Big data—the massive amount of information that is generated by social networks, mobile devices, blogs and other disparate content sources— creates both challenges and opportunities for companies. Dr. Brian Cameron, executive director of the Center for Enterprise Architecture (EA), recently attended a symposium where he discussed how the practice of enterprise architecture—the alignment of enterprise information systems and technology with business strategy and goals—can be employed by companies to maximize the potential of enterprise big data and cloud computing environments.

Cameron was a featured speaker at “Managing the Data Explosion: Turning Information into Ideas,” a Wipro and InformationWeek executive symposium, held recently in Chicago. During the symposium, InformationWeek, a weekly business technology magazine headquartered in San Francisco, and Wipro, a global information technology services and consulting company based in Bangalore, India, presented ideas for managing the data explosion that companies of all sizes are encountering. The overall goal of the symposium was to help executives understand how they can harness valuable information flowing throughout the enterprise and make better decisions that lead to business growth.

“It is difficult to design enterprise-wide big data solutions that can access the many silos of data throughout the organization,” Cameron said.  “Enterprise cloud computing also needs to be planned and architected properly.  Enterprise Architecture provides the process and tools for analyzing, designing and implementing enterprise big data and cloud solutions.”

The Center for EA, which launched in January 2011, seeks to gather intellectual resources across Penn State to address research concerns and questions that span the design, functioning and governance of contemporary, information-driven enterprises. Enterprise architecture, according to Cameron, is the process of translating a business vision and strategy into effective operational planning.

“In today’s complex global environment, enterprise architecture is a crucial component for the effective implementation and management of enterprise big data and cloud environments,” Cameron said.

In addition to presenting at the symposium, Cameron was invited to join the review committee for next year’s InformationWeek’s National Architecture Awards program.

Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) will hold its spring 2012 commencement ceremony at 3 p.m. Saturday, May 5, 2012, at Eisenhower Auditorium. The ceremony can be viewed live on Ustream at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/ist-commencement-2012.

The ceremony will include special remarks by the commencement speaker, Dr. Irvin Wladawsky-Berger, chairman emeritus of the IBM Academy of Technology; individual recognition of each graduate while crossing the stage; and a welcome into the Penn State Alumni Association by Paul Horn (IST '04), president of the IST Alumni Society.

Since retiring from IBM in 2007 after 37 years of service, Wladawsky-Berger has continued to consult for IBM in a number of initiatives, including cloud computing, Smart Planet and other technical and innovation areas. In March 2008, he joined Citigroup as strategic advisor, helping with innovation and technology initiatives across the company.

The IST student marshals for this year’s commencement are Elizabeth Bartels and Eric Papamarcos, along with ROTC student marshal Nicholas Orlando.

Bartels, a Schreyer Honors College student, will be escorted by faculty marshal Dr. Gerry Santoro.  At Penn State, she was president of the IST Game Design Club, chair of the IST Student Government’s Academic Committee, a member of Women in IST (WIST), and a member of Gamma Tau Phi (IST Honors Society). In addition, she has been an IST Diplomat and president of the Doctor Who Fan Club. She is receiving a B.S. in Security and Risk Analysis (SRA) and a B.S. in Information Sciences and Technology (IST), with a minor in geography. After graduation, she plans to work and become involved in the IST Alumni Society.

Papamarcos, who will be escorted by faculty marshal Dr. Steven Haynes, won the Evan Pugh Scholar Award in both his junior and senior years, and was named the Penn State Club Sports Non-Traditional Officer of the Year for 2009-10. He is receiving a B.S. in IST with a minor in SRA. He has accepted a position at Microsoft as a software engineer.

While at Penn State, Orlando upheld various leadership roles within Penn State’s Naval ROTC Unit. He was responsible and accountable for 24 individuals within the Battalion (Fall 2010) and served as a secondary squad leader for the Penn State Naval ROTC Drill Team.  He is receiving a B.S. in SRA. He will commission into the U.S. Navy as an ensign, and in June, will be heading to LSD 47 USS Rushmore out of San Diego.

To honor the graduates and their families, an ice cream social will be held prior to the ceremony in Reese's Cafe and the West Atrium of the IST Building from 12:45 p.m. to 2 p.m.

For the commencement ceremony, graduates must arrive at Eisenhower Auditorium and check in to receive their name card no later than 2:30 p.m. The processional will begin promptly at 3 p.m.

These entrepreneurs include David Rusenko (’07), CEO and co-founder of Weebly, a San Francisco-based start-up that offers free, easy-to-use website-building tools; Neilye Garrity (’04), co-founder of Candid Career, a video-based career exploration website that hosts informational interviews with industry professionals; Daehee Park (’09), who works in monetization and analytics at Mulu, a celebrity-supported social commerce platform based in Palo Alto, Calif. that raises money for charities; and Nick Berardi (’03), CEO and co-founder of Hoppio, a scalable back-end service provider that helps mobile developers create feature-rich applications.

