• Outstanding International Student Award, College of Engineering, 2011
• SIGWEB Travel Award 2012; MILCOM Travel Award 2011; CISE Travel Awards 2011 and 2012, University of Florida
• Alumni Fellowship Award, CISE Department, University of Florida, 2008
• The Honda Young Engineer and Scientist Award, Honda Foundation and The National Institute for Science and Technology, 2007
• Distinguished Academic Achievement Award, Vietnam National University, 2007
• Microsoft Scholarship, Awarded by Bill Gates for Top Ten Outstanding Vietnamese Students in Computer Science, 2006
• First Prize, National Student Programming Contest, Vietnam, 2004
• Bronze Medal, 15^th International Olympiad in Informatics, Wisconsin, US, 2003

Communication networks play a vital role in the day-to-day routine of all sectors of our society. Unfortunately, these systems are often greatly affected by several uncertain factors, including external natural or man-made interferences (e.g., severe weather and enemy/malicious attacks.) The failure of a few key nodes that play a vital role in maintaining the network’s connectivity can break down its operation.

• Finding the set of disruptors who play a key role in maintaining the network connectivity, thus it can serve as a fundamental framework for the design of network topology, network vulnerability and reliability.
• Investigate what role the power-law distribution plays in the complexity and approximation of solutions
• Investigate cascading-failure in complex networks and how to prevent casading-failure from happening.
• Investigate vulnerability issues in interdependent systems such as critical infrastructure and body system.

Community structure is defined as a subgraph such that there is a higher density of edges within the subgraph than between them. This has applications in many domains, not only in computer networks, but also in computational biology, social research, life sciences and physics.  We focuses on complex, dynamic, and evolving over time, yet often greatly affected by uncertain factors, which may arise in many forms, including natural or man-made interferences. 

• Develop mathematical models and efficient approximation algorithms to identify the community structure in dynamic networks;
• Handle the dynamic and evolution of community structures; provide a mathematical framework for several existing problems in dynamic networks such as routing protocols in DTN and MANETs, network design and management.

Social network applications on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc. are excellent examples of viral marketing. The spreading of an application starts with one user installing the application, then the application sends ‘Invitations’ to all friends of the user. Furthermore, for every activity of the application the application will notify friends with a mini-story or feed. In turn, friends of the users get curious about the application, install it and continue the exponentially viral growing process. The more initial users selected, the faster the application will spread through the network. However, due to limits on resources companies often want to target a small group of the most influential users so that after a chain-reaction of influence the company can reach to users in the whole network or a
sesegment of the network.

• Investigate how information propagates under different diffusion models.
• Investigate Cascading Failures/rumor and disease spreading in networks and how to efficiently isolate disease/failures inside communities/clusters.

1. T. N. Dinh, M. T. Thai, and D. T. Nguyen, A Unified Approach for Domination Problems on Different Network Topologies, Handbook of Combinatorial Optimization, (P. Pardalos, D. Du, and R. Graham eds), Springer Publisher


2. M. T. Thai, T. N. Dinh, and Y. Shen, Hardness and Approximation of Network Vulnerability, Handbook of Combinatorial Optimization, (P. Pardalos, D. Du, and R. Graham eds), Springer Publisher


3. T. N. Dinh, I. Shin, N. K. Thai, M. T. Thai, and T. Znati, A General Approach for Modules Identification in Evolving Networks, Dynamics of Information Systems: Theory and Applications, (M. Hirsh, P. Pardalos, and R. Murphey eds), Springer Publisher, 2010.

4. T. N. Dinh and M. T. Thai, Community Detection in Scale-free Networks: Approximation Algorithms for Maximizing Modularity, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications: Special Issue on Network Science (JSAC), 2013 (to appear)[PDF] .


5. T. N. Dinh, Y. Xuan, M. T. Thai, and P. M. Pardalos, On New Approaches of Assessing Network Vulnerability: Hardness and Approximation. IEEE/ ACM Transactions on Networking (ToN), 2012. [PDF]
 

6. T. N. Dinh, Y. Shen, D. T. Nguyen, M. T. Thai, On the Approximability of Positive Influence Dominating Set in Social Networks, Journal of Combinatorial Optimization (JOCO), 2012


7. R. Tiwari, T. N. Dinh, and M. T. Thai, On Centralized and Localized approximation algorithms for Interference-Aware Broadcast Scheduling, IEEE Transaction on Mobile Computing (TMC), 2013.


8. T. N. Dinh, Y. Shen, D. T. Nguyen, and M. T. Thai, Cost-effective Viral Marketing for Time-critical Campaigns in Large-scale Social Networks, IEEE/ ACM Transactions on Networking (ToN), (accepted pending revision).


9. T. N. Dinh and M. T. Thai, Towards Optimal Community Detection: From Trees to General Weighted Networks, Internet Mathematics,[PDF] (accepted pending revision).


10. N. P. Nguyen, Y. Shen, T. N. Dinh, and M. T. Thai, Evolution of Overlapping Communities in Dynamic Mobile Networks IEEE Transaction on Mobile Computing (TMC) (accepted pending revision).

11. H. Zhang, T. N. Dinh, and M. T. Thai, Maximizing the Spread of Positive Influence in Online Social Networks, The 33rd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems(ICDCS), 2013 (to appear, acceptance rate: 13.1%).


12. T. N. Dinh, N. P. Nguyen, and M. T. Thai, An Adaptive Approximation Algorithm for Community Detection in Dynamic Scale-free Networks, in Proceedings of the 32nd Int Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM) Mini-Conference, 2013 (Main+mini acceptance rate: 25%)


13. T. N. Dinh, Y. Shen, and M. T. Thai, The Walls Have Ears: Optimize Sharingfor Visibility and Privacy in Online Social Networks, in Proceedings of the 21st ACM Int Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), 2012 (full paper). (Co-first aurthor) [PDF] (Acceptance rate: 13.4%)


14. Y. Shen, T. N. Dinh, H. Zhang, and M. T. Thai, Interest-Matching Information Propagation in Multiple Online Social Networks, in Proceedings of the 21st ACM Int Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), 2012 (short paper). [PDF]


15. T. N. Dinh, Y. Shen, and M. T. Thai, An Efficient Spectral Bound for Link Vulnerability Assessment in Large-scale Networks, in Proceedings of the IEEE Military Communications Conference (MILCOM), 2012. [PDF]


16. Y. Shen, T. N. Dinh, and M. T. Thai, Adaptive Algorithms for Detecting Critical Links and Nodes in Dynamic Networks, in Proceedings of the IEEE Military Communications Conference (MILCOM), 2012. [PDF]


17. T. N. Dinh, D. T. Nguyen, M. T. Thai, Cheap, Easy, and Massively Effective Viral Marketing in Social Networks: Truth or Fiction?. in Proceedings of the ACM Hypertext and Social Media Conference (Hypertext), 2012. [PDF][PPT] (Acceptance rate: 27.5%)


18. N. P. Nguyen, T. N. Dinh, S. Tokala, and M. T. Thai, Overlapping Communities in Dynamic Networks: Their Detection and Mobile Applications, in Proceedings of the 17th Annual Inter- national Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MOBICOM) 2011. (Acceptance rate: 13.6%)


19. T. N. Dinh and M. T. Thai, Precise Structural Vulnerability Assessment Via Mathematical Programming, in Proceedings of the IEEE Military Communications Conference, (MILCOM) 2011. [PDF] [Slide]
    


20. N. P. Nguyen, T. N. Dinh, D. T. Nguyen and M. T. Thai, Overlapping Community Structures and Their Detection on Social Networks, in Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE International Conference on Social Computing (SOCIALCOM) 2011 (short paper). (Full+short acceptance rate: 14%)


21. T. N. Dinh and M. T. Thai, Finding Community Structure with Performance Guarantees in Complex Networks, in Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE International Conference on Social Computing (SOCIALCOM) 2011 (poster paper).


