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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In response to financial challenges students face when pursuing a college degree, and motivated in part by the significant social justice issues across the country, Andrew Sears, dean of the College of Information Sciences and Technology, and his wife, Beth, have made a gift to establish the Andrew and Beth Sears Educational Equity Scholarship in the College of IST.
As the daughter of small-business owners, College of IST student Erica Mi knew the challenges these companies were facing firsthand. When she learned about Novaris, an IT consulting organization started by a group of undergraduate students from across the country, and the students’ plans to help small businesses with their technical needs during the pandemic, she wanted to get involved to help those who were struggling.
Researchers in the College of Information Sciences and Technology have designed an algorithm that was trained to defeat a world-class bot — an AI-driven program that plays on behalf of a human — in the award-winning computer game StarCraft II. Their work highlights vulnerabilities in bots that are created using deep reinforcement learning.
Wastewater sampling for coronavirus on campus and in the surrounding community could alert University decision makers to a potential outbreak several days before individuals exhibit symptoms of an infection. The initiative — part of Penn State’s multilayered approach to test, monitor and mitigate for COVID-19 — could enable leaders to take swift actions to minimize the virus’s spread with the goal of helping to protect the health and safety of the community.
As chief data officer for the City and County of San Francisco, Jason Lally carries the daily responsibility to help each of the city’s approximately 50 departments make the best use of its data. And that responsibility becomes especially critical in the middle of a global pandemic.
Since the novel coronavirus began its spread earlier this year, College of Information Sciences and Technology faculty and students have been innovative in addressing a variety of challenges related to COVID-19, including how to equip researchers with the most up-to-date information, how to educate the public about mitigation tactics, and how more online interactions put our privacy at risk.
Millions of people turn to their mobile devices when seeking medical advice. They’re able to share their symptoms and receive potential diagnoses through chatbot-based symptom-checker (CSC) apps. But how do these apps compare to a trip to the doctor’s office?
The Penn State community is invited to virtually attend the Nittany AI Challenge Celebration, where nine student teams will present their minimum viable product for a chance to share in the remaining pool of $25,000 in funding. Saqib Shaikh, software engineering manager and project lead for the Seeing AI project at Microsoft, will be the keynote speaker. The event will take place from 6-7:30 p.m. Sept. 25 via Zoom.
With a new grant, Yubo Kou, assistant professor of information sciences and technology, will examine how users of online community platforms experience punishments in various forms, such as chat restriction and account suspension, and what can be done to help those punished users, through his aim to better understand human-punishment interaction (HPI).
Isabella Webster, a 2020 graduate of the College of Information Sciences and Technology, was heavily engaged on campus during her time at Penn State — with leadership roles in Homecoming, Movin’ On, and the University Park Undergraduate Association. And now, as an alumna, Webster’s strong involvement will continue, as she was recently named a Penn State Alumni Association 2020-21 Young Alumni Ambassador.
The NASA Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium (PSGC) is accepting applications for its 2020-21 competitive mini-grant program. The program supports and enhances science and engineering education, research and outreach. PSGC will consider proposals from institutions across Pennsylvania for new or enhanced projects.
Invent Penn State’s 2020 Summer Founders program, a 13-week student startup accelerator, wrapped up Aug. 12 in a virtual showcase after funding seven student-startup teams with $15,000 each to work on their startup, nonprofit, or social good full time over the summer. The program also matched teams with resources and entrepreneurial experts who provided mentorship.
Shaowen Bardzell, professor of information sciences and technology, has joined the College of Information Sciences and Technology faculty this fall. Bardzell is an internationally recognized scholar in feminism and human-computer interaction (HCI), critical and humanistic computing, and design research, strengthening the college’s expertise and research focus in the area of HCI.
The last few months of pandemic-stricken quarantine have been anything but monotonous for 2013 Penn State alumna Lindsay Langley, as she has been staying busy with two new roles: working virtually in a new position at a new company and becoming a first-time mother.
Elizabeth Mansfield, professor and head of the Department of Art History, and James Wang, professor of information sciences and technology, have received a Digital Humanities Advancement Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a project that will use computer-aided image analysis to examine the depiction of clouds in the paintings of John Constable, a 19th-century European artist noted for his pictorial realism.
The College of Information Sciences and Technology was well-represented at the 2020 ACM Knowledge Discovery in Databases Conference, held virtually Aug. 23-27.
The Penn State Center for Security Research and Education is announcing its Fall 2020 Grant Program to support security-related scholarship and educational programs at Penn State. University faculty and researchers are eligible to apply by Nov. 2.
For three years, Class of 2020 graduate Zach Sowa lived a double life: He was a College of Information Sciences and Technology student and the face of Penn State — the Nittany Lion mascot. How did he balance his time and manage to keep one of the University's best-kept secrets?
Many students follow in their siblings’ footsteps when attending Penn State, but few share their graduate experience simultaneously. This fall, siblings Adaku Uchendu and Uchendu Uchendu will both be pursuing their doctoral degrees at the College of Information Sciences and Technology when Uchendu begins his studies at University Park.
Ten new faculty members will join the College of Information Sciences and Technology for the 2020-21 academic year. The new faculty will support the rapidly growing college and the addition of three new degree programs: a bachelor’s in enterprise technology integration, a master’s in cybersecurity analytics and operations, and an online bachelor’s in cybersecurity analytics and operations through Penn State World Campus.
Two Penn State students have co-founded Xora, a platform aimed at allowing more people to create augmented reality experiences by making them easier to develop, and one of seven startups selected to participate in this year's Summer Founders Program.
