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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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.
The College of IST welcomed six new faculty members in 2024 to represent three research areas: data sciences and AI, human-computer interaction and privacy and security. .
The STEM Libraries at Penn State University Park have announced the calendar of events for the fall 2024 semester.
On Sept. 11 and 12, Penn State IT, Teaching and Learning with Technology, the College of Engineering, and the College of Information Sciences and Technology are partnering with Top Hat to offer a series of workshops designed to help faculty increase engagement in their courses. Available to use free of charge for all Penn State faculty and students, the Top Hat platform offers a variety of tools educators can use to deliver interactive, personalized learning.
Sanjana Mendu and Sahiti Kunchay, recent graduates of the College of IST's doctoral program, have joined Ivy League medical schools as postdoctoral researchers.
Where: Psychology Today, ’AI Performance Enhanced With Human Developmental Psychology’
Who: Lizhen Zhu, doctoral candidate in the College of IST
Penn State has announced the selection of 23 faculty members for the Penn State Emerging Academic Leaders program for fall 2024. This initiative highlights individuals who have demonstrated exceptional potential for academic leadership and innovation within their fields.
Penn State University Libraries’ Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) has named 13 recipients of the 2024 Faculty Engagement Award with this year’s theme of “Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Teaching.” Recipients will collaborate with TLT staff to identify potential uses, constraints and best practices for using generative AI for teaching purposes.
Democracy is a process that works best when citizens are informed and engaged. In the internet age, our relationship to information has been profoundly altered by the shifting role of legacy media, the rise of social media and growing challenges involving misinformation, disinformation, polarization and unequal broadband access. How do these changes help or hinder our participation as democratic citizens?
Jeffrey Schulman, a graduate student pursuing a doctorate in informatics in the College of IST, recently presented at HammerCon 2024, the national convention of the Military Cyber Professionals Association. This year’s HammerCon theme was “Our Warfighting Workforce: Talent, Teams, Training, Triumph.”
Aidan Engleka earned a bachelor’s degree in human-centered design and development (HCDD) from the College of IST in 2023. More than a year later, the research he contributed to as an undergraduate student has been published.
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.
Rachel Desulme, a fourth-year data sciences student in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, spent her summer internship studying dragonflies in Ghana.
Some TikTok users acknowledge the technology underlying personalized content online but can’t deny sometimes feeling that a higher power is involved, according to researchers from the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology. The researchers spoke with Penn State News about how and why TikTok users interpret algorithmic recommendations as a kind of divine intervention.
The Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology has named Miranda Goodman as its summer 2024 student marshal.
Aiping Xiong, associate professor in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, has earned a five-year, $585,818 U.S. National Science Foundation Early Career Development Award for a project to develop effective and easy-to-use tools for drivers to increase the situation awareness in connected and automated vehicles.
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.
The top 11 pictures in the summer Penn State Today photo contest, as selected by our editors, are highlighted in this photo gallery.
Where: Associated Press, “Artists Are Taking Things Into Their Own Hands to Protect Their Work From Generative AI”
Who: Jinghui Chen, assistant professor in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST)
Peng Liu has been reappointed as Raymond G. Tronzo, MD Professor of Cybersecurity in the College of Information Sciences and Technology. The professorship — named for late Penn State alumnus Raymond G.
Justin Silverman, assistant professor, is the recipient of the prestigious Raymond and Diana Tronzo Medical Informatics Endowment in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, effective July 1, 2024, through June 30, 2027. The funds will support Silverman as he engages faculty and students in innovative research related to medical informatics.
Hong Hu, assistant professor in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, earned a five-year, $654,681 U.S. National Science Foundation Early Career Development Award for a project titled, “Enhancing Practical Defense Mechanisms Against Memory Errors and Attacks.”
Sharon