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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A new research project led by Benjamin Hanrahan, assistant professor of information sciences and technology, aims to enrich online platform workers and improve the marketplace for online work.
Penn State is expanding its online portfolio of information technology degrees with one focused on how to prevent and respond to cyber attacks at a time of the rapid growth in the cybersecurity industry.
In response to the growing coronavirus pandemic, orders from the state government and recommendations from global public health organizations, Penn State will hold its spring 2020 commencement ceremony via livestream on May 9. The virtual ceremony will recognize all Penn State undergraduate students and all graduate students in the Penn State Graduate School.
How will COVID-19 end? Matthew Ferrari and Nita Bharti of the Penn State Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics explore this question in a new video produced in collaboration with WPSU. With volunteer assistance from Penn State faculty and staff from across the campuses, the video will be available with subtitles in 10 languages.
A group of students in the College of Information Sciences and Technology are using their collective knowledge and skills to help inform Penn State emergency management officials during the evolving global coronavirus outbreak.
Benjamin Hanrahan, assistant professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State, will explore how digital tools to automate and remotely manage workers may negatively impact those workers and their rights.
As U.S. citizens engage with the federal government for their digital needs such as enrolling in government benefits online or completing the census online for the first time, College of Information Sciences and Technology alumnus Jordan Burris is working behind the scenes to enable the successful delivery of the federal government’s digital services.
Two undergraduate researchers from the College of Information Sciences and Technology were invited to present their work in Boras, Sweden, this week at iConference 2020 — a forum through which information scholars, researchers and professionals share their insights on critical information issues in contemporary society. The conference has now been moved to a virtual format.
A new international publication, which will be utilized as a framework for counterterrorism training in organizations around the world, has expert input from several Penn State faculty, students and alumni.
Two College of Information Sciences and Technology students have been named to this year’s list of Top 50 Hackers by Major League Hacking. The Top 50 Hackers list is composed of individuals worldwide who were nominated and selected in recognition of the ways they have impacted the hacking community.
Faculty and staff members in the College of Information Sciences and Technology were recently recognized for their outstanding contributions to the college, the University community, and the world as part of the college’s annual faculty and staff awards.
To continue supporting Penn State faculty’s remote teaching, Teaching and Learning with Technology is offering virtual office hours each day during the week of March 16. During these sessions, instructors can get help with transitioning their courses from a residential format to remote.
Nicholas Arndt -- senior, information sciences and technology -- has always had an interest in technology and a passion for music. His experience at Penn State is giving him the opportunity to bring both of his interests together.
Creative authors could soon have a new option to help overcome writer’s block, thanks to a system launched by researchers in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State.
The Penn State Online MBA now has concentrations with additional courses of study in the fields of information technology, engineering, health care, homeland security, international affairs, public administration and economic development.
The Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology recently hosted a “Sit With Me” initiative, which was held as part of the global campaign powered by the National Center for Women & Information Technology to recognize and validate the important role women play in creating future technology.
The Mentoring Program in the Sokolov-Miller Family Financial and Life Skills Center is enabling students to benefit from the perspectives of experienced adults.
Looking back on his Penn State journey, Jonathan Adrien said he is grateful for the opportunity to have evolved into an even better version of himself.
As a staff research associate in the Homeland Protection and Air Traffic Control Division at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Penn State alumnus Andrew Weinert focuses on enabling drones to be safely and efficiently integrated into national airspace.
As part of his honors thesis, a Penn State and Schreyer Honors student is researching data that could help increase preparation time for severe storm systems.
Researchers from the College of Information Sciences and Technology are taking steps to address the alarming rate of suicides among indebted farmers in India, by developing a deep-learning algorithm as the first step in a decision-support system that could predict future market values of crops.
As of September 2019 there were approximately 330,000 Venezuelans that had fled to neighboring Ecuador amid an economic and political crisis in their home country. As humanitarian organizations respond to aid the displaced individuals and families, could helpful information in the Venezuelan refugee crisis in Ecuador be used more effectively, overcoming software, analytic or organizational limitations?
Every parent knows college students like sleep. College of Engineering graduate John-Thomas “JT” Marino, however, committed all his energy to sleep after graduating in 2012 when he started Tuft & Needle — a direct-to-consumer online mattress retailer with a “bed in a box” concept — completely disrupting the way consumers purchase their beds.
Undergraduate students who access Penn State University Libraries’ resources or services and who struggle to pay for their education are encouraged to apply for 2020 University Libraries scholarships, available to a wide variety of student majors.
Katt Shatinsky has been familiar with THON since she was young and remembers seeing students canning for money on her drives through Pennsylvania to visit family. But it wasn’t until her freshman year at Penn State that she realized how much she wanted to get involved. Today, Shatinsky now holds the title of president of IST Benefiting THON – a student organization that strives to bring the college’s community together to support Dance Marathon.
Undergraduate students interested in machine learning in cybersecurity research activities are invited to apply to a new Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site program, to be hosted this summer at the College of Information Sciences and Technology.
Penn State has launched the Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence, a multi-unit research center that promotes the thoughtful development and application of AI and studies its impact on all areas of human endeavor.
