U.S. online retail sales are expected to reach $370 billion annually by 2017, a number that eclipses the government budgets of more than 40 nations. Yet as consumers grow comfortable with e-commerce, computer engineering Associate Professor Yan “Lindsay” Sun worries it brings risks of sellers manipulating markets for profit.

Sun wants to bring order to a digital world where it is unclear whom or what review you can trust. And she’s doing it in a novel way, by using errors to identify fake reviews of everything from hotel rooms to socks.’

“In engineering we can’t avoid errors so instead we figure out if we can use them,” she says.

Sun’s research found that there should be no overall patterns across the reviews for a particular product. With that knowledge, she developed computer models that can analyze hundreds of reviews looking for patterns difficult to spot with the human eye. If the models find very few outliers (errors) to the patterns, the system raises a red flag.

Currently, the process is possible only in a lab setting. But Sun is working on a consumer version that would allow web shoppers to paste the address of a reviews page into a website that automatically analyzes the reviews for honesty. Such a system would require cooperation from major web retailers, which may be leery of how consumers would perceive the results.

Sun has another idea as well. Working with colleagues, she is applying game theory to designing a ratings system that encourages honest reviews. A seller that fakes reviews typically pays for inflated rankings, which increases the product’s price as the seller seeks to cover expenses. Sun wants to know at what point paying for reviews is not profitable.

“We want to make the whole e-commerce market healthier,” Sun says. “Instead of sellers spending money manipulating product reviews, have them spend money making their products better.”

The professor became interested in social computing when she realized the connections between the field and her expertise in signal processing. That field requires pattern recognition, directly translatable to analyzing hundreds or thousands of product reviews.

The topic also matches her passion of using engineering to make a tangible difference in an average person’s life.

“I could talk to anyone on the street as long as they are over eight and under 80 and they would understand and appreciate what I do,” Sun says.

Sun never set out to study the topic. As a child, she tagged along to her mother’s research lab in China, where her mother worked as a physicist. The particle accelerator and the taste of innovation captivated Sun. When she headed to college, her mother bemoaned how her lab needed more computer and electrical engineers to design better research equipment. With that on her mind, Sun entered college pursuing those fields.

She later attended the University of Maryland seeking a master’s degree. Intrigued by the opportunity to undertake research, Sun switched to a doctoral program at a professor’s urging.

“I’ve always been a curious person,” she says. “I didn’t even know what a Ph.D. program was, but I didn’t want my curiosity to end after my master’s degree.”

After earning her doctorate, Sun set her sights on joining academia where she could research and inspire the next generation of engineers. She turned down three other offers to come to URI in 2004, attracted by the University’s environment of fostering research and collaboration among disciplines.

“I still have a lot of curiosity,” she says. “I really appreciate that I am at URI because my department is really supportive and I have freedom to pursue different research.”