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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Researchers from the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology recently studied a new form of crisis information exchange that has emerged between geographically dispersed areas to facilitate local crisis responses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Given the security around many military and government organizations, students and graduates of the College of Information Sciences and Technology's security and risk analysis program often can't share much about the work they do. But for senior Alexia Calnon, informing the public about the work of her organization is literally her job.
A compilation of recent news, highlights and achievements from the College of Information Sciences and Technology community.
Many alumni can say that the Penn State legacy runs in their family, but few can say that they graduated from the same college as their sibling. Sisters Diana Lopez Long and Maria Umana Cody graduated from the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology with future careers in mind.
Imagine you are asked to rank the counties in Pennsylvania in terms of number of COVID-19 infections. Or you may be asked to rank cities in Pennsylvania based on their populations. An algorithm developed by a team of researchers led by Hadi Hosseini, assistant professor at the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, can reach the true answer to this and similar questions by combining a respondent’s own vote or opinion with their prediction about how others will answer.
Andrea Tapia, professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), has been named IST’s associate dean for research, effective Sept. 1.
Authors experiencing writer’s block could soon have a new way to help develop the next section of their story. Researchers at the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology recently introduced a new technology that forecasts the future development of an ongoing written story.
The College of Information Sciences and Technology, in collaboration with IST student government, announced the launch of the IST Honor Code. Signing serves as a symbolic commitment that individuals will uphold the expectations of the IST community and affirms their commitment to the Penn State Values and the University’s emphasis on academic integrity.
Thanks to established capabilities with IT from personal experiences, previous internships, and things learned in the classroom at the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, rising senior Bailey Rumford landed a summer internship providing end-user IT support at the Agricultural Research Service, the chief scientific in-house research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The Penn State Berks Data Lions team recently took first place in the Anthem AI ‘Substance Use Disorder and Whole Health of the Person’ Hackathon, a competition to identify risk factors related to substance use, and conditions indicative of underlying substance abuse.
Digital badges used as emblems to indicate an accomplishment or skill is a concept familiar to online learners seeking advanced knowledge in their profession. For many learners, digital badges have been used as a motivation to continue along a prescribed path — often through workshop attendance or completion of required online learning modules. But what about independent or self-guided learners who may wish to study certain topics or complete learning at their own pace?
Eight new faculty members will join the College of Information Sciences and Technology this fall, strengthening the college’s research portfolio and enhancing IST’s growing number of academic programs — including a residential master’s degree in cybersecurity analytics and operations and bachelor’s degree in enterprise technology and integration, both launched in fall 2020.
Researchers received a $900,000 grant to create artificial intelligence that can plan for and solve future problems. They will test the new software on the video game Minecraft.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many significant changes to people's lives, but one of the most visible signals of this has been the proliferation of masks and other face-coverings in public spaces. In a recent study, researchers from the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology developed a new method for assessing public compliance with local mask mandates by analyzing publicly available video feeds.
After starting a company whose proceeds benefited Venezuelans living in poverty and working in a number of startups in various industries, College of Information Sciences and Technology student Izaak Lustgarten landed a summer position with Bank of America as a global quantitative analytics intern. In his role, he analyzes data to help the bank make informed decisions for its digital banking.
Like many interns over the past 16 months, Penn State senior Katie Byrd expected her internship with Universal Health Services Inc. to be entirely virtual. But after her first week, she gave up her quiet, virtual workspace in exchange for a fast-paced hospital environment when public health guidelines allowed for a switch to an in-person experience.
The College of Information Sciences and Technology will honor Alayna Spriggle as student marshal for its summer 2021 commencement, which will be held at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 14, at the Bryce Jordan Center.
As online fake news detectors and spam filters become more sophisticated, so do attackers’ methods to trick them — including attacks through the “universal trigger.” In this learning-based method, an attacker uses a phrase or set of words to fool an indefinite number of inputs, which could lead to more fake news appearing in your social media feed or spam reaching your email inbox.
Shubham Mishra, a rising sophomore studying data sciences in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, believed that if he was hardworking and willing to find an internship, he could be hired even though he had only just completed his first year at Penn State. As a summer data analyst intern in the information technology department at Intelligent Direct, Inc., he’s getting a fast start on building experience for his future career.
A compilation of recent news, highlights and achievements from the College of Information Sciences and Technology community.
The Graduate School announces the Penn State alumni who have been elected to serve a three-year term on the Graduate School Alumni Society Board of Directors beginning July 1.
Penn State students Bill Chen and Howard Hong are working with a team of fellow students to make sure that during a crisis no one else feels alone by developing an active listening application called PsySpace while competing in the Nittany AI Challenge.
At the College of Information Sciences and Technology, doctoral student Jeongwon Jo has benefited from having access to an interdisciplinary network of experts and scholars to help advance her research. And because of those collaborations and mentors, in part, Jo and her co-authors earned the Best Paper Award at the Communications and Technologies 2021 conference for the first paper she’s published since she began her doctoral program at Penn State.
How does modern digital technology shape our world and our perceptions? That is a question investigated by students in an emerging issues and technologies course this spring in the College of Information Sciences and Technology. Structured around a text by Martin Heidegger titled The Question Concerning Technology, students were given opportunities throughout the semester to post thought-provoking discussion questions and present their viewpoints.
