Cha Meeyoung


Cha Meeyoung, sometimes known as Mia, is a scientific director of the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy. Previous to Max Planck, she was an associate professor at KAIST in the School of Computing and a chief investigator in the Pioneer Research Center for Mathematical and Computational Sciences at the Institute for Basic Science. Her research focuses on network and data science with an emphasis on modeling, analyzing complex information propagation processes, machine learning-based computational social science, and deep learning. She has served on the editorial boards of the journals PeerJ and ACM Transactions on Social Computing.

Early life and education

Mia was born in Daejeon, South Korea. She had a "boring" childhood in Chuncheon, where she often spent time alone in her thoughts. Growing up, she often would play with the novelist O Jeonghui's daughter as they were the same age and lived in the same apartment complex.
She went to Bongeui Middle School and then was one of the only female students attending Kangwon Science High School at that time. The entirety of Meeyoung's higher education has taken place at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, South Korea. She initially desired to major in astrophysics, as she grew up loving stars and was influenced by her physicist father, but KAIST had no degree in astrophysics. Majoring in computer science, she graduated magna cum laude for her B.S. Within the Graduate School for Culture Technology at KAIST, the adviser for her M.S. was Kim Taewhan, and her Ph.D. was supervised by Sue Moon.
Noting that IPTV was becoming more popular, but data packets had issues transversing networks, Mia initially focused her dissertation on a purely mathematical solution. Upon seeing the issue also involved various socio-demographic factors, she analyzed the viewing habits of IPTV users to optimize the distribution algorithm. She later stated in an interview, "It became clear to me that the combination of computer science and social science could change things for the better in society."

Career

In 2008, Meeyoung worked as a postdoc in Max Planck Institute for Software Systems under adviser Krishna Gummadi. Leaving Max Planck, she returned to her alma mater and became an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Culture Technology later becoming an associate professor joint faculty member in the School of Computing. Outside of KAIST, she worked as a scientific and technical consultant for both SK Telecom and the Korea Internet Self-Governance Organization in 2010 and 2014, respectively.
In 2015, Meeyoung went to Menlo Park to work as a visiting professor with Facebook's Data Science Team hosted by Lada Adamic. In 2019, she and Oum Sang-il were the founding chief investigators of the Pioneer Research Center for Mathematical and Computational Sciences at the Institute for Basic Science. This and the Pioneer Research Center for Biomolecular and Cellular Structure are the first of two such centers at IBS. Headed by Meeyoung, the Data Science Group researches fake news, perception biases in relation to AI, deep learning of heterogeneous data for modeling human behavior, and prediction efforts through language processing and image analysis. Seeing the infodemic on COVID-19 information starting in China and spreading to Korea and the US, the Data Science Group and researchers from Ewha Womans University, started the multilingual Facts Before Rumors campaign to separate common claims seen online.
She has been named BACUDA science collaborator of the World Customs Organization, is a member of the Seoul Forum for International Affairs, and a commissioner for the Presidential Council on Intellectual Property, Open Data Mediation Committee, National Tax Service, Korea Customs Service, and Korea Copyright Commission.
In June 2024, she relocated to the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy in Bochum, Germany, to become a scientific director at the Max Planck Society heading the Data Science for Humanity research group. She is the first South Korea director and second Asian female scientist to hold such a position at Max Planck.
In addition to continuing some of her research interests started in Korea, she is doing more work as a scientific advisor, speaking at the German-Korean Forum in Dresden and the United Nations World Health Summit in October 2024, and also serving on an AI ethics committee for UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

Awards and honors

From 2016, Meeyoung has served on the editorial boards of PeerJ and ACM Transactions on Social Computing. In 2025, she was program co-chair of WSDM with Marc Najork and Marie-Francine Moens.

Selected publications