative models (e.g., Variational Autoencoders, Generative Adversarial Networks) have grown in prominence. Naturally, the question arises as to whether these new methods can be adapted to the graph domains and how they compare in capability to the current state-of-the-art.

Topics of Interest

Including but not limited to:

Key Challenges:

  • Network alignment and data integration from multiple heterogeneous domains
  • Sub-graph detection and matching algorithms for large networks
  • Attack and defense strategies on graph models (e.g., graph neural networks)
  • Novel graph generation and synthesizing techniques (e.g., static, dynamic, etc.)

Fundamentals:

  • Fast and scalable graph mining algorithms
  • Multilayer and multiplex network analytics
  • Limits of detectability and identifiability
  • Game theoretic approach on anticipating opponent intent and actions
  • Novel evaluation metrics for network generation, alignment, and detection
  • Analysis of network topologies (e.g., centrality and network motif analysis)
  • New methods and frontiers in spectral graph theory
  • Identification of novel network datasets
  • Semi-supervised learning, transductive inference, active learning, and transfer learning in the graph context

Other related topics:

  • Graph neural networks (GNNs) and their application towards adversarial activity analytics
  • Automated knowledge graph construction and reasoning
  • Complex anomaly (e.g., group anomaly) detection and interpretation
  • Clustering and ranking methods for composite networks
  • Large-scale link prediction and recommendation algorithms
  • Community detection in big networks
  • Information diffusion and influence maximization
  • Interactive visualization for big graphs

This workshop (co-located with the 2019 IEEE International Conference on Big Data) aims to bring together a cross-disciplinary audience of researchers from both academia and industry to share experience techniques, resources and best practices, and to exchange perspectives and future directions. We expect the workshop to develop a community of interested researchers and facilitate their future collaborations. A best paper will be selected and announced in our workshop based on the collective feedback from our reviewers.

Submission Instructions

Submissions to the workshop will be subject to a single-blind peer review process, with each submission reviewed by at least two program committee members in addition to an organizer. Accepted papers will be given either an oral or poster presentation slot, and will be published in the IEEE Big Data workshop proceedings.

Papers must be submitted in PDF format according to IEEE Computer Society Proceedings Manuscript Formatting Guidelines to (Formatting InstructionsTemplates) to fit within 8 pages (long papers), 4 pages (short papers) or 2 pages (demo papers) including any diagrams, references and appendices. Submissions must be self-contained and in English. After uploading your submission, please check the copy stored on the site.

Submissions should be made using the Online Submission System provided by IEEE BigData and submitted by 23:59, Anywhere on Earth.

Important Dates

  • All deadlines end at 11:59pm PST
  • + Due date for full workshop papers submissionOctober 8, 2019
  • + Notification of paper acceptance to authorsNovember 1, 2019
  • + Camera-ready of accepted papersNovember 20, 2019
  • + WorkshopDecember 9, 2019

Keynote Speakers

We plan to invite 2-3 speakers who are experts in relevant research areas.

Accepted Papers

Noisy Subgraph Isomorphisms on Multiplex Networks

Hui Jin, Xie He, Yanghui Wang, Hao Li, and Andrea Bertozzi

Applications of Structural Equivalence to Subgraph Isomorphism on Multichannel Multigraphs

Thien Nguyen, Dominic Yang, Yurun Ge, Hao Li, and Andrea Bertozzi

Filtering Strategies for Inexact Subgraph Matching on Noisy Multiplex Networks

Alexei Kopylov and Jiejun Xu

Graph Generation with a Focusing Lexicon

Mayanka Chandra Shekar and Joseph Cottam

Multiplex Graph Matching Matched Filters

Konstantinos Pantazis, Daniel L. Sussman, Youngser Park, Carey E. Priebe, and Vince Lyzinski

Higher Order Temporal Analysis of Global Terrorism Data

Madelyn Dunning and Sumit Purohit

Schedule

01:30pm - 01:40pm | Opening Remarks
01:40pm - 02:20pm | Keynote 1: Neural Operators for Graph Search - Prof. Yizhou Sun
02:20pm - 03:00pm | Keynote 2: Graph Ginzburg--Landau: discrete dynamics, continuum limits, and application - Prof. Yves van Gennip
03:00pm - 03:15pm | Noisy Subgraph Isomorphisms on Multiplex Networks - Hui Jin, Xie He, Yanghui Wang, Hao Li, and Andrea Bertozzi
03:15pm - 03:30pm | Multiplex Graph Matching Matched Filters - Konstantinos Pantazis, Daniel L. Sussman, Youngser Park, Carey E. Priebe, and Vince Lyzinski
03:30pm - 03:40pm | Graph Generation with a Focusing Lexicon - Mayanka Chandra Shekar and Joseph Cottam
03:40pm - 04:00pm | Coffee Break
04:00pm - 04:40pm | Keynote 3: Tensor Decompositions for Multi-aspect Graph Analytics And Beyond - Prof. Vagelis Papalexakis
04:40pm - 05:20pm | Keynote 4: Friendship Paradox and Information Bias in Network - Prof. Kristina Lerman
05:20pm - 05:35pm | Applications of Structural Equivalence to Subgraph Isomorphism on Multichannel Multigraphs - Thien Nguyen, Dominic Yang, Yurun Ge, Hao Li, and Andrea Bertozzi
05:35pm - 05:45pm | Filtering Strategies for Inexact Subgraph Matching on Noisy Multiplex Networks - Alexei Kopylov and Jiejun Xu
05:45pm - 05:55pm | Higher Order Temporal Analysis of Global Terrorism Data - Madelyn Dunning and Sumit Purohit
05:55pm - 06:05pm | Closing Remarks

Program Committee

  • Tyler Derr (MSU, USA)
  • Jingrui He (UIUC, USA)
  • Samuel Johnson (HRL, USA)
  • Alexi Kopylov (HRL, USA)
  • Hang Liu (SIT, USA)
  • Tsai-Ching Lu (HRL, USA)
  • Connie Ni (HRL, USA)
  • Shane Roach (HRL, USA)
  • Daniel Sussman (BU, USA)
  • Jiliang Tang (MSU, USA)

Program Co-chairs (Organizers)