College of Information and Communications
Faculty and Staff
Amir Karami, Ph.D.
Title: | Associate Professor |
Department: | School of Information Science College of Information and Communications |
Email: | karami@mailbox.sc.edu |
Phone: | 803-777-0197 |
Office: |
School of Information Science Davis College, Room 215 1501 Greene Street Columbia, SC 29208 |
Resources: |

Education
B.S., Industrial Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology
M.S., IT Management, University of Tehran
M.S., Information Systems, University of Maryland Baltimore County
Ph.D., Information Systems, University of Maryland Baltimore County
Other Positions Held
Social Media Core Director at the Big Data Health Science Center (BDHSC) in the University of South Carolina
Faculty Associate at the South Carolina SmartState Center for Healthcare Quality (CHQ) at the Arnold School of Public Health.
Chair of the ASIS&T Social Media Special Interest Group (SIG SM)
Research
Dr. Amir Karami's research focuses on social media analysis, big data and text mining, and medical and health informatics. His research was founded by ASPIRE, Social Science, COVID-19 Research Initiative Funding, Internal Funding to Pursue Research on October 2015 Catastrophic Flooding, College of Information and Communications Internal Grant, and NSF XSEDE Startup Funding. His students were awarded different grants, such as SURF and Magellan. His students have been hired by different institutions, such as Amazon, DOD, and UNC at Charlotte. He also has external collaborations with other universities (e.g., Johns Hopkins University and UNC-Chapel Hill) and internal collaborations with UofSC units related to health and social sciences.
Funded Research
Big Data Health Science Scholar Program for Infectious Diseases.} Mentor: Amir Karami.NIH NIDIA. $152,734. 2021-2026.
LGBT Health Surveillance via Mining Social Media Big Data. PI: Amir Karami. University of South Carolina Advanced Support for Innovative Research Excellence (ASPIRE I). $14,974. 2021-2022.
Explore Diseases and Chemicals in COVID-19 Scholarly Articles with Data Science Techniques. PI: Amir Karami. The University of South Carolina COVID-19 Research Initiative Funding. $10,120. 2020-2021.
Big Data Health Science Center. Co-I & Social Media Core Director: Amir Karami. UofSC Office of the Vice President for Research/Provost Office (Excellence Initiative Project). $2,996,000. 2019-2023.
Teaching
Karami believes that teaching is an opportunity to share the excitement of knowledge with the curious minds of students. He teaches SLIS 301: Information Storage and Retrieval, SLIS 330: Introduction to Computer Technology and Applications for Information Environment, SLIS 434: Introduction to Knowledge Discovery (Data Science), SLIS 770: Design and Management of Databases, SLIS 776: Web Technologies for Information Specialists, and SLIS 780: Information Networks. He also received the 2017 Two Thumbs Up Award for faculty & staff across campus who have been influential to students registered with UofSC Office of Student Disability Services.
Recent Publications
Bozorgi P., Porter D. E., Eberth J. M., Eidson J. P., Karami A. (2021), The Leading Neighborhood-Level Predictors of Drug Overdose: A Mixed Machine Learning and Spatial Approach, Drug and Alcohol Dependence (IF=4.492 & SJR Q1 (Top-25% Journals on Pharmacology))
Karami A, R., Zhu M., Goldschmidt B., Boyajieff H., and Najafabadi M. M. (2021), COVID-19 Vaccine and Social Media in the U.S.: Exploring Emotions and Discussions on Twitter. Vaccines (IF=4.422 & SJR Q2 (Top-50% Journals on Immunology))
Karami A, Lundy M., Webb F., Boyajieff H. R., Zhu M., and Lee D. (2021), Automatic Categorization of LGBT User Profiles on Twitter with Machine Learning. Electronics (IF=2.397 & SJR Q2 (Top-50% Journals on Electrical and Electronic Engineering)).
Karami A., Spinel M. Y., White N., Ford K., Suzanne S., (2021), A Systematic Literature Review of Sexual Harassment Studies with Text Mining, Sustainability. (IF=3.251 & SJR Q1 (Top-25% Journals on Geography, Planning and Development)).
Karami A, Kadari R. R., Panati L., Nooli S. P., Bheemreddy H., and Bozorgi B. (2021), Analysis of Geotagging Behavior: Do Geotagged Users Represent the Twitter Population?, ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (IF=2.899 & SJR Q1 (Top-25% Journals on Geography, Planning and Development)).
Service
UofSC College of Information and Communications: Faculty Advisory Committee and Research and Scholarship Advisory Council Member
UofSC iSchool: Personnel, Curriculum, Undergraduate, and Research & Doctoral Committees
Reviewer for different journals such as Nature Human Behaviour (IF:12.282), IJIM (IF:8.210), AJPH (IF:5.381), AIDS (IF: 4.511), and JASIST (IF:2.41),
Reviewer for different conferences such as iConference, ASIST, AMIA, and CHI
Program committee member of ASIST, SBP-BRiMS, and International Conference on Social Media & Society