Rusenko’s company, Weebly, which launched in 2006, developed out of an IST class project by Rusenko, his fellow IST alumnus Chris Fanini, and Dan Veltri, a graduate of Penn State’s Smeal College of Business. Within its first year, Weebly was named one of the 50 best websites by TIME magazine. In December 2011, Rusenko was named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30: Social/Mobile,” a list of influential under-30-year-olds in the social media and mobile industries. He received the Alumni Achievement Award from the Penn State Alumni Association in 2010, becoming the youngest recipient of that award and the first recipient from IST.

According to Rusenko, the concept of Weebly started after he, Fanini and Veltri noticed students having difficulty creating websites. Knowing that many businesses were also struggling, Rusenko said, they concluded that the process could be simplified through a widget-style format, allowing users to create pages by dragging and dropping different page elements. About 10 million people have used Weebly to create websites and approximately 10 percent of the U.S. population regularly visits a website made through Weebly.

“Everyone who uses Weebly is working on something they’re passionate about,” Rusenko said. “We enable them to pursue that passion.”

Despite Weebly’s success, Rusenko cautioned that the initial stages of starting a company can be a roller coaster of highs and lows. “There are times when you think you’re going to take over the world and times when you think you’re going to be dead,” he said.

To help aspiring young entrepreneurs overcome some of those hurdles, Rusenko offers this advice: “Pick a big market to make something better, and ride a wave. Those two things are going to make your life a lot easier.”

While Rusenko doesn’t advise people to copy ideas, he does emphasize that there is no shame in improving upon existing ones. While it is commonly assumed that most successful companies don’t make mistakes, he said, Weebly has created a loyal and passionate user base by responding to people’s concerns. “The company that makes a mistake and fixes it is the company that’s loved the most,” he said.

Candid Career, which was founded by Garrity and Bill Glading in 2010, also aims to take a difficult process – in this case, choosing a career path – and make it easier through web-based videos. Garrity, who lives in Annapolis, Md., worked as an information technology consultant for IBM in the Washington, D.C. area for six years after graduating from IST. While working at IBM, she met Glading, who had a vision of creating a platform that would assist high school and college students in deciding upon a career. Together, they created Candid Career, an online library of more than 2,000 video interviews in which professionals from diverse fields discuss their jobs. In Candid Career's first year of selling their product, Garrity said, more than 50 colleges and universities across the U.S. paid a subscription fee to access the videos.

According to Garrity, Candid Career stands out from other websites that offer career advice because it delivers brief, informational interviews that describe the “good, bad and the ugly” of the interviewees’ professions, “straight from the horse’s mouth.” The next step for the company, she said, will be expanding its services to high schools and other markets.

Garrity attributes the interpersonal skills and technical knowledge that she gained at IST to helping her become successful in her career. The group work she performed as a student, she said, has helped her deal with a wide variety of people in her profession, in addition to helping bridge the gap between technology (her developers) and business (her user's needs and requirements).

For aspiring entrepreneurs, Garrity said, the most important thing is to love what they do. “If you are not passionate about your venture, don't do it,” she said. “It’s hard to sell something you don't believe in yourself.”

Passion also is a major component of the engine that drives Mulu, according to Park, who commutes to Palo Alto from Tempe, Ariz. Like other social shopping sites such as Pinterest, the Mulu site allows users to create accounts where they can share their favorite things and ask for shopping recommendations.

Unlike Pinterest, however, Mulu also has a charitable element, where purchases made based on Mulu recommendations can benefit charities such as Greenpeace, Doctors without Borders, St. Jude Children’s Hospital and LIVESTRONG.

To make Mulu stand out among the competition, Park said he and his colleagues must “differentiate the features that really do make us different.

“One of our key competitive factors is that we have some major support with names in the celebrity realm,” he said. “We work personally with Michael Kors, Elie Tahari, Lance Armstrong, Pete Wentz and Zoey Deschanel. They actually have profiles on our page and they are driving traffic to our site so that they can raise money for their charities.”

Park echoed Garrity’s sentiment that working in team settings at IST has been beneficial, and said that the comprehensiveness of the program provides a lot of flexibility in career choices.

“IST is one of those majors that goes a mile wide and maybe a couple feet deep,” Park said. “But through that, it gives you a broad experience so that when you do want to dive into something it gives you that foundation so you can learn, just based on your motivations.”

When Park talks to students about entrepreneurship, he tells them to trust their instincts and not hesitate to act out of fear of failure. Even if a venture doesn’t succeed, he added, the lessons learned from the experience can prepare someone for the next phase.

