Social and Organizational Informatics

Social and Organizational Informatics (SOI) is a confederation of faculty and graduate students aimed at studying the ways in which social, cultural, political, economic, and organizational structures impact and are impacted by information technologies. We are a highly interdisciplinary team drawing from several academic fields, such as information science, business, philosophy, social sciences, planning, development studies, and sociology, to answer our questions.

Our research begins with the needs of people and communities. We seek to understand and potentially solve socio-technical problems. People lead our research, not technological opportunities. Our research is critical. Technologies advantage and disadvantage populations. Our research seeks to affect change. Our research begins with the assumption that technologies are not neutral tools. They are political, have unintended consequences, and carry embedded values. SOI develops both scientific understanding and practical tools to help communities and institutions.

Research-Active Faculty
Photo of Mahir Akgun

Assistant Teaching Professor

Learning Analytics; Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL); Epistemic Agency

Photo of Guoray Cai

Associate Professor

Geographical information science; Visual analytics; Online democracy and deliberation

Photo of Kelley Cotter

Assistant Professor

Critical Algorithm Studies; Critical Data Studies; Digital Literacy

Photo of Fred Fonseca

Associate Professor

Data Science; Philosophy of Science; Philosophy of Technology

Photo of David Fusco

Associate Teaching Professor and Director of Master's Programs

Photo of Chris Gamrat

Assistant Teaching Professor

Photo of Nicklaus Giacobe

Associate Teaching Professor

Cybersecurity Education; Cybersecurity; Situation Awareness

Photo of Edward J. Glantz

Teaching Professor and Assistant Director of Master's Programs

Cybersecurity; Risk Analysis; Risk Identification

Photo of Sharon Huang

David Reese Professor of Information Sciences and Technology

Biomedical Image Data Analysis; Computer Vision; Machine Learning

Photo of Johnson Kinyua

Associate Teaching Professor

Cybersecurity; Data Science (FinTech); Building Secure Software Systems

Photo of Greg Kruczek

Assistant Teaching Professor

Photo of Priya Kumar

PNC Career Development Professor

Privacy and agency; Digital childhood/parenting; Datafication/data power

Photo of Peng Liu

Raymond G. Tronzo, MD Professor of Cybersecurity

Computer Security; Building Secure Software Systems; Secure Internet of Things

Photo of Carleen Maitland

Professor and Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Affairs

Humanitarian Informatics; Refugee Tech; Critical data studies

Photo of William Parquette

Professor of Practice

Strategic Deception; National Intelligence; National Security

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Professor

Cognitive Modelling and learning; Cognitive Architecture; Human-Computer Interaction

Photo of Andrea Tapia

Dean

Crisis Informatics; Social Data Analytics; Social Theories and Methods of Information

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Associate Teaching Professor

smart cities, knowledge management, organizational learning, intelligent education systems

Photo of Urja Vora

Associate Teaching Professor

Multidisciplinary Engineering; IoT to IoE; Edge Computing

Suhang Wang

Associate Professor

Data Mining; Graph Mining; Machine Learning

Photo of Aiping Xiong

Associate Professor

Human Factors; Cybersecurity and Privacy; Human Perception and Action

Photo of Lynette Yarger

Professor

Social Informatics; Future of Work; Critical Theory

Photo of Xiang Zhang

Associate Professor

Data Mining; Machine Learning; Big Data Analytics

Recent News

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.

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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

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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.

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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)   

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Office of Research and Graduate Affairs 

411 Eric J. Barron Innovation Hub
State College, PA 16801