Ebuka J. Okpala

eokpala@clemson.edu
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I am a Ph.D. Candidate in the School of Computing at Clemson University being advised by Long Cheng, Ph.D.

My research interests are in natural language processing and computer vision. My research studies various forms of online abuse, such as hate speech and offensive language, bias, and AI/ML security.

My current research focuses on detecting and analyzing online abuse, understanding and mitigating bias in online abuse detection systems based on LLMs and the robustness and explainability/interpretability of debiased online abuse systems.

I have a master's degree in Computer Science from Clemson University and a bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana.

Publications and Posters

  • Understanding and Mitigating Biases in BERT-based Hate Speech Detection Models.
    Ebuka Okpala, Long Cheng, Nicodemus Mbwambo, Feng Luo, Hongxin Hu, Matthew Costello. (In revision)
    PDF
  • Analyzing Offensive Content and Topics in BLM-Related Tweets.
    Ebuka Okpala, Long Cheng. (In revision)
    PDF
  • AI-Cybersecurity Education Through Designing AI-based Cyberharassment Detection Lab.
    Ebuka Okpala, Nishant Vishwamitra, Keyan Guo, Song Liao, Long Cheng, Hongxin Hu, Yongkai Wu, Xiaohong Yuan, Jeannette Wade, Sajad Khorsandroo. IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), 2023.
    PDF
  • Analysis of COVID-19 Offensive Tweets and Their Targets.
    Song Liao, Ebuka Okpala, Long Cheng, Nishant Vishwamitra, Mingqi Li, Hongxin Hu, Feng Luo, Matthew Costello. ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, 2023.
    PDF
  • AAEBERT: Debiasing BERT-based Hate Speech Detection Models via Adversarial Learning.
    Ebuka Okpala, Long Cheng, Nicodemus Mbwambo, Feng Luo. International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA), 2022.
    PDF
  • COVID-HateBERT: a Pre-trained Language Model for COVID-19 related Hate Speech Detection.
    Mingqi Li, Song Liao, Ebuka Okpala, Max Tong, Matthew Costello, Long Cheng, Hongxin Hu, Feng Luo. International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA), 2021.
    PDF
  • COVID-19: A Pandemic of Anti-Asian Cyberhate.
    Matthew Costello, Long Cheng, Feng Luo, Hongxin Hu, Song Liao, Nishant Vishwamitra, Mingqi Li, Ebuka Okpala. Journal of Hate Studies (JHS), 2021.
    PDF
  • Enhancing AI-Cybersecurity Education Through Designing AI/ML-based Cyberharassment Detection Labs.
    Nishant Vishwamitra, Ebuka Okpala, Keyan Guo, Song Liao, Long Cheng, Hongxin Hu, Yongkai Wu, Xiaohong Yuan, Jeannette Wade, Sajad Khorsandroo. (In revision)
    PDF
  • Understanding and Mitigating Biases in BERT-based Hate Speech Detection Models.
    Ebuka Okpala, Long Cheng, Nicodemus Mbwambo, Feng Luo. IEEE Secure Development Conference (SecDev), 2022 poster.
    PDF
  • BranchCorr: Detecting Incompatible Branch Behavior by Enforcing Branch Correlation Integrity.
    Long Cheng, Ebuka Okpala, Song Liao, Danfeng(Daphne) Yao. IEEE Secure Development Conference (SecDev), 2019 poster.
    PDF