Penn State researchers have observed that social media users who may be looking for ways to stay connected during isolation appear to be sharing more personal information online. This is a concern because we know that personal information shared voluntarily through social media is vulnerable to collection and misuse, says Sarah Rajtmajer, assistant professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State.
A new Army Research Office grant will support efforts to combat cyberattacks by dynamically changing attack surfaces and system configurations, making it more difficult for attackers and providing insights about their methods.
Seven students in the College of Information Sciences and Technology have been chosen for the prestigious Department of Defense Cyber Scholarship Program in the 2020 cycle. The program is designed to encourage the recruitment of the nation’s top cyber talent and the retention of DoD personnel who have skills necessary to meet the agency’s cyber requirements and help secure the United States against threats of information systems and networks.
An artificial intelligence algorithm developed by researchers at the College of Information Sciences and Technology could help predict susceptibility to substance use disorder among young homeless individuals, and suggest personalized rehabilitation programs for highly susceptible homeless youth.
Last academic year, four Penn State instructors worked with teams from Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) to enhance the spaces where students learn. With preparations underway for the new academic year, the most recent cohort of TLT Faculty Fellows; Ed Glantz, Siu Ling (Pansy) Leung, Pierce Salguero and Priya Sharma can share lessons learned from their work.
This summer, three undergraduate students from three higher education institutions got an exclusive, in-depth introduction to research topics focused on machine learning in cybersecurity through the Research Experiences for Undergraduates site program sponsored by National Science of Foundation and hosted by Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology.
Jessica Strait, a Penn State junior studying Applied Data Sciences, has earned a spot in the 2020 Cargill Global Scholars program.
The College of Information Sciences and Technology has named Candice Sheaffer as student marshal for the University’s summer 2020 commencement. Sheaffer will earn her degree in security and risk analysis, information and cyber security option, through Penn State World Campus.
Following his trip last summer to Kazakhstan, Professor of Information Sciences and Technology Alan Peslak and a contingent of University representatives traveled to New Zealand this past winter to engage in a development workshop with faculty members from the University of Auckland.
Jeffrey Bardzell has been named associate dean for undergraduate and graduate studies in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, effective Aug. 1.
When College of Information Sciences and Technology alumnus Kurt Heslop needed to update the website for an Oregon-based animal shelter, for which he serves on the board, he sought out a Penn State student to help complete the task.
This spring, students in the data sciences capstone course at the College of Information Sciences and Technology worked with a team of MIT Lincoln Laboratory Beaver Works researchers to make real-world contributions toward improving image classifiers for disaster response.
Joe Lewis, a 2010 graduate of the College of Information Sciences and Technology, created a nonprofit organization to give children in underserved communities in Atlanta the opportunity to learn about and experience technology after noticing disparities that existed in the city's school systems compared with what he experienced as a child.
Penn State students are using artificial intelligence to analyze how COVID-19 is affecting the number of people who telework and the impact that will make on public transportation in Philadelphia.
Shara Beach Ryan’s list of career experiences is quite extensive — she has worked as an advertising campaign manager, front-end developer, business analyst, project and product manager, marketer and user-interface designer. But none of that would be possible without the lessons she learned in the College of Information Sciences and Technology.
Educators and instructional and learning designers at Penn State have been key elements of the pivot to remote instruction as the University works to overcome the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
When the novel coronavirus pandemic struck, and many College of Information Sciences and Technology students faced challenges in securing summer internships due to public health guidelines, an IST alumnus rose to the occasion to help students get the experience they needed.
As a child, Rahil Mehta found that many science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) concepts weren't taught in a participatory way. So now as a rising sophomore at Penn State, he is changing the learning environment for young students through his nonprofit organization, Future Engineers Unite, which teaches children ages eight through 11 about STEM using interactive methods.
Courtney Smith, a rising Penn State junior studying security and risk analysis, recently received a 2020 Erickson Discovery Grant to further her research on parasocial relationships between 18- to 25-year-old Tumblr bloggers and celebrities.
The Center for Security Research and Education (CSRE) has selected 13 interdisciplinary projects through its spring 2020 seed grant program. CSRE is providing a total of $300,000 in funding for the projects, with an additional $300,000 in matching and supplemental funding from other colleges, departments, and institutes.
With students in the College of Information Sciences and Technology having offers rescinded from their internship placements, one alumnus launched an eight-week virtual hacker bootcamp to give a group of students professional experiences this summer.
A new study from Penn State tracked excess influenza-like illness data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to estimate that the number of early COVID-19 cases in the U.S. may have been more than 80 times greater and doubled nearly twice as fast as originally believed.
With the shift of the International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development to a virtual format due to COVID-19, general chair Carleen Maitland led a team effort to bring the international conference online.
Professor James Wang and Assistant Professor Xinyu Xing — both from the College of Information Sciences and Technology — are among 51 computing experts representing 39 universities worldwide to receive 2019 Amazon Research Awards.
This summer, as many students acclimate to virtual internship experiences due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, one Penn State World Campus student has just successfully completed an eight-month remote internship with the federal government.
The Big Ten Academic Alliance Academic Leadership Program in 2020-21 will include six new fellows from Penn State.
Lauren Pearl never imagined she would become so involved with the newest major at the College of Information Sciences and Technology during the first semester of her first year at Penn State, let alone be elected president of a club for its students. But she’s found her niche as an advocate for the program that focuses on human-centered design and development in technology.
The College of Information Sciences and Technology will launch a residential master's degree in cybersecurity analytics and operations this fall to help meet the growing demand for professionals who can protect digital information.
A paper co-authored by Peng Liu, Raymond G. Tronzo, MD Professor of Cybersecurity in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, has been selected as one of the two winners of the prestigious 10-year Test-of-Time Award from the 2020 IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN) — a top conference in fault tolerance and dependable computing.