Alumni Profiles
Alumni of the College of IST's graduate programs hold top-notch positions at companies, research institutes, and universities around the world. You can read a few of their stories and learn more about their research interests in the profiles below.
Paula Bach
Paula Bach is a postdoctoral research associate at The University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS). Bach is an NSF-funded Computing Innovation Fellow. This highly-competitive program seeks to identify the most promising new PhDs in computing and informatics and retain them in research and teaching in order to support intellectual renewal and diversity in the computing fields at U.S. organizations. She is one of the 11 percent of successful applicants to the program.
Bach completed her thesis, "Supporting the User Experience in Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) Development" working in the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning Lab and Penn State Center for HCI under the direction of Jack Carroll, Edward M. Frymoyer professor of information Sciences and Technology.
She will be working at GSLIS with Professor Michael Twidale to continue and extend her research on ways in which sociotechnical solutions can foster participation from HCI professionals and HCI-interested users as well as investigating other ways to make FLOSS more usable.
Bach completed her thesis, "Supporting the User Experience in Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) Development" working in the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning Lab and Penn State Center for HCI under the direction of Jack Carroll, Edward M. Frymoyer professor of information Sciences and Technology.
She will be working at GSLIS with Professor Michael Twidale to continue and extend her research on ways in which sociotechnical solutions can foster participation from HCI professionals and HCI-interested users as well as investigating other ways to make FLOSS more usable.
Cong Chen
Cong Chen joined IBM as a senior consultant in 2006. She currently works in the information management team, specializing in product/customer information management. In this role, Cong helps companies assemble an enterprise-wide view of their critical business data through service oriented architecture-enabled master data management solutions.
Chen's dissertation research focuses on design, implementation, and assessment of an intelligent training framework for enhancing team performance in a distributed simulation. Her expertise includes intelligent agents, teamwork, intelligent training systems, and information system design and evaluation.
Chen received her Ph.D. in IST from Penn State and her B.S in Computer Science from Peking University in China.
Chen's doctoral thesis chair was John Yen.
Yiling Chen
Yiling Chen is an assistant professor in computer science at Harvard University. Prior to working at Harvard, Chen worked at Yahoo! Research from 2006-2008. Her research interests are on the border of economics and computer science, including prediction markets, auction theory, and sponsored search.
Chen's current research focuses on better understanding information dynamics in markets and designing innovative mechanisms for efficient information aggregation, dissemination, and use.
Her dissertation research on prediction markets received the Elwood S. Buffa Doctoral Dissertation Honorable Mention in Decision Science (2006) and the eBusiness Research Center (eBRC) Doctoral Award (2004). Chen received her Ph.D. in IST from Penn State.
Chen’s doctoral thesis co-chairs were Tracy Mullen and Chao-Hsien Chu.
Erik Connors
Erik Connors is a research associate for SA Technologies, working alongside Dr. Mica Endsley. Connors is leading an Army Research Lab project on developing a situation awareness model based on a fuzzy cognitive map. He also is involved in the design of interfaces for controlling the Navy's heterogeneous unmanned vehicle and the evaluation of an interface for the military’s Future Combat System.
Connors' thesis focused on intelligent group interfaces for emergency crisis management teams and his expertise includes distributed team cognition, cognitive task analysis, and interface design and evaluation.
He is a member of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and serves as the Webmaster for the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making (CEDM) technical group.
While at Penn State, he presented to the IST 590 colloquium class.
Connors received his B.S and M.S. in Chemical Engineering and Ph.D. in IST from Penn State. His doctoral thesis chair was Michael McNeese.
C. Frank Igwe
C. Frank Igwe is a Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, at Harvard University. His expertise includes computer-mediated communications, the digital divide, virtual third places, and electronic online reverse auction exchanges.
Frank’s dissertation focused on examining how African Americans utilize weblogs to create virtual “third places” as a means to rebuild aspects of community that are lacking in their “real-world” communities.
Frank has finished his degree requirements and received his Ph.D. in IST in May 2008. He also holds an M.S. in business administration from Penn State. He also received his M.G.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and his M.B.A. and B.S. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Oklahoma.
Frank’s doctoral thesis chair was Lynette Kvasny.
Jonah Gregory
Jonah Gregory joined Cisco Systems through a graduate internship program in 2008, and is resuming work for Cisco full-time summer 2009 as a QA Engineer. He specializes in creating automation for quality assurance in software development, primarily for Cisco's Network Access Control (NAC) solution. He also works as a technical writer, professional musician, and guitar teacher.
Jonah received his Master's Degree from Penn State in 2009. His research involved quantitatively analyzing methods that are used to embed information within mp3 audio files. His research advisor was Chao-Hsien Chu. He received his Bachelor's degree in network communications Pennsylvania College of Technology and also studied at Penn College's Cisco Academy.
