SHORT BIO

Demetris Paschalides is a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory of Internet Computing (LInC), University of Cyprus. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Cyprus in 2024, where he also completed his MSc and BSc degrees (2018, 2016). His research focuses on natural language processing (NLP), with particular emphasis on the detection and analysis of disinformation, hate speech, and online polarization. His work combines deep learning, multilingual and cross-platform analysis, and computational social science to develop scalable tools for real-time monitoring and early warning of harmful online content. Demetris has been an active member of LInC since 2016 and has served as research and technical lead in several EU and nationally funded projects, including MANDOLA, Check-It, POLAR, and ATHENA. In ATHENA, he leads the technical development of systems to identify and counter foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) campaigns and contributes to the evaluation of ideological bias in large language models (LLMs). In MANDOLA, he designed and implemented a big data pipeline and developed machine learning models for online hate speech detection. In Check-It, funded by Google’s Digital News Initiative, he led the development of a privacy-first architecture and a fake news detection system. He has contributed machine learning tools and models to the open-source community, and his work has been published in top-tier venues such as the ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT), ACM Transactions on Social Computing (TSC), Online Social Networks and Media (OSNEM), IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI), International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM), and the International Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM).