Motivation Letter

Raza Ul Mustafa
I have completed my M.S. degree in Computer Science in 2014 and B.S. in Computer Science in 2012
from University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan. My research interests are in the area of Machine
Learning, Search engine optimization (SEO), Software defined Networking (SDN) and WEB mining in
social networks.

My M.S. thesis title was “Comparative analysis of SDN viz Traditional Networks”. In [5] this work,
efforts were made, to analyze the performance of SDN with typical network for the sake of a medium
enterprise data center. Simulations are executed in Mininet emulator for parameters such as latency,
packet delivery ratio, packet switching and routing. Our results indicate that SDN has significant
performance improvements over traditional networks. Furthermore, in order to overcome the bottleneck
problem in SDN controller, we have used concept of cache controller in network.

I am also interested in using data mining techniques in social networks for analyzing live events and
detecting disease spread in a region. In [1], we investigate the feasibility of using collective knowledge
obtained from microposts posted on Twitter to predict the winner of cricket match. For predictions, we
use three different methods that all take a different approach. First method only makes use of the number
of microposts posted on Twitter before the game. Second method aggregates the sentiment contained in
the individual microposts and the third method depends on the score predictions of Twitter users. Data
sets obtained from prediction methods are combined to train three classifiers.

Research regarding Mobile Application Testing (MAT) in Pakistan is hard to discover and to the best of
our knowledge, no work has been done in surveying MAT in Pakistan. In this work, we have examined
the current trend and status of MAT in Pakistan. Main objective is to investigate to what extent MAT is
currently applied in Pakistan software companies and what experience the companies have with using
MAT [7].

I have also worked in SEO, SEO is a marketing discipline focused on growing visibility in organic (non-
paid) search engine results. SEO encompasses both the technical and creative elements required to
improve rankings, drive traffic and increase awareness in search engines. Efforts were made to find
Techniques to get High score in SERP’s using Recommended Guidelines [6]. Similarly microdata for
animals proposed in Google Schema tags [8].

I have worked to overcome problem of Influenza worldwide [2]. In this paper efforts were made to find
informative knowledge which is useful for users searching online, such as Influenza causes, their early
symptoms, medications and antibiotics which are useful for that area. I have merged Google Queries
searched last from 2014 to 2015, and used same queries to get Tweets from twitter using Top ten trends of
Influenza. Using above methodology we have extracted useful information from user tweets and at the
end we have trained Support Vector Machine Classifier for valid (with useful information)/ In-valid
content shared on twitter. A book chapter in same research has published in the Journal [11]. In [9] I have
worked to check either twitter trends have been published in newspapers. We also investigate how
healthcare professionals (institutes and providers), general public as well as patient uses Twitter as an
effective platform for spreading health related information and interaction [4].

Recently I have worked to detect hate speeches spread by users on social media such as Twitter [3]. In
this paper we have explored three religions such as Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Tweets were
gathered using Twitter stream and search API. Then different Machine Learning algorithm were used for
identification of hate tweets. In [11] we have tried to detect controversial news pattern in Urdu.

Teaching is an integral part of doing research. Currently, I am working as Lecturer at Department of

Computer Science, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT) Sahiwal. I am teaching the
course of Programing fundamentals, Intro to Machine Learning, Web Engineering, Automata Theory and
Android to B.S. Students. Furthermore, I am supervising 4 M.S. students in the field of Machine
Learning, SEO, and Sentimental analysis. Following are the topics that MS students are working on:

1. Clustering of news (Links shared on Twitter) on twitter

2. Detecting cancer, anesthesia, and Dengue Virus symptoms from user tweets
3. Using Google Queries to track Un-employment rate in Pakistan
4. Using Web meta data to enhance SERP’s results in Google

I have the national and international collaboration with the following researchers.