“It’s not just about the money, it’s about the hard skills,” he said. “I think it’s about being able to make that leap of faith and just trying it.”

For Berardi, who lives and works in Philadelphia, that leap of faith sprung from a downturn in the economy that propelled him into a consulting career and a pragmatic need to manage his taxes. In 2008, Managed Fusion was born, and has since become a leading information technology consulting firm serving clients throughout the U.S. Following the success of Managed Fusion, Berardi launched Hoppio, a back-end service provider for mobile app developers, in January 2012.

“There were a lot of people with great mobile aspirations that don't really have the experience or time to learn how to scale a back-end server for their app,” Berardi said. “App developers also need to focus on what they care about, the app development itself, and I thought, ‘Wow, wouldn't it be great if we could just point app developers to a website and just say, here, just start developing your app against our back-end. We'll take care of the scaling for you.’”

Berardi, like Garrity and Park, said that group dynamics were the biggest takeaway of his IST education. As in the real world, he said, sometimes he and his classmates got to choose their own groups, while at other times they were assigned.

“When you’re out there working with people, sometimes it’s by choice, sometimes it’s not,” he said. “And you have to understand their needs and communicate your needs effectively.”

Berardi said that the most important piece of advice he would offer to aspiring entrepreneurs is to focus on the experience of coming up with new ideas rather than trying to predict the outcome.

“One of the most important things is, if this is the kind of work you like and this is what you want to be doing, even if you have a hundred ideas, just keep trying them,” he said. “And you’re probably going to gain something, even though it might not be money and you might not have the next big start-up, you will gain something out of just trying.”

These IST alumni, along with other notable young technology entrepreneurs from around the country, shared their cutting-edge expertise during IST’s inaugural Start-up Week, held April 9-13. During the week, the entrepreneurs networked with students and delivered classroom talks at the college on various topics related to information technology, many of which were open to the entire Penn State community.

A highlight of Start-up Week was a donation of $400,000 from Rusenko—the largest from an IST graduate in the college’s 13-year history. The gift will create the David Rusenko Scholarship for Entrepreneurship, which will help IST students to launch their own companies while they are still in school.

In addition, Berardi presented the Nick and Melinda Berardi Scholarship, which will provide $5,000 per year for IST students interested in open source work.

Recorded sessions from Start-up Week can be viewed on IST's UStream channel.

"IST has done a tremendous job creating well-rounded technical graduates," said Rusenko, a 2007 graduate and co-founder of San Francisco firm Weebly. "I’m excited to help encourage students to think seriously about creating and joining startups."

Weebly, launched in 2006 to offer free, easy-to-use website-building tools, developed out of an IST class project by Rusenko, his fellow IST alumnus Chris Fanini, and Dan Veltri, a graduate of Penn State’s Smeal College of Business. Within its first year, Weebly was named one of the 50 best websites by TIME magazine. In December 2011, Rusenko was named to Forbes' "30 Under 30: Social/Mobile," a list of influential under-30-year-olds in the social media and mobile industries. He received the Alumni Achievement Award from the Penn State Alumni Association in 2010, becoming the youngest recipient of that award and the first recipient from IST.

"We’re very proud of David’s accomplishments, and we’re extremely grateful for his generous gift," said Dean David Hall. "Our college was founded on the principle of innovation, and our culture encourages students to find new kinds of solutions to problems in business and society. Weebly is an excellent example of how those ideas can be translated into real results for real consumers. It’s very exciting that the Rusenko Scholarship will now be available to help other students forge similar paths to finding solutions and achieving success."

Rusenko’s gift to IST continues his active support for entrepreneurship among young people. He has spoken on the topic to Penn State students and serves as an adviser to Innoblue, a State-College-based organization that helps members of the Penn State community launch their own start-up companies. This week, Rusenko is taking part in the College of IST’s Start-up Week, which is bringing successful entrepreneurs from around the country to discuss opportunities in the technology sector. For more information about the IST Start-up Week, visit http://ist.psu.edu/startup online.

Rusenko’s gift will help the College of IST and the University to reach the goals of For the Future: The Campaign for Penn State Students. This University-wide effort is directed toward a shared vision of Penn State as the most comprehensive, student-centered research university in America. The campaign’s top priority is keeping a Penn State degree affordable for students and families. For the Future is the most ambitious effort of its kind in Penn State’s history, with the goal of securing $2 billion by 2014.

The program is in response to the rapidly increasing demand for professionals with a unique combination of skills and perspectives to align enterprise information systems and technology with business strategy and goals.

The College of IST has offered classes in EA for the past several semesters, and the Master of Professional Studies Program in Enterprise Architecture (MPS/EA) was recently approved by the Penn State’s Board of Trustees.

“Globally, we’re seen as one of the thought leaders in this field,” said Dr. Brian Cameron, executive director of the Center for Enterprise Architecture at the College of IST and faculty program director of the master’s program.

The Center for EA, which was launched in January 2011, seeks to gather intellectual resources across Penn State to address research concerns and questions that span the design, functioning and governance of contemporary, information-driven enterprises. The Center is guided, in part, by an external advisory board consisting of representatives from leading corporations, government and professional organizations.

Dr. Pete Forster, director of online programs for the College of IST, said that the MPS/EA program “epitomizes the values and goals of the college.

“It is extending cutting- edge subject matter taught by faculty who are strong academics, but have corporate experience, to new student populations,” he said. “This is a corporately informed program that addresses the realities and challenges of enterprise architecture in the public and private sector.”

The MPS/EA program has had a unique development process, according to Cameron. Since the inception of the Center for EA in 2008, he said, “one of the visions was to create an online master’s program.”  Cameron raised about $500,000 in start-up funds from approximately 70 organizations on the external advisory board, all of which played a role in developing the curriculum for the program. Within two-and-a-half years, Cameron said, he had received both the internal and external support required to propel the master’s degree program forward.

The MPS/EA program is an innovative program, unlike any other program that is currently offered at universities, Cameron said.  It is designed for working professionals who need to integrate strategic, business and technology planning methods with an ability to understand, analyze, justify and communicate the solution of EA problems.   With an eye towards the international market, the curriculum accommodates individuals from all types of academic backgrounds with a minimum of two years of relevant work experience.

According to Cameron, the program is the closest available option to a chief information officer degree and pairs the most important aspects of an MBA program with courses in EA and systems. “This program prepares you for a wide variety of technology leadership roles in organizations,” he said.

The program, which requires 34 credits for graduation, includes courses in EA principles and practices, EA leadership and governance, cost and value management, business and project strategy and project and portfolio management. Initial elective areas that offer opportunities for further study in areas of interest include supply chain management, enterprise integration, security, software engineering, and project and program management. On average, Cameron said, the program will take two to three years to complete.

In addition to the master’s program, the Center for EA is planning to offer a degree focus area in EA that will be available to undergraduate students in the fall 2012 semester.

While large organizations have been the first to explore EA, Cameron said, mid-size and smaller companies are increasingly taking an interest in the field. As with all offerings at the College of IST, he added, the MPS/EA program will reflect the dynamic nature of industry and government.

“As the profession continues to evolve and change, our program will evolve and change as well,” he said.

For more information about the MPS/EA program, visit http://ist.psu.edu/online-education/. To learn more about the Center for EA, visit http://ea.ist.psu.edu/.

Huffman will speak on Friday, April 13 from 1:25 to 2:15 p.m. in the Cybertorium (Room 113 IST Building). His presentation is open to the public.

Huffman created Reddit with his college roommate, Alexis Ohanian. Reddit displays news based on the personal preferences of each user along with the most popular news items based on community voting. The website has been described as having a simple interface and little advertising, which has been attributed to its popularity with news consumers.

In 2009 Huffman left Reddit and, in 2010, co-founded Hipmunk, a travel search site that aims to take the agony out of travel planning. Hipmunk has been named to Time magazine’s Top 50 Websites and Top 10 Smart-Phone Apps.

Start-up Week will feature presentations from a number of technology entrepreneurs, including IST alumni. The week’s events, many of which will be open to the entire Penn State community, will include classroom talks on various topics related to information technology as well as opportunities to network with the presenters. In addition to Huffman, the featured speakers include David Rusenko (’07 IST), CEO and co-founder of Weebly; Nick Berardi (’03 IST), CEO and co-founder of Hoppio; Daehee Park (’09 IST), of MULU; Neilye Garrity (’04 IST), founder of Candid Career; and David Chu (’03 IST), founder of Spyder Rentals.

The public is invited to attend speaker presentations throughout Start-up Week, and there will be an Entrepreneur Meet and Greet from 5:30 to 7 p.m. April 12 in Reese’s Café at the IST Building. Students and guests will be able to mingle with the speakers over refreshments and hors d’oeuvres.

Recorded sessions from Start-up Week can be viewed on IST's UStream channel.

For more information about Start-up Week and a complete schedule of events, visit: http://ist.psu.edu/startup.

David Hall, dean of the College of IST, said that Start-up Week provides an opportunity for rising stars in the information technology field to discuss a wide array of career options that students may be interested in pursuing.

“These guests are young, very successful information technology entrepreneurs,” Hall said. “They’re coming to help us showcase their success stories for current and prospective students.  For students thinking about the possibilities for their future, they will find this to be an opportunity that can’t be missed.  It’s the first time Penn State IST has had an alum named to Forbes’ ‘30 under 30’ list, which is a remarkable achievement.”

The entrepreneurs featured during Start-up Week include David Rusenko (’07 IST), who is CEO and co-founder of Weebly; Nick Berardi (’03 IST), CEO and co-founder of Hoppio; as well as David Chu (’03 IST), founder of Spyder-Rentals.com. In addition Matt Miller (’01 ENG), co-founder of Career Bliss and CTO of CyberCoders, will present to IST students.

The public is invited to attend speaker presentations throughout the week, and there will be a networking session from 5:30 to 7 p.m. April 12 in Reese’s Café at the IST Building. Students and guests will be able to mingle with the speakers over cocktails and tapas.

President Rodney Erickson, Dean Hall, speakers, students and faculty will celebrate the entrepreneurs’ achievements and philanthropy at an ice cream social April 13, 2:30 to 4:00 p.m. at the Schreyer House.

Additional highlights of Start-up Week include a town hall presentation by Steve Huffman, co-founder of Reddit. He will speak at 2:30 p.m. April 12 in the Cybertorium in the IST Building.

Recorded sessions from Start-up Week can be viewed on IST's UStream channel. More information about Start-up Week can be found at: http://ist.psu.edu/startup.

Penn State's Security and Risk Analysis major was featured as part of the final episode of the Big Ten Network's (BTN) "Impact the World" series. The episode explored ground-breaking safety developments from Penn State, the University of Iowa and the University of Minnesota.

-- Penn State: With greater emphasis placed on security, universities across the nation have seen information sciences and technology majors grow in scope to include all levels of security. However, perhaps no program is more relevant than Penn State's Security and Risk Analysis (SRA) major. The program teaches students how to design secure systems and solve real-world problems, including terrorism, fraud and security risks. One key component of the program's success is Professor Colonel Jake Graham, who encourages students to re-enact real world events in the program's Extreme Events Lab for tangible results. In this episode, the network examines why Penn State SRA majors are among the most desirable job candidates in their designated field. To watch a short video preview, click here.

-- Iowa: The life of a soldier is fraught with challenges, but what if soldiers knew how they could respond to certain elements before setting foot on the battle field? A team of biomedical engineers at the University of Iowa Virtual Soldier Research program are collaborating to provide soldiers those answers with help from Santos, the virtual solider. The computerized avatar is an exact duplicate of the human skeletal and muscular systems, and can react with different senses, including smell, sight and touch on command. The program's ultimate goal is to improve safety for soldiers in war zones by demonstrating how much equipment soldiers can carry on a mission without compromising their safety. To watch a short video preview, click here.

-- Minnesota: Robots are no longer the stuff of science fiction. In fact, at the University of Minnesota's Center for Distributed Robotics, Dr. Nikos Papanikolopoulos and his graduate students are changing the way swat teams and military do reconnaissance. Their mission is to save lives on the front lines and they are having greater success -- thanks to the help of a little robot called Scout. The United States military, police and SWAT teams use the Scout robot as a safety precaution to survey risk areas ahead of troops. Each robot is operated by a remote control device and equipped with a camera that feeds visuals back to the command center. To watch a short video preview, click here.

Abhijit Dutt, instructor in information sciences and technology at Penn State Beaver, has been selected as an associate editor of the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) which will be held June 10-13, in Barcelona, Spain.

ECIS is considered the premier information systems event in Europe and provides a platform for panel discussions and the presentation of peer-reviewed academic research.

Prior to joining Penn State in 2008, he worked in the information systems industry for a variety of companies, including Motorola, Tellabs, Cabletron, and Putnam Investments. In addition, he was a visiting assistant professor of computer information systems at Edgewood College, an adjunct instructor at the University of Wisconsin, an adjunct assistant professor in electrical engineering and computer science at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, and a lecturer at Shepherd University.

Dutt holds a master's degree in computer science from the University of Tulsa as well as a master’s degree and a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Calcutta, India. He can be contacted at aud18@psu.edu or 724-773-3860.

According to its website, ShmooCon is “hell-bent on offering three days of an interesting atmosphere for demonstrating technology exploitation, inventive software and hardware solutions, and open discussions of critical infosec issues.” The convention, which is held at the Washington Hilton Hotel, is sponsored by The Shmoo Group, a nonprofit think-tank of individuals who are interested in information security research and development. Events at ShmooCon include talks and seminars by information security professionals on “new and innovative security solutions and how hackers will try to exploit the current security situation,” said Adam Stavely, a member of the IA Club and a sophomore majoring in IST and minoring in Security Risk and Analysis.

“It brings together people in the fields of cyber security and information security to talk about the new wave of hackers and how we’re trying to prevent it,” said Stavely, who didn’t attend the convention.

Hoss Hewitt, corporate liaison for the IA Club and a junior SRA major who attended ShmooCon, said that as the winner of last year’s Hack Fortress competition, the team had 10 tickets guaranteed for this year’s convention.  Nearly a dozen club members made the trip, he said, in addition to a number of alumni, for a total of about 30 attendees connected to Penn State.

The IA Club, according to the group’s website, is a “hands-on, student-driven organization designed to supplement and extend the information security concepts discussed in the IST curriculum.” Through talks, demonstrations, seminars and special guests, the club seeks to help students understand the current climate and future opportunities in the information assurance field.

Hack Fortress, according to ShmooCon’s website, combines elements of two previous ShmooCon events, "Hack or Halo" and the "Team Fortress 2 LAN party." Hack Fortress pits teams of players against one another in a dual-challenge event over the course of a day. Each team is divided into two groups that work on separate challenges occurring at the same time. One portion of a team competes in the video game, while the second group attempts to crack passwords and decrypt secret messages. Each hacking solution is worth a certain amount of points, Stavely said, and the team that accumulates the most points within a half-hour is declared the winner. The contest also allows its competitors to indulge their extroverted sides, Hewitt said. One of his challenges was to give a team member a piggy-back ride, while his partner screamed out lines from a movie.

Since hackers, generally speaking, don’t have a noble reputation, one might question the merits of a hacking convention. However, Hewitt said, by acquiring those skills, a computer user is equipped with the knowledge to counter malicious hackers.

“If you know how to hack something, then you can better defend yourself,” he said.

As repeat victors of Hack Fortress, Hewitt said, the IA Club members were once again guaranteed a set of tickets to the next ShmooCon.

“We’re going back, and hopefully, we can defend our title,” he said.

Dr. Jack Carroll, Edward M. Frymoyer Professor of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State, was elected a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science in December 2011. He was nominated by a group of his peers for his pioneering research in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI).

“I sort of just arrived as this area was being invented,” he said.

The Association for Psychological Science (previously the American Psychological Society), according to its website, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of scientific psychology and its representation at the national and international level. The association has about 23,000 members and includes the leading psychological scientists and academics, clinicians, researchers, teachers and administrators.

Fellow status, according to the website, is “awarded to APS members who have made sustained outstanding contributions to the science of psychology in the areas of research, teaching, service, and/or application.”

Carroll, who joined the faculty of the College of IST in 2003, is co-director (with Dr. Mary Beth Rosson) of the Laboratory for Computer Supported Collaboration and Learning. He also serves as director of Penn State's Center for Human-Computer Interaction. In addition, he holds courtesy appointments as professor of computer science and engineering, instructional systems and psychology. His research interests include methods and theory in human-computer interaction, particularly as applied to networking tools for collaborative learning and problem solving, and the design of interactive information systems.

Carroll, who has a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Columbia University, first started doing research in HCI while doing post-doc work at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in the mid-1970s.The development of HCI, he said, was largely a result of the emergence of the personal computer.

“Once ordinary people started using computers, (HCI) exploded,” he said.

HCI started out with “limited, arcane problems,” Carroll said, but branched out into many areas as embedded systems such as mobile phones, digital cameras, and music players were invented. In the latter part of his career, he said, his research has focused on community informatics, and collaborative problem solving and learning. One of the areas he is exploring is the use of Internet news feeds for community networking. Currently, he is designing software that aggregates feeds from different sources to support an experimental news portal for State College, Pa. The news site, civicinity, can be viewed at www.civicinity.org.

“The technique could make every community system more lively and interesting,” Carroll said.

Carroll acknowledged that his areas of interest are viewed as unconventional by many traditional experimental psychologists, who mostly conduct research according to very specific standards.

“It’s not the usual thing psychologists do,” he said.

However, he added, HCI is a very broad field that encompasses not just researchers, but also designers and programmers. Technology impacts people’s lives in so many ways, he said, that it will be increasingly hard for the mainstream psychological community to ignore research that explores human-computer interaction.

“I think, ultimately, people are attracted to interesting problems and opportunities,” Carroll said.

Dr. Edward Glantz, a professor in Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology, has a wealth of experience to draw from when it comes to helping students get acclimated at Penn State. In his new book, “A Student Guide to Success at Penn State,” he explains to incoming students that getting a degree in a particular major is not the ultimate goal of a college education.  Rather, he encourages incoming students to “take advantage of all that college has to offer, including preparing for the first job.”

“I'm constantly being asked how to translate what we learn in the classroom and then apply it to getting on with life, including getting a job,” Glantz said. “This book provides this advice in a more shareable form.”

“A Student Guide to Success at Penn State” is divided into two sections. “Part I-Blueprint for Success” gives tips on how to succeed academically in college, while “Part II-Being on Campus” focuses on day-day-day survival on campus. “Part I” includes tips on managing time, taking notes in classes, and job hunting. In “Part II”, Glantz offers advice on getting involved in campus life, navigating the university’s information systems, and finding resources to deal with specific issues.