Twenty teams have been awarded $500 to pursue their ideas to use artificial intelligence for good in the 2020 Nittany AI Challenge to improve the world by providing solutions for problems within the areas of education, health, humanitarian challenges, sustainability and climate change.
Raising awareness and offering technological tools to the thousands of citizens groups in the U.S. that monitor water quality might help community leaders tap these volunteers as a way to improve access to plentiful, clean water and possibly avoid water-related crises.
For Leah Miller, a junior studying data sciences in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, activities outside of the classroom are just as essential to the Penn State experience as education in her classes. That’s why once she heard about TEDxPSU — the Penn State version of the nationally recognized Ted Talks — she got involved right away.
The evolution of viruses will be the focus of a five-year, $3.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s new program on convergence research, to an interdisciplinary team led by Penn State. The grant is in two phases, depending on successful completion of phase one milestones.
Strategic efforts by Penn State University Libraries faculty and staff over the past three years to lower or eliminate the cost of textbooks and other course materials has paid off — nearly 20 times over — in potential savings for Penn State students.
In May 2018, former Marine Robert Bussey enrolled in the Penn State Online MBA program, led by the Penn State Smeal College of Business and delivered by Penn State World Campus, to ultimately build a company from scratch after taking courses in the corporate innovation and entrepreneurship concentration.
As thousands of their classmates got a break from classes on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a handful of Penn State students went to work as the first group to take part in Penn State’s IT Career Exploration Program. The initiative, designed to give prospective information technology (IT) professionals an hour-by-hour, on-the-job shadowing experience, was co-sponsored by Penn State IT and the College of Information Sciences and Technology.
When Steve Cassey began his journey at Penn State’s then-new School of Information Sciences and Technology nearly 20 years ago, he was told that there would be an abundance of relevant jobs available in the tech field within 15 years. Now, as the director of content analytics at Audible Inc., he realized those predictions were true.
RJ Shirey, a sophomore in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, overcame life-changing trauma: a gunshot that led to the amputation of his right leg. Today, he uses his disability to benefit the lives of those around him.
With a law enforcement career spanning more than 20 years and an established private investigations firm of his own, Ron Long could be considered an expert in the field of investigative work. Now, he’s pursuing a degree in security and risk analysis through Penn State World Campus to better understand how the internet is changing the dynamic of police and investigative work in the country.
Researchers in Penn State's College of Information Sciences and Technology are advancing work that utilizes machine learning methods to improve traffic signal control at urban intersections around the world.
Penn State President Eric Barron and a pair of University experts will discuss the impacts of automation and artificial intelligence during the next episode of WPSU Penn State’s “Digging Deeper” on Sunday, Jan. 26.
Penn State will host Study Abroad Week 2020 during the week of Jan. 20-24 on the University Park campus. Students who attend can learn more about the process of applying, what funding is available, and career enrichment opportunities; and meet other students who have gone abroad.
For their final project, students in the Foundations of Human-Centered Design and Development course in the College of Information Sciences and Technology had the opportunity to gain real-world industry perspective and feedback on the prototypes they spent the semester building.
On Dec. 10, students presented seven-minute lightning pitches for their ideas to build technology solutions for cosmetics consumers.
Penn State World Campus is recognized in six top-10 rankings of U.S. News and World Report’s 2020 Best Online Programs. U.S. News also ranked Penn State World Campus in six categories of its Best Online Programs for Veterans lists.
Many times, attending Penn State is a family tradition, but one family takes that tradition to a whole new level. Vince Derr, his cousin Jaclyn Carradorini, and Jaclyn’s little brother Chris have all graduated from the College of Information Sciences and Technology, and their younger cousin, Nicholas Carradorini, is currently a senior in the college.
Penn State’s Dickinson Law, the Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS), and Monash University have joined together to sponsor the “Privacy, Technology and Vulnerability Workshop,” which will be held at Monash University Prato Centre in Prato, Italy on June 22-23.
“A lock isn’t designed to keep people out; it’s designed to slow people down.” That was the key point that Nick Leghorn, Penn State class of 2010, took away from a hacking conference that he attended as a student. So he brought the cybersecurity concept to the University by launching Penn State 2600 -- a student organization for people who wanted to have fun with technology and enjoy being intellectually challenged. The art of lock picking was the focus of one of the club’s first meetings.
Penn State’s new Digital Multimedia Design program is seeing its first graduates this week. The interdisciplinary program is offered through Penn State World Campus by the College of Arts and Architecture, College of Communications, and College of Information Sciences and Technology.
Adalice Burgos and Aaron Spak balanced their jobs and families while working toward their degrees. They’ll share their stories of their educational journeys at an event for Penn State World Campus students this Friday.
The Penn State Center for Security Research and Education has announced its spring 2020 grant program to support security-related scholarship and educational programs at Penn State. University faculty and researchers are eligible to apply by Feb. 14, 2020.
Since Joselyne Mera Vargas moved to the United States from Ecuador when she was 9 years old, she has developed valuable leadership and communication skills, discovered a passion for data science, and completed a summer internship at Harvard University. To celebrate all that Vargas has achieved during her time at Penn State, she has been selected as the College of Information Science and Technology’s student marshal for the fall commencement ceremony on Dec. 21.