Panos Ipeirotis

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Panagiotis G. Ipeirotis
Παναγιώτης Ηπειρώτης
Born (1976-05-03) May 3, 1976 (age 49)
CitizenshipGreek, American
Alma mater University of Patras (BSc)
Columbia University (MSc, PhD)
Known for Crowdsourcing; human computation; Data quality; Text mining
Awards SIGKDD 2020 Test of Time Award [1]
Lagrange Prize 2015 [2]
Scientific career
Fields Computer Science
Institutions New York University Stern School of Business
Thesis Classifying and Searching Hidden-Web Text Databases  (2004)
Doctoral advisor Luis Gravano

Panagiotis G. Ipeirotis (aka Panos Ipeirotis) (born May 3, 1976, in Serres, Greece) is a Greek-American computer scientist and the Merchants' Council Professor of Technology and Business at the New York University Stern School of Business. [3] [4] His research focuses on data mining, crowdsourcing, human computation, and the economics of online information systems. [5]

Contents

Ipeirotis is a recipient of the Lagrange Prize in Complex Systems (2015) [2] and the ACM SIGKDD Test of Time Award (2020). [1] He is known for research on Amazon Mechanical Turk and crowdsourcing quality management, work that has been covered in publications including The Washington Post , MIT Technology Review , and Bloomberg Businessweek . [6] [7] [8] [9]

In addition to his academic career, Ipeirotis co-founded the AI consulting firm Detectica in 2015, which was acquired by Compass, Inc. in 2019. [10] He has also held research positions at Meta Reality Labs and Google. [3]

He is also the author of the blog "A Computer Scientist in a Business School," [11] which covers topics in crowdsourcing, data science, and academia; posts from the blog have been cited in academic papers and media coverage. [12]

Education

Ipeirotis earned his Diploma in Computer Engineering and Informatics (CEID) from the University of Patras in 1999. [3] He pursued graduate studies at Columbia University, receiving his M.Sc. in 2001, M.Phil. in 2003, and Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2004. [3]


Academic career

Ipeirotis began his academic career as a graduate research assistant at Columbia University (1999–2004). In 2004, he joined the Department of Information, Operations, and Management Sciences at the New York University Stern School of Business as an Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2010 and Full Professor in 2016. He holds a courtesy appointment at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences [13] and is an associated faculty member at the NYU Center for Data Science. [14]

Ipeirotis has held leadership roles in major academic conferences and journals. He served as General Co-Chair of the AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing (HCOMP) in 2015 [15] and as Technical Program Co-Chair for The Web Conference 2018 (WWW 2018). [16] He has served on the editorial boards of Management Science and IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, and was a founding co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Collective Intelligence launched in 2022 as a collaboration between SAGE Publications, the Association for Computing Machinery, and Nesta. [17] [18]

His research has received coverage in Bloomberg Businessweek , which in 2011 featured his work on combining human and machine intelligence in crowdsourcing systems [19] and in 2013 profiled him as the "data dude" of business analytics. [9]

Research

Ipeirotis's work explores the intersection of computer science and economics, an approach he and collaborators have termed "EconoMining." His research has been published in venues such as Management Science , Information Systems Research , and IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering. [3]

Crowdsourcing and human computation

Ipeirotis is known for his studies on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). His 2010 paper "Running Experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk," [20] co-authored with Gabriele Paolacci and Jesse Chandler, established methodological standards for using crowdsourcing platforms in behavioral research and became one of the most frequently cited papers on crowdsourcing methodology, having received more than 6600 citations according to Google Scholar.

His research on MTurk data quality gained significant media attention. Studies revealing that approximately 40% of MTurk responses contained spam or low-quality content were covered by Business Insider, MIT Technology Review, and The Washington Post. His 2010 demographic analysis of the MTurk workforce became a widely cited reference for understanding crowd work platforms. [21]

This work led to the development of quality management techniques for crowdsourcing, including the "Get Another Label" framework for improving data quality using multiple noisy labelers, which received the SIGKDD Test of Time Award in 2020. [1]

Data quality and record linkage

Ipeirotis has conducted extensive research on duplicate record detection and data quality. His 2007 survey "Duplicate Record Detection: A Survey" in IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, co-authored with Ahmed Elmagarmid and Vassilios Verykios, became a standard reference in the database community with over 2,800 citations. [22]

Online reputation and user-generated content

His collaborative work with Anindya Ghose on the economic value of textual content in product reviews quantified the pricing power derived from user-generated content. [23] A related 2011 study demonstrated that the quality of spelling and grammar in product reviews significantly affects perceived helpfulness and product sales. [24] This finding was featured in Forbes , Harvard Business Review , Slate , Freakonomics , and Reuters . [25] [26] [27] [28]

Applied research and industry

Early industry work (2009–2014)