Glantz’s roots run deep at Penn State. He completed his Ph.D. with the first group of graduate students in the College of IST, and also holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering and a B.A. in general arts and science from Penn State. In addition, he received a M.B.A. from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. As an undergraduate, he worked in Penn State’s College of Agriculture and as a photojournalist for The Daily Collegian. He served as a supply chain and information systems faculty member for 10 years at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business and worked in industry for 20 years.

In addition to being well-versed in the organizational structure of Penn State, Glantz said, his experience with guiding students gives him unique insight into the issues that they face.

“Since 1999, I have taught 9,000 students at University Park, and am the father of two alumni and one current undergraduate from the Colleges of Science, Business and IST,” he said.

Glantz’s book has drawn praise from a number of Penn State students, graduates, and faculty members.

“This detailed guide to Penn State offers something for all students, regardless of semester standing,” said Clara Ocneanu, a member of the class of 2014 in the College of IST. “It is hard to discover all of Dr. Glantz’s useful suggestions on your own. This guide serves as both an introduction to the university and a reference for numerous facets of your college career.”

According to Glantz, the college experience has evolved since he was a Penn State undergraduate. A couple of the major shifts that have occurred, he said, are an increased emphasis on early career planning and a change in the nature of student advising.

While Glantz was attending Penn State in the 1970s, he said, students had the luxury of focusing on their classes for most of their college careers. It wasn’t until their senior year that they really started planning for the future. Now, he said, the job searching process starts in freshman year. For most students, completing an internship before graduation is practically a requirement, he added, and some companies won’t hire graduates who haven’t done at least two internships. The College of IST requires its students to do internships. Student clubs, activities, and volunteer work are also vital resume boosters.

“In business, I conducted a wide variety of technical and support searches in all parts of North America and have reviewed thousands of resumes,” Glantz said. “In fact, I still enjoy giving students feedback on resumes from an experienced recruiter perspective.”

One of Glantz’s goals for the book is to help retain students at the University. About 15 percent of students who start at Penn State do not continue after freshman year, he said, and he believes that the attrition rate could be lowered if more freshmen began their studies in the summer, when classes are smaller and the university environment is less overwhelming. For the past 10 years, he has taught in a summer program called LEAP (Learning Edge Academic Program), in which students are grouped into academic “prides”  consisting of two course sections taken by a maximum of 25 students along with an assigned student mentor.

Until around 10 years ago, Glantz said, faculty members acted as formal advisors to their students. While most universities now employ professional student advisors, students are not obligated to meet with them. Developing a relationship with one’s advisor early on and meeting with him or her at least once a semester, he said, are key steps to academic success. Students also need to develop faculty relationships for career advice and academic references, he added.

Glantz recently revised “A Student Guide” to include a chapter on Penn State branch campuses, he said. About half of University Park campus graduates start their Penn State careers at one of the 20 undergraduate campus locations across the commonwealth, he said, and some of those campuses offer four-year programs. Some students may feel that the smaller branch campuses are better suited to them, he added.

Glantz said that he hopes to get feedback on “A Student Guide to Success at Penn State” and make improvements to the book each year. Copies of the book are available from www.lulu.com, Pattee Library, Barnes & Noble at The Penn State University Bookstore, and The Student Bookstore in downtown State College; and can also be obtained by contacting Glantz at GetOnState@gmail.com.

Dr. Richard L. Tutwiler, a senior research associate at Penn State’s Applied Research Laboratory, has been named as deputy director of the Center for Network-Centric Cognition and Information Fusion (NC2IF), a research center led by the College of Information Sciences and Technology that explores the gap between the collection of reports and data in computer systems and human decision-making.  Tutwiler, who assumed the position on Jan. 1, replaces Dr. Pete Forster, a senior lecturer at the College of IST.

“As deputy of the NC2IF, Dr. Tutwiler will serve a vital function in both mentoring graduate students, designing and guiding research, and exploring new partnerships and funding opportunities to support NC2IF research,” said Col. Jake Graham, director of the NC2IF and a professor at the College of IST. “We are both pleased and fortunate to have Dr. Tutwiler as an integral part of the NC2IF.”

Tutwiler, who serves as a senior research associate in the Imaging Systems and Processing Department of the Communications, Information and Navigation Division in the Intercollegiate Research Program at ARL, is also a member of Penn State’s graduate faculty in the departments of Acoustics, Electrical Engineering, and Kinesiology. In addition, he is an MRI (Materials Research Institute) research associate, a faculty member of the Penn State College of Medicine M.D./Ph.D. program, and a faculty member of the Penn State Hershey Eye Center. A native of Pittsburgh, he holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Penn State and has worked at ARL since 1986.

“Dr. Tutwiler is a great addition to the NC2IF,” Graham said. “He brings with him a diverse and practiced background in the fields of sensor fusion, experimentation, and applied research.”

The focus of the NC2IF, which was chartered as a Penn State research center in 2008, is to conduct research and demonstrate how information technology can span the gap from energy detection (via sensors and human reports) to knowledge creation. The researchers leverage new media technologies to transform information into actionable knowledge and focus on large-scale problems that provide opportunities for collaboration.

Tutwiler had been well-acquainted with the NC2IF prior to assuming the role of deputy director. He is part of the team working on the center’s Multi-University Research Initiative (MURI), a collaborative project with the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, and Tennessee State University, that seeks to develop computerized learning techniques to fuse hard and soft data. At ARL, he has conducted research in the areas of computer vision image processing and signal recognition, which he said are directly applicable to the work that is being done at the NC2IF.

Tutwiler’s goals as deputy director, he said, include expanding the center’s partnerships with industry and government.

“I would like to be able to interface with corporate sponsors,” he said.

Tutwiler said that he would like for the NC2IF to be able to sponsor students for co-ops with companies and obtain external research funding for projects that are of interest to government agencies and corporations.

“You have multiple directions to go for funding,” he said.

In regards to research, Tutwiler said, there is plenty of growth potential for the NC2IF. He is interested in applying machine learning techniques to hard and soft sensor data streams, which could aid the work of emergency responders.

The most rewarding aspect of working in the technology field, Tutwiler said, is being able to work with “interesting, state-of-the-art” techniques. He particularly enjoys research in 3-D computer vision, and also takes pleasure in working with students.

“You always get to work on something new,” Tutwiler said.

“We wanted to have a mobile tool so that [users] can see how much caffeine is in the body,” Yeh said.

Caffeine Zone 2 is an iPhone app that monitors, predicts and displays a user’s caffeine level in real-time based on a pharmacokinetic model and the user’s input of when he or she consumes caffeine. The app, which has been in development for about 18 months, became available in December on the App Store. Both a free version of Caffeine Zone 2 (with ads) and a paid version ($0.99 without ads) are able to run on iPhones and iPod Touches, as well as on iPads.

Caffeine Zone 2 was developed by the Applied Cognitive Science Lab at the College of Information Sciences and Technology and spun out through a small company started by Ritter with the permission of the Office of Naval Research and Penn State. The app is based on research sponsored by ONR.

According to Ritter and Yeh, caffeine offers a number of benefits to users, including for some, an enhanced sense of confidence while speaking in public, and the ability to stay awake during late-night study sessions or work shifts. However, they added, many people are unaware of how their patterns of caffeine consumption can be disruptive when they do want to go to sleep.

“We know some people are over-caffeinated,” Ritter said.

Caffeine can be a tricky substance to manage, Ritter and Yeh said. Caffeine Zone 2 lists an eight-ounce cup of coffee as containing 120 mg of caffeine, while the same amount of tea contains 55 mg of caffeine.  In addition, Ritter and Yeh said, caffeine takes a certain amount of time for the body to process.  The biological half-life of caffeine—the time required for the body to eliminate one-half of the total amount of caffeine that was consumed –is about six hours for healthy adults. [1] For people who have trouble sleeping, Ritter said, it would be wise to avoid consuming caffeine later in the day.

Caffeine Zone 2 users can enter their caffeine consumption by choosing from three different sizes of coffee or tea (eight ounces, 12 ounces, or 16 ounces) or 100 mg of caffeine gum. The app also asks users how fast they drank their beverage –instant (one minute), fast (five minutes), medium (20 minutes), or slow (60 minutes). After they make their selections, the app generates a line chart of predicted caffeine level for the next 24 hours. It also shows a cognitive active zone, an area of caffeine level where most people will feel active, and a sleep zone, an area of caffeine level where most people will be able to sleep. The values are adjustable, and the zones can be changed to represent individual differences.

Caffeine Zone 2 can be a “decision aide” to help individuals learn “how to use coffee correctly,” Yeh said. For example, he added, on a long car trip, the app can help a driver understand how much coffee to drink -- and how fast to drink it-- to stay alert through the trip.

Within a week or two of using Caffeine Zone 2, Ritter said, many people may be able to manage their caffeine consumption independently. However, he added, individuals such as truck drivers and night shift workers can “use it as a daily function to compute what to do.”

In the future, Ritter and Yeh said, they would like to implement a couple of new features in Caffeine Zone 2. They would also like to offer a wider variety of caffeinated beverages, such as energy drinks, in more sizes.

[1] Julien, R.M. (2001). “Caffeine and nicotine.” In “A primer of drug action” (pp.220-228). New York: Worth Publishers.