The Penn State Center for Security Research and Education is announcing its Fall 2021 Grant Program to support security-related scholarship and educational programs at Penn State. University faculty and researchers are eligible to apply by Sept. 30.
Jacob Meissner never imagined he’d work in technology after obtaining his bachelor’s degree in English from Penn State. But a side job working for computer support at the University quickly opened his eyes to the countless opportunities available within the field — and led him to his current role as director of security engineering for Disney Streaming.
Erica Mi, a rising junior at Penn State, is working for IBM this summer as part of a project management internship — the latest endeavor she’s exploring during an ambitious college career.
When it comes to what users share on Twitter, women and users who never attended college voluntarily disclose more personal information than users from other socioeconomic and demographic backgrounds — potentially making these populations more susceptible to online privacy threats, according to a recent study led by the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology.
When Nia Anderson started thinking of career paths as she nears graduation, she saw herself as a business analyst. Through the support and knowledge of her virtual summer IT Innovation internship with PepsiCo, and a growing interest in artificial intelligence, she now wants to take a path within data science.
As a member of the College of Information Sciences and Technology’s first graduating class and a long-time alumni volunteer, Steve Pipino has established the Pipino Family Annually Funded Scholarship in the college to benefit first-generation students and students with demonstrated need.
Penn State senior Jason Nucciarone is using the skills he gained through the human centered design and development program at the College of Information Sciences and Technology to make technology more efficient for users.
The Presidential Leadership Academy at Penn State recently announced its Class of 2021.
Assistant Professor Daniel Susser has been awarded the Haile Family Early Career Professorship in Information Sciences and Technology. The endowed position supports standout faculty members to foster a commitment to teaching, provide funds for emerging research, and offer recognition for their accomplishments.
Shaowen Bardzell, professor of information sciences and technology, has been elected as executive vice-president for the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI), the premier international society for all professionals, academics and students interested in human-computer interaction.
A $1.2 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant will help researchers build a search engine and create other resources for scientists who need to scour billions of online documents to improve online privacy.
A research group from the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology is well-represented at the virtual 10th International Conference on Communities and Technology, which began June 21. Five papers from the Center for Human-Computer Interaction were accepted to the conference, representing 20% of the papers program.
A Penn State team of researchers found that clickbait often did not perform any better and, in some cases, performed worse than traditional headlines. They also found that artificial intelligence systems designed to spot clickbait struggled with the task.
Penn State researchers, with funding from the Mental Research Institute, are developing a smartphone app to promote positive, engaged family relationships that support healthy development for adolescents.
Researchers from the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology made a methodological contribution toward a potential answer to the challenging problem of how to operationalize posthuman concepts into practice for human-computer interaction through the art of noticing — specifically, observing birds to reimagine their relationship to the natural world as designers of technologies.
Chris Gamrat, instructional designer at the College of Information Sciences and Technology, is co-author on a chapter in the new book Microlearning in the Digital Age: The Design and Delivery of Learning in Snippet by Routledge.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, essential workers tweeted less often than general users about COVID-19 but more about overall mental health issues, according to researchers at the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology. Additionally, essential workers’ overall tweets were more positive compared to general users, the researchers found.
Jiawei Han, Michael Aiken Chair Professor in the Department of Computer Science at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will present a talk as part of the Penn State Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence Distinguished Lecture Series at 11:30 a.m. on June 14 via Zoom. In the talk, Han will discuss his work to explore the power of taxonomy and embedding in text mining.
As a child growing up in Nepal, Bikalpa Neupane never thought he would come to the U.S. for a college education, much less a graduate degree. Now, as a doctoral candidate in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, Neupane has developed an AI-driven platform that matches international students with mentors to help them through the college application process.
With a new grant from the National Institutes of Health, an interdisciplinary team of researchers aims to examine police radio communications to observe what happens during adverse encounters between police officers and male minority youth and study any patterns of interaction that may lead to unfortunate or tragic outcomes.
Penn State University Libraries presented its fourth annual Undergraduate Research Award: Excellence in Information Literacy honors to 100 students at nearly all undergraduate Penn State campuses. Awards recognized 96 current undergraduate students and recent graduates, four graduate students, plus two additional College of Medicine students and two collaborating faculty members participating in campus-wide virtual research exhibition events.
A new seminar series that aims to initiate a dialog between healthcare practitioners, clinical researchers, and artificial intelligence and data science experts on strategies for realizing the promise and potential of AI in healthcare starts June 8.
Penn State faculty members James Wang, professor of information sciences and technology, and Rui Zhang, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, each received a 2020 Amazon Research Award, which was announced publicly in April of this year.
Penn State alumna Jayme Anne Goldberg is the founder of Consequential Flowers, a social media network designed to help female students and young professionals develop impactful leadership skills.
Philip S. Yu, distinguished professor and the Wexler Chair in Information Technology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, will kick off the Penn State Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence Distinguished Lecture Series at 11 a.m. Thursday, May 27 on Zoom. Yu’s talk will focus on network heterogeneity on graph neural networks.
Penn State University Libraries and the Schreyer Honors College recognized the 10th annual finalist presentations and winner of the recently endowed Robert F. Guentter Jr. Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award on May 6, immediately following the three finalists’ remote presentations. Finalists represented the College of Agricultural Sciences, the College of Information Sciences and Technology, and the College of the Liberal Arts.