Beginning in 2009, Ipeirotis was part of the founding data science team at Integral Ad Science (originally AdSafe Media), where he helped develop machine learning systems for detecting inappropriate web content and advertising fraud, using crowdsourcing to generate training data for the models. [29] In 2011, working with AdSafe engineers, he uncovered an elaborate click fraud scheme that used hidden iframes to generate fraudulent ad impressions, which he termed "traffic laundering." [30] The investigation, which estimated the scheme generated hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly, was reported by The Wall Street Journal and MIT Technology Review , and led to an FBI referral. [31] [30]

He also served as Academic-in-Residence at Upwork (then oDesk) in 2012 and as a Visiting Scientist at Google from 2013 to 2014. [3]

Detectica and Compass (2015–2022)

In 2015, Ipeirotis co-founded Detectica with Foster Provost and Josh Attenberg, offering AI strategy consulting and machine learning solutions for business applications. [32] The company developed AI-driven compliance monitoring systems for financial institutions. Prior to founding Detectica, the team had designed and built the founding data science architecture for Integral Ad Science. [32]

Detectica was acquired by Compass, Inc. in November 2019. [10] At Compass, the Detectica team developed "Likely to Sell," a predictive analytics system that identifies properties likely to enter the market; the company cited the tool as a significant revenue contributor in earnings calls. [33] [34]

Public engagement and pedagogy

Academic integrity debates

In July 2011, Ipeirotis published a blog post titled "Why I will never pursue cheating again," describing his experience catching 22 of 108 students plagiarizing in his "Information Technology in Business and Society" course using Turnitin software. [35] The post, which criticized the administrative burden placed on faculty who enforce academic integrity policies, went viral and was temporarily removed. [36] The incident sparked national debate about the costs of enforcing academic honesty.

AI-powered assessment

In December 2025, Ipeirotis developed an AI-driven oral examination system using ElevenLabs voice agents to address concerns about students using generative AI tools to submit perfect assignments while lacking deeper understanding. The system, which cost approximately $0.42 per student to administer, used a voice AI agent to call students and ask personalized questions about their submitted work. [37] The experiment was covered by Business Insider, The Decoder, and educational technology publications [38] and generated substantial online discussion about the future of educational assessments.

