The strength of the College of IST is demonstrated through the successes and accomplishments of its students, faculty, alumni, and programs. Read more about how the college and its people are driving innovative change and taking on the challenges of the Information Age.
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The Penn State College of IST has name cybersecurity major Jenna Fox as the student marshal for the fall 2024 commencement ceremony.
Where: Gigazine, ‘A large number of scientists are migrating from X (formerly Twitter) to Bluesky’
Who: Sarah Rajtmajer, assistant professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST)
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Shomir Wilson, associate professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) received the Best Teaching Material Award from the Sixth Workshop on Teaching NLP. The workshop was co-located with the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) on Aug.
Police radio transmissions contain personally identifiable information that could pose privacy risks for members of the public, especially Black males, according to a new study by researchers at Penn State and the University of Chicago. They also found that a large language model, a widely used artificial intelligence tool, could detect personally identifiable information with high accuracy, highlighting the risk of privacy vulnerability.
The College of Information Sciences and Technology and the Nittany AI Alliance are joining forces to amplify AI innovation at Penn State. The transition will be effective Jan. 1, 2025.
The J. Jeffrey and Ann Marie Fox Graduate School at Penn State and Penn State Global have announced the awardees for the Fall 2024 Graduate Student International Travel Grants. Of 39 applications, seven were selected for $1,500 grants to assist them in presenting their research at international conferences outside the United States.
This GivingTuesday, the Penn State College of IST is calling on alumni and friends to make a gift to the IST Alumni Society Endowment to support the college's student organizations.
The Matthew Gartland Igwé Family Matching Scholarship in the College of Information Sciences and Technology will address the financial, academic and personal challenges faced by students who are struggling to meet their college expenses.
Fred Aebli, lecturer of information sciences and technology at Penn State Scranton and creator of GetMeCoding, which teaches computer coding, was the guest speaker for the Family Business Alliance’s (FBA) recent informational program on artificial intelligence (AI) and what it means for employees and businesses. The presentation, “Great Uses of AI in Your Business”, was part of the FBA’s slate of fall offerings.
The Charles E. Kaufman Foundation has selected three Penn State researchers to receive scientific research grants: Grayson Sipe, assistant professor of biology; David Radice, associate professor of physics and of astronomy and astrophysics; and Romit Maulik, assistant professor of information sciences and technology.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The second-largest donors in Penn State history visited Westgate Building on Nov. 8 to tour the newly dedicated Roz and Gene Chaiken Center for Student Success in the College of Information Sciences and Technology in E103 Westgate Building.
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.
Eleven students from the College of IST attended the BLK Men in Tech THRIVE Conference on Oct. 10-13 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. THRIVE is a tech conference designed to foster connections, facilitate learning and promote personal development for all in the tech community, with a special focus on the Black male experience.
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.”
The Penn State College of IST Distinguished Lecture Series will host Wenke Lee from Georgia Tech at noon on Nov. 18 in E202 Westgate Building at University Park.
Penn State’s Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence (CSRAI) will host “Diagnose-a-thon,” a competition that aims to uncover the power and potential dangers of using generative AI for medical inquiries. The virtual event will take place Nov. 11-17 with top prizes of $1,000.
The Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences announced two new co-hires: Dana Calacci, assistant professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, and Enrico Casella, assistant professor of data science for animal systems in the College of Agricultural Sciences.
A Penn State faculty project team has received a two-year Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant totaling $104,771 to create and host a National Forum for Privacy Literacy Standards and Competencies. The forum will be held March 10-11, 2025, at the Penn Stater Hotel and Conference Center and online.
James Z. Wang, distinguished professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, will present the college’s annual McMurtry Lecture at noon on Thursday, Nov. 7, in E202 Westgate Building at Penn State University Park.
Faculty and staff in Penn State’s Law, Policy, and Engineering (LPE) initiative were recently tapped by the governor’s office to lead a two-day training program in September in Harrisburg on science and technology policy. The faculty and staff are part of Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Science and Technology Policy Program, which is run by LPE and aims to improve public and environmental health, economic and social equity, and public scientific discourse in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Heather M. Costa, director of technology resilience at the Mayo Clinic, will address the Penn State Chapter of the Order of the Sword & Shield National Honor Society on Nov. 4. The College of Information Sciences and Technology established the chapter in 2023 and will induct its second cohort at this year’s ceremony.
The Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, founded in 1999, celebrated its 25th anniversary with two days of events at University Park.
Three graduates were honored at the College of Information Sciences and Technology's second annual Alumni Symposium. The award ceremony was part of two event-filled days celebrating IST’s 25th anniversary.
Twenty-four students from the College of Information Sciences and Technology attended the annual Grace Hopper conference, which celebrates women and nonbinary technologists from around the world.
Romit Maulik, an assistant professor in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, was granted a three-year, $360,000 Early Career Program Award from the Army Research Office.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State Competitive Cyber Security Organization (CCSO) took second place at the Great Lakes Regional Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition (CPTC), held Oct. 19-20 at Baldwin Wallace University in Cleveland.
The availability of an artificial intelligence system's training data can promote transparency and accountability of that system, according to Penn State researchers.
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. Artificial intelligence is playing a big role in how political—and misinformation — campaigns are run, and its influence could impact the outcomes of 2024 elections around the world.
Where: The Charlotte Observer, 'Over the top' ad features a fake Mark Robinson. What to know about AI in political ads.
Who: Shomir Wilson, associate professor in the College of IST
The J. Jeffrey and Ann Marie Fox Graduate School at Penn State named 110 graduate students as recipients of the 2024-25 University Graduate Fellowships and Distinguished Graduate Fellowships. The students were honored on Oct. 3 at a reception held at the Bryce Jordan Center.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Andrea Tapia, dean of the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) was among the rappelers at Penn State’s Over The Edge at Beaver Stadium event on October 8.
A team of Penn State researchers has been selected to lead a three-year, $8,552,388 multi-institution project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to identify cognitive threats in mixed-reality systems as part of the Intrinsic Cognitive Security program.
Liam Geyer, a fifth-year Integrated Undergraduate/Graduate student majoring in cybersecurity analytics and operations, leveraged his involvement in the Competitive Cybersecurity Organization at Penn State to land internships and full-time employment.
Penn State and University of Washington researchers found that AI models may cause cultural harms that go beyond surface-level biases
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Generative artificial intelligence (AI) models often contain cultural misrepresentations as a result of the way they were trained. Researchers from Penn State and the University of Washington set out to understand how these biases translate into tangible harms for minority communities.
As part of our regular “We Are!” feature, we recognize 14 Penn Staters who have gone above and beyond what’s asked of them in their work at the University.
Baking in the test kitchens at The Hershey Company. Studying the effects of space weather on satellite communication with NASA. Working on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., as a congressional intern. Planning events at the Arboretum. These activities are just a few of the many experiential learning and professional development opportunities that Penn State students gained through internships this summer.
Sixteen recent graduates were selected by the Penn State Alumni Association as Young Alumni Ambassadors for the 2024-25 academic year. August 2024, December 2024 and May 2025 graduates are encouraged to apply for the 2025-26 class of ambassadors when applications become available.
Penn State and MIT researchers found that analyzing surveillance videos with large language models may lead to inconsistent decisions to call the police.
Where: Tech Brew, ‘AI election roundup: Deepfakes and AI memes are taking off’
Who: Shomir Wilson, associate professor in the College of IST L
Penn State’s Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence invites short proposals for its annual seed funding program. Applications will be accepted through Nov. 1, with projects expected to start in spring 2024 and last up to two years.
Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT), part of Penn State University Libraries, has announced the Teaching and Learning Technologies Faculty Advisory Committee for the 2024-25 academic year. The committee is pivotal in guiding TLT on integrating technology within teaching and learning at Penn State.
Penn State student Maria Rovers is one of thousands who are earning their degrees online through Penn State World Campus.
The Penn State College of IST offers nine integrated graduate-undergraduate degree (IUG) programs. Vinayak Jayaprakash, a fifth-year IUG student pursuing a master's degree in informatics, hopes to encourage more students to follow his path.
Where: The Washington Post, “Why killer AI is such an alluring horror villain”
Who: Dana Calacci, assistant professor
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 student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her doctoral degree in July.
Seventeen graduate students from Penn State have been awarded research fellowships and six undergraduate students from the commonwealth have been awarded scholarships for 2024 from the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium.
Penn State researchers discuss how to spot AI-generated election misinformation and what voters can do to protect themselves.
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. The project was one of 20 selected for 2024 Atmospheric System Research (ASR) funding awards.
Researchers from the College of Information Sciences and Technology, the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications and the Ross and Carol Nese College of Nursing received a $432,198 grant from the National Institute on Aging to work on voice assistants to support dementia care.