1. M. Saqib Nawaz, Department of Information Science, School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking

University, Beijing, China
2. Kashif Saleem, Centre of Excellence in Information Assurance (CoEIA), King Saud University,
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
3. Basit Shahzad, College of Computer and Information Sciences, King Saud University, Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia
4. Muhammd Ikram Ullah Lali, Department of Computer Science & IT, University of Sargodha,
Sargodha Pakistan
5. Tehseen Zia, Department of Computer Science, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology,
Islamabad, Pakistan

I am interested to do research in Opinion Mining on Social Networks such as Facebook, Twitter and
YouTube using Machine Learning techniques. This research based on user opinions posted on Twitter,
Comments on YouTube, Facebook. I am interested to predict user personality on Facebook (A man can
be known by the company he keeps), using its friends circle, his/her likes/dislikes and various other
attributes available on Facebook. Secondly, I am interested to automate twitter, so that when user started
typing for a tweet. Once he used a certain hashtag (#) in his/her tweet, a recommender system will suggest
from previous tweets on that hashtag, which words he/she should not use, which may produce
controversies among users.

References
[1] Raza Ul Mustafa, M. IkramUllah Lali, M. Saqib Nawaz, Tehseen Zia, “Predicting the
cricket match outcome using crowd opinions on social networks: a comparative study of
 machine learning methods”, Malaysian Journal of Computer Science, Vol. 30, No. 1, pp
63-76, 2017, (IF 0.5).
[2] M. IkramUllah Lali, Raza Ul Mustafa, M. Saqib Nawaz, “Finding Healthcare Issues
with Search Engine Queries and Social Network Data”, International Journal on
Semantic Web and Information Systems (IJSWIS), Vol 13, Issue 1, 2017. (IF 0.93).
[3] Tehseen Zia, M. Shehbaz Akram, M. Saqib Nawaz, Basit Shahzad, Abdullatif M
Abdullatif, Raza Ul Mustafa, M. Ikramullah Lali “Identification of Hatred Speech
against Religion on Twitter,” In Proceedings of 52nd The IRES International Conference,
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
[4] M. Saqib Nawaz, M. Bilal, M. IkramUllah Lali, Raza Ul Mustafa, Waqar Aslam,
Salman Jajja , “Effectiveness of Social Media Data in Healthcare Communication”,
Journal of medical imaging and health informatics, Vol 7, Issue 6, pp 1365-1371, 2017,
(IF=0.87)
[5] M. IkramUllah Lali, Raza Ul Mustafa, Faraz Ahsan, M. Saqib Nawaz, “Performance
Evaluation of Software Defined Networking vs. Traditional Networks”, The Nucleus,
Vol 54, No. 1, pp 1-7, 2017.
[6] Raza Ul Mustafa, M. Saqib Nawaz and M. IKramUllah Lali, “Search engine
optimization techniques to get high score in SERP’s using recommended guidelines,”
Science International, Vol. 26, No. 6, pp. 5079-5086, 2015.
[7] M. Saqib Nawaz, Zafar Iqbal, M. IkramUllah Lali, Raza Ul Mustafa, “Mobile
Application Testing in Pakistan: A Survey”, Mehran University Research Journal of
Engineering and Technology. (Accepted)
[8] M. Ikramullah Lali, Kinza Mehr, Waqar Aslam, Raza Ul Mustafa, and Umair Ali,
“Enhancing Knowledge and Bounce Rate in SERPs Using Micro-Data”, Mehran
University Research Journal of Engineering & Technology. (Accepted)
[9] Basit Shehzad, M. Ikram-Ullah Lali, Saqib Nawaz, Waqar Aslam, Raza Ul Mustafa,
Atif Mashkoor, Discovery and Classification of User Interests on Social Media,Journal of
Information Discovery and Delivery Previously published as: Interlending & Document
Supply. Vol. 45, Issue 3, 2017, (IF 0.17).
[10] Raza Ul Mustafa, M. Saqib Nawaz, Basit Shehzad, Javed Farzund, Philippe Fournier-
Viger, M.IkramUllah Lali “Early Detection of Controversial Urdu Speeches from Social
Media”, “Library Hi-Tech”. (Submitted)

BOOK CHAPTER:-

[11] M. Saqib Nawaz, Raza Ul Mustafa, M. IkramUllah Lali “Role of Online Data from
Search Engine and Social Media in Healthcare Informatics”, Applying Big Data
Analytics in Bioinformatics and Medicine.