Halil Kilicoglu.

Halil Kilicoglu, a professor of information sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has joined the Beckman Institute. 

Kilicoglu earned his Ph.D. in computer science from Concordia University. Prior to joining the iSchool at Illinois in 2019, he worked as a research scientist at the U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, where he led the Semantic Knowledge Representation project.

Kilicoglu's research is primarily concerned with natural language processing and machine learning, with a particular emphasis on biomedical text. His lab uses a combination of data-driven analytical techniques and knowledge-based semantic approaches to extract and organize knowledge buried in textual artifacts, with potential benefits for biomedical discovery and scholarship and healthcare outcomes. Current projects include development of NLP/ML methods for assessing reporting quality and transparency of biomedical publications, for verifying accuracy of citations and creating a trustworthy evidence base for complementary medicine approaches from the literature, and for repurposing drugs.

"I am excited to join the Beckman Institute and to be part of a community of distinguished scholars across many disciplines. This is a great opportunity, and I look forward to engaging in interdisciplinary collaborations that push the boundaries of innovation and discovery," he said.