22. N. P. Nguyen, T. N. Dinh, Y. Xuan, M. T. Thai, Adaptive Algorithms for Detecting Community Structure in Dynamic Social Networks, in Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), 2011. (Acceptance rate: 16%)


23. Ferhat Ay-T. N. Dinh, My T. Thai, T. Kahveci, Identification of Dynamic Modules in Biological Regulatory Networks, 10th IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics & Bioengineering (BIBE), 2010 (Co-first author) [PDF]


24. T. N. Dinh, Y. Xuan, M. T. Thai, E. K. Park, and T. Znati, On Approximation of New Optimization Methods for Assessing Network Vulnerability, in Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), 2010. (Acceptance rate: 17.5%)


25. T. N. Dinh, Ying Xuan, and My T. Thai, Towards Social-aware Routing in Dynamic Communication Networks, in Proceedings of the 28th IEEE International Performance Computing and Communications Conference (IPCCC), 2009. [PDF]


26. R. Tiwari, T. N. Dinh, anh M. T. Thai, On Approximation Algoirthms for Interfence-Aware Broadcast Scheduling in 2D and 3D Wireless Sensor Networks, in Proceedings of Int. Conf. on Wireless Algorithms, Systems and Applications(WASA) 2009. [PDF]

• T. N. Dinh, Y. Shen, and M. T. Thai, Selective Sharing: Better Privacy at Minimum Visibility Decrement in Online Social Networks, IEEE Trans. on Know. and Data Eng.(TKDE),


• T. N. Dinh and M. T. Thai, Network under Joint Node and Link Attacks: Vulnerability Assessment Methods and Analysis, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (ToN), 2013.


• T. N. Dinh, N. P. Nguyen, and M. T. Thai, An Adaptive Approximation Algorithm for Community Detection in Dynamic Scale-free Networks, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (ToN)


• N. P. Nguyen, T. N. Dinh, Y. Shen and M. T. Thai. On the Detection and Applications of Community Structure in Dynamic Social Networks . (Submitted)


• Y. Shen, T. N. Dinh, D. T. Nguyen, and M. T. Thai, Staying Safe and Visible via Message Sharing in Online Social Networks, (Submitted)


• Y. Shen, T. N. Dinh, Y. Xuan, and M. T. Thai. Minimizing the Time Latency of Broadcast Schedul- ing in 3D MANETs. IEEE Trans. on Par. and Dist. Sys. (TPDS), (revise and resubmit).


• T. N. Dinh and M. T. Thai, On Vulnerability Assessment in Dynamic Networks, Manuscript, 2013


• N. P. Nguyen, T. N. Dinh, and My T. Thai, Assessing complex network vulnerability: A community structure point of view, Manuscript.

• T. N. Dinh, V. S. Le, and H. X. Hoang, A Fast Algorithm for Genome Pairwise Alignment with Rearrangements, In Proceedings of KLLBI Workshop in the 10^th Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (PRICAI-08), Hanoi 2008 [PDF]


• T. N. Dinh, N. H. Pham, An approach to Vietnamese Spelling Check, In Proceedings National Informatics Conference, Dalat, 2006
  
  
• N. H. Pham, Y. H. Le, T. N. Dinh, D. H. Thi, Evaluation of Vietnamese Word Segmentation Methods, In Proceedings of National Informatics Conference, Haiphong, 2005

• Publicity chair: CSoNet '13
• TPC member: SOCIALCOM '12, SOCIALCOM '13
  
• Reviewer: IEEE Transactions on Distributed and Parallel Systems (TPDS), Journal of Combinatorial Optimization (JOCO), Optimization: A J. of Math. Prog. & Oper. Res., Social Network Analysis and Mining (SNAM), Optimization Letters
  
• External reviewer: IEEE ToN, IEEE TMC, INFOCOM, ISAAC, COCOON, COCOA, CCNET, SIMPLEX.
  

• COT 3100: Discrete Mathematics (Prof. Tim Davis)
• COT 5405: Analysis of Algorithms (Prof. My T. Thai, Prof. Sanjay Ranka)
• COP 5536: Advanced Data Structure (Prof. Sartaj Sahni)
• COP 5615: Distributed Operating Systems Principles (Prof. Alin Dobra )
• Introduction to Bioinformatics, VNUH
• Coach of Vietnam team for International Olympiads in Informatics (IOI).

• "You Ain't Gonna Need It"
• "Stay hungry, stay foolish" - Steve Jobs
• "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein
• “We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.” - Randy Pausch
• "We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done." - Alan Turing
• "I never did a day's work in my life. It was all fun". - Thomas A. Edison

• My Erdos number is 3 via the following path: Paul Erdos --> Ronald Graham --> Panos Pardalos.
• Member of FPT Centre for Young Talents 2003-2005
• IEEE Student Member

Links:

• Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student, by Professor Manuel Blum
• MIT Open Courseware - Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• The last lecture: Randy Pausch: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams (Video on Youtube)