Jonah received his Master's Degree from Penn State in 2009. His research involved quantitatively analyzing methods that are used to embed information within mp3 audio files. His research advisor was Chao-Hsien Chu. He received his Bachelor's degree in network communications Pennsylvania College of Technology and also studied at Penn College's Cisco Academy.
Joshua Gross
Joshua Gross is a postdoctoral fellow at Simson Garfunkel, working on using computer forensics and machine learning to characterize information about a disk drive and its owner. His research interests include using machine learning to derive social clusters from a user's e-mail repository.
Gross earned his Ph.D. in information sciences and technology from Penn State. He also holds an M.S. in software engineering from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota and a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He spent eight years as a sofware developer before beginning his Ph.D. work.
Gross earned his Ph.D. in information sciences and technology from Penn State. He also holds an M.S. in software engineering from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota and a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He spent eight years as a sofware developer before beginning his Ph.D. work.
Joey Lee
Joey Lee is an assistant professor of technology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Prior to working at Columbia, he worked as a software engineer at IBM in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. His research interests are in Serious Games, identity, and video games as designed experiences for learning.
His dissertation research focused on the design and evaluation of Identity Supportive Games, a new class of Serious Game that addressed issues of identity, possible selves, and learning, especially in terms of ethnic minority stereotypes.
Lee received his Ph.D. in information sciences and technology from Penn State. He also holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from Penn State University.
Lee's doctoral thesis co-chairs were Chris Hoadley and Brian Smith.
His dissertation research focused on the design and evaluation of Identity Supportive Games, a new class of Serious Game that addressed issues of identity, possible selves, and learning, especially in terms of ethnic minority stereotypes.
Lee received his Ph.D. in information sciences and technology from Penn State. He also holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from Penn State University.
Lee's doctoral thesis co-chairs were Chris Hoadley and Brian Smith.
Mark Pfaff
Mark Pfaff is an assistant professor in the Indiana University School of Informatics (Indianapolis). His research explores the intersections of people, information, and technology in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) environments through the use of experimental simulations and mixed-methodological approaches. He is particularly interested in CSCW in the context of distributed decision-making, communication technology, and collaborative systems design.
His research has been presented at the Human Factors and Engineering Society, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, and the Association for Psychological Science.
Pfaff received his B. A. From Penn State, M.S. from Duquesne University, and Ph.D. in IST from Penn State. His doctoral thesis chair was Michael McNeese.
His research has been presented at the Human Factors and Engineering Society, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, and the Association for Psychological Science.
Pfaff received his B. A. From Penn State, M.S. from Duquesne University, and Ph.D. in IST from Penn State. His doctoral thesis chair was Michael McNeese.
Benjamin Yeo
Benjamin Yeo is a research analyst in the Regional Studies group at the Milken Institute. His expertise involves information technology planning and knowledge management for e-business and economic development, information systems/process management, and national information policy studies.
Yeo’s recent projects include: the Keystone Workforce Cluster project in Pennsylvania, where he assisted in an analysis of the statewide IT work force; a study of Pittsburgh's technology strategy; and research on Orlando’s Nemours Children's Hospital.
Yeo received his Ph.D. in IST from Penn State. He holds bachelor and master's degrees from the School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Yeo's doctoral thesis chair was Eileen Trauth.
Ziming Zhuang
Ziming Zhuang is a research scientist at Yahoo! Labs in Silicon Valley. He is working with many world-class experts on a wide range of data mining and machine learning applications, advancing the state of the art in Web search and online advertising.
Zhuang's dissertation focused on mining and leveraging both explicit and implicit user feedback to improve relevance ranking and recommendation systems. Zhuang received his B.S. in computer science and engineering from Fudan University in China, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Penn State. Zhuang interned at Microsoft Research in 2005 and 2007, and Yahoo! Labs in 2007. He was also one of the contributors to the CiteSeer and the Next Generation CiteSeer project at Penn State.
Zhuang's doctoral thesis co-chairs were C. Lee Giles and Prasenjit Mitra.
Zhuang's dissertation focused on mining and leveraging both explicit and implicit user feedback to improve relevance ranking and recommendation systems. Zhuang received his B.S. in computer science and engineering from Fudan University in China, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Penn State. Zhuang interned at Microsoft Research in 2005 and 2007, and Yahoo! Labs in 2007. He was also one of the contributors to the CiteSeer and the Next Generation CiteSeer project at Penn State.
Zhuang's doctoral thesis co-chairs were C. Lee Giles and Prasenjit Mitra.
