Meeyoung Cha

Meeyoung Cha is a South Korean computer scientist working in social computing, complex networks and data science, known for pioneering studies of how information and misinformation spread through social networks. Born in Daejeon, South Korea, in 1979 and educated entirely at KAIST, she built her early reputation with the widely cited paper Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower Fallacy, which challenged the assumption that a large follower count alone signals real influence online. She went on to lead research distinguishing facts from rumors as they circulate on social media, work recognized with an ACM Distinguished Member honor and an ACM Internet Measurement Conference Test of Time award. After holding a professorship at KAIST and a chief investigator role at the Institute for Basic Science, she became scientific director at the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy in Germany.