Machine learning offers new opportunities to anticipate and manage violent conflict, especially in cases involving hybrid actors that defy conventional classifications. Conflict factions present in the Horn of Africa, whose trajectories have spanned political leadership, armed insurgency, and terrorist designation, present a compelling case for this approach. Drawing on a curated dataset of historical incidents and broader contextual indicators, such as political shifts, economic instability, and social unrest, this project uses machine learning to model the behavior of these actors and forecast their future actions.
The research investigates how behavioral patterns can be uncovered, which historical features most improve forecast accuracy and timeliness, and which internal and external factors influence the likelihood of violent events. It also explores how to make model outputs interpretable and operationally relevant, providing analysts and policymakers with actionable insights. While the immediate focus is on the Horn of Africa, the resulting framework is designed to generalize across other conflict-prone settings, offering a scalable, data-driven tool for supporting adaptive counter-terrorism strategies and informed governance.
About the Speaker:
Lirika Sola is a Scholar at the Balsillie School of International Affairs (BSIA), and a third-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science at Northwestern University, advised through the Northwestern Security & AI Lab. Her research lies at the intersection of machine learning, geospatial analysis, and counterterrorism studies, with a focus on modeling, forecasting, and mitigating malicious behavior in both digital and physical domains. She develops data-driven systems that integrate spatial information, behavioral patterns, and environmental context to support risk assessment and decision-making in security-critical settings. With an emphasis on bridging technical innovation and real-world applicability, her work is designed to inform decision-making across governmental, humanitarian, and security sectors.
She previously earned her Master of Science from Northwestern University and her Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the American College of Thessaloniki, Greece.