Awards and honors

Selected publications

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "2020 SIGKDD Test of Time Award Winners". ACM SIGKDD. Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  2. 1 2 3 "Press Release: Lagrange Prize 2015". ISI Foundation. 2015-10-06. Archived from the original on 2015-10-06.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "NYU Stern - Panagiotis Ipeirotis - Merchants' Council Professor of Technology, Operations, and Statistics". www.stern.nyu.edu. Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  4. ↑ "TOPS | Full-time Faculty - NYU Stern". www.stern.nyu.edu. Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  5. ↑ Ghose, Anindya; Ipeirotis, Panagiotis (2009). "The EconoMining project at NYU: Studying the economic value of user-generated content on the internet". Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management. 8 (2–3): 241–246. doi:10.1057/rpm.2008.56. S2CID   154923072.
  6. ↑ Rosenwald, Michael S. (2011-01-30). "How you and Google are losing the battle against spam in search results". ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  7. ↑ "40% Of Amazon's Mechanical Turk Is Spam". Business Insider. Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  8. ↑ Mims, Christopher. "How Mechanical Turk is Broken - Technology Review". Technology Review. Archived from the original on 2011-12-12. Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  9. 1 2 "The Data Dude: NYU Stern's Panos Ipeirotis". Bloomberg. 24 January 2013.
  10. 1 2 "Real-Estate Brokerage Compass Buys AI Startup Detectica". The Wall Street Journal. 2019-11-19. Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  11. ↑ "A Computer Scientist in a Business School". Behind the Enemy Lines. Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  12. ↑ Agger, Michael (2011-05-10). "Awsum Shoes!". Slate. ISSN   1091-2339 . Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  13. ↑ "Faculty". NYU Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  14. ↑ "Associated Faculty". NYU Center for Data Science. Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  15. ↑ "HCOMP 2015: Organizers". AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing. Retrieved 2026-01-31.
  16. ↑ "Research Tracks CFP – TheWebConf 2018". The Web Conference 2018. Retrieved 2026-01-31.
  17. ↑ "Editorial Board". Collective Intelligence. SAGE Publications. Retrieved 2026-01-31.
  18. ↑ "SAGE, Association for Computing Machinery Announce Collective Intelligence, New Open Access Journal in Collaboration with Nesta". Association for Computing Machinery. 2020-08-18. Retrieved 2026-01-31.
  19. ↑ Weise, Karen. "Humans Plus Computers Equals Better Crowdsourcing". Bloomberg Businessweek. Archived from the original on 2014-11-09. Retrieved 2026-01-27.
  20. ↑ Paolacci, Gabriele; Chandler, Jesse; Ipeirotis, Panagiotis G. (2010). "Running experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk". Judgment and Decision Making. 5 (5): 411–419. doi:10.1017/S1930297500002205. ISSN   1930-2975.
  21. ↑ Ipeirotis, Panagiotis G. (2010). "Demographics of Mechanical Turk". NYU Stern School of Business.
  22. ↑ Elmagarmid, Ahmed K.; Ipeirotis, Panagiotis G.; Verykios, Vassilios S. (2007). "Duplicate Record Detection: A Survey". IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering. 19 (1): 1–16. doi:10.1109/TKDE.2007.250581. ISSN   1558-2191.
  23. ↑ Archak, Nikolay; Ghose, Anindya; Ipeirotis, Panagiotis G. (2011). "Deriving the Pricing Power of Product Features by Mining Consumer Reviews". Management Science. 57 (8): 1485–1509. ISSN   0025-1909.
  24. ↑ Ghose, Anindya; Ipeirotis, Panagiotis G. (2011). "Estimating the Helpfulness and Economic Impact of Product Reviews: Mining Text and Reviewer Characteristics". IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering. 23 (10): 1498–1512. doi:10.1109/TKDE.2010.188. ISSN   1558-2191.
  25. ↑ Savitz, Eric. "Zapos, Zappoz, or Zappos: Why Typos Are Good For Your Brand". Forbes. Archived from the original on 2011-07-11. Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  26. ↑ "The Value of Teaching Your Customers How to Spell". Harvard Business Review. Archived from the original on 2013-07-18. Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  27. ↑ Agger, Michael (2011-05-10). "Awsum Shoes!". Slate. ISSN   1091-2339 . Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  28. ↑ "Does Reviewer Quality Matter?". Freakonomics. 2011-04-12. Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  29. ↑ "About Us". Detectica. Retrieved 2026-01-31. They designed and built the founding data science architecture for Integral Ad Science, originally founded as AdSafe Media.
  30. 1 2 Mims, Christopher (2011-03-21). "A Web Scam That Makes $500,000 a Month". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2026-01-31.
  31. ↑ "Off Screen, Porn Sites Trick Advertisers". The Wall Street Journal. 2011-03-18. Retrieved 2026-01-31.
  32. 1 2 "Detectica - Enabling organizations to adopt effective AI strategies". Techweek. 2019-12-19. Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  33. ↑ "Compass, Inc. (COMP) Q4 2021 Earnings Call Transcript". The Motley Fool. 2022-02-17. Retrieved 2025-12-22. In 2021, $151 million gross commission revenue was from listings that the likely to sell tool recommended to our agents before the listing was created. We expect this number to exceed $400 million in 2022.
  34. ↑ "Compass, Inc. (COMP) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript". The Motley Fool. 2023-05-09. Retrieved 2025-12-22. Since launching in 2020, we have handed out millions of recommendations that be attributed more than $100 million of annual incremental revenue to these recommendations over each of the last two years.
  35. ↑ Jaschik, Scott (2011-07-22). "Who Is Punished for Plagiarism?". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved 2026-01-31.
  36. ↑ "NYU Prof Vows Never to Probe Cheating Again—and Faces a Backlash". The Chronicle of Higher Education. 2011-07-21. Retrieved 2026-01-31.
  37. ↑ ""An NYU professor who hates that students' work reads like McKinsey memos held AI oral exams to 'fight fire with fire'"". Business Insider. 2026-01-05. Retrieved 2026-01-31.
  38. ↑ "NYU professor fights AI cheating with AI-powered oral exams that cost 42 cents per student". The Decoder. 2026-01-06. Retrieved 2026-01-31.
  39. ↑ "Research Highlight: Panos Ipeirotis - 2015 CRT Foundation Lagrange Prize". NYU Stern. Retrieved 2026-01-31.
  40. ↑ "Past Meetings". AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing. Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  41. ↑ Christoforaki, Maria; Ipeirotis, Panagiotis (2014-11-05). STEP: A Scalable Testing and Evaluation Platform. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing. Vol. 2. AAAI.
  42. ↑ "Management Science—2014 Best Paper Awards". Management Science. INFORMS. 2015-01-15. Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  43. ↑ "$1.5 Million Google Research Grant Awarded to Professor Panos Ipeirotis & Colleagues". NYU Stern. February 22, 2013. Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  44. ↑ "The Twentieth International WWW Conference (WWW 2011) – Best Paper Award". International World Wide Web Conference Archives (IW3C2). Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  45. ↑ "Award Search: Award #0643846 – CAREER: Towards a Text-Centric Database Management System". National Science Foundation. Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  46. ↑ "SIGMOD Best Paper Award". ACM SIGMOD. Retrieved 2025-12-22.
  47. ↑ "ICDE 2005 Best Paper Awards". 21st IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering. Retrieved 2025-12-22.



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