Kenneth Huang to present at Johns Hopkins
Ting-Hao ‘Kenneth’ Huang, associate professor in the College of IST, will present, “What Roles Will Humans Play in the Future of Data Annotation,” to the Department of Computer Science (CS) and the Center for Language and Speech Processing (CLSP) at Johns Hopkins University.
Media Mention: Wang, Pan, Mehta—NIBIB
Where: National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, 'Picture this: Using AI to analyze photographs of the placenta'
Kelley Cotter to present at DE&I In Tech Summit
Kelley Cotter, assistant professor in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, will present a session at the Technology Council of Central Pennsylvania’s 2025 DE&I In Tech Summit.
Media Mention: Xinning Gui, Yubo Kou, Sam Moradzadeh
Where: Ecoonomia, ‘The Evolution of WallStreetBets: A Look into the High-Risk Trading Phenomenon’
Media Mention: IST Research
Where: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, ‘What can the placenta tell us? Pittsburgh researchers join effort to find out’
IST professor publishes second book on innovative teaching practices
Jack Carroll, distinguished professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, has published a new book on innovative teaching practices. Twenty faculty members from the College of IST, and seven alumni or current students contributed to the book.
IST doctoral student featured on NPR news affiliate podcast
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Jason Lucas, a graduate student pursuing a doctoral degree in informatics in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, was a guest speaker on a podcast hosted by NPR affiliate WXXI in Rochester, New York.
James Z. Wang featured in opinion piece on 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — John H. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton earned the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for their “foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”
(Mis)Informed Voters
Robocalls that sound just like the president but aren’t. Videos of political figures doing or saying things they’ve never done. Social media posts created by ChatGPT, not humans.
Media Mention: Shomir Wilson
Where: The Charlotte Observer, 'Over the top' ad features a fake Mark Robinson. What to know about AI in political ads.
Non-Western cultures misrepresented, harmed by generative AI, researchers say
Penn State and University of Washington researchers found that AI models may cause cultural harms that go beyond surface-level biases
Media Mention: Dana Calacci
Where: The Washington Post, “Why killer AI is such an alluring horror villain”
Tanusree Sharma recognized by SOUPS 2024
Tanusree Sharma, assistant professor in the College of IST, recently received the 2024 John Karat Usable Privacy and Security Student Research Award for her research contributions while a stude
IST, Meteorology join forces to understand destructive thunderstorms in the US
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — An interdisciplinary team of Penn State researchers received a three-year, $499,796 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office (DOE) of Science to study processes in destructive thunderstorms over the continental United States.
Media Mention: Lizhen Zhu
Where: Psychology Today, ’AI Performance Enhanced With Human Developmental Psychology’
IST Undergrad Research Published in Interacting With Computers
Aidan Engleka earned a bachelor’s degree in human-centered design and development (HCDD) from the College of IST in 2023. More than a year later, the research he contributed to as an undergraduate student has been published.
Peng Liu reappointed to cybersecurity professorship
Peng Liu has been reappointed as Raymond G. Tronzo, MD Professor of Cybersecurity in the College of Information Sciences and Technology. The professorship — named for late Penn State alumnus Raymond G.
Justin Silverman recipient of Tronzo Medical Informatics Endowment
Justin Silverman, assistant professor, is the recipient of the prestigious Raymond and Diana Tronzo Medical Informatics Endowment in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, effective July 1, 2024, through June 30, 2027.
Three IST doctoral students accepted to linguistic diversity fellowship
Human technology, such as smart voice assistants or computer-based intelligent tutoring systems, is largely based on standard American English and the misconception that there is a single, idealized variety of American English. This conflicts with the linguistic diversity of language users.
Claim replicability may help prevent harms caused by ML
The ability of a model to duplicate its performance is how machine learning (ML) scientists traditionally justify the validity of their research claims.
Media Mention: James Wang, Lizhen Zhu
Where: Psychology Today, “AI Performance Enhances With Human Developmental Psychology”
Peng Liu reappointed as the Raymond G. Tronzo, MD Professor in Cybersecurity
Peng Liu has been reappointed as the Raymond G. Tronzo, MD Professor in Cybersecurity. The professorship is named for late Penn State alumnus Raymond G. Tronzo and is funded through a $1 million gift from his wife, Diana.
Nick Giacobe leading global education effort with Kazakhstan
In collaboration with Penn State Global, Nick Giacobe, associate teaching professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), will travel to Kazakhstan to meet with cybersecurity students, faculty, researchers and leadership.
Lee Giles, Jack Carroll among Research.com best computer scientists
Lee Giles, David Reese Professor of Information Sciences and Technology, and Jack Carroll, distinguished professor, were included in the Research.com 2023 Ranking of Best Scientis
Dongwon Lee featured in National Academies workshop
Professor Dongwon Lee, acting interim associate dean for research and director of doctoral programs in the College of IST, participated in a virtual National Academies workshop on April 11.
Doctoral student story discusses digital privacy and data ethics
A story by Sanjana Gautam, a doctoral student of informatics in the College of IST, appeared in Medium on April 27.
Media Mention: Vasant Honavar
Where: Penn State News, Infrastructure, consultation for multi-site studies using electronic health data
Media Mention: Priya Kumar, The Washington Post
Where: The Washington Post, “As the internet gets scarier, more parents keep their kids’ photos offline”
Who: Priya Kumar, assistant professor in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST)
Media Mention: Greg Kruczek, Voice of America
Where: Voice of America (VoA), “Iraq’s Christians cancel Easter celebrations to support Cardinal Sako”
Edge Discovery magazine profiles Vasant Honavar
Vasant Honavar, professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, Huck Chair in Biomedical Data Sciences and Artificial Intelligence, and founding director of the Center for Art
Informatics student to attend MIDAS future leaders summit
Siyu Wu, a graduate student pursuing a doctorate in information in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, was selected to attend the Future Leaders Summit hosted by the Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS). The event offers outstanding graduate students, postdocs and early-career faculty from around the U.S.
Media Mention: Nora O’Toole
Where: The Daily Collegian, “TEDxPSU conference encourages students to ‘bring about the change’ they want to see”
One Health Microbiome Symposium to convene experts for innovative discussions
Penn State’s One Health Microbiome Center will host the One Health Microbiome Symposium on May 30-31, 2024, at the Huck Life Sciences Building on the University Park campus.
Competition helps expose demographic and cultural biases in generative AI tools
Penn State’s Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence announced the winners of its first-ever “Bias-a-thon.” The competition, held Nov. 13–16, asked Penn Staters to identify prompts that led popular generative AI tools to produce biased or stereotype-reinforcing outputs.
Penn State Scranton professor wins conference award for research excellence
Penn State Scranton Professor of Information Sciences and Technology Alan Peslak has been recognized with a Meritorious Paper Award for his outstanding contributions at the Information Systems and Computing Academic Professionals (ISCAP) Conference.
IST Professor Alan Peslak receives Meritorious Award for research excellence
Penn State Scranton Professor of Information Sciences and Technology Alan Peslak has been recognized with a Meritorious Paper Award for his outstanding contributions at the Information Systems and Computing Academic Professionals (ISCAP) Conference.
True: Fact checkers tend to agree on validity of news claims, researchers say
Fact-checking organizations like Snopes and Politifact have generally agreed on the validity of news claims, according to researchers from the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology.
Trained AI models exhibit learned disability bias, IST researchers say
Artificial intelligence tools, such as sentiment analysis and toxicity detection models, often exhibit biases toward people with disabilities, according to a new paper from researchers in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology. The work won the Best Short Paper Award from the Association for Computation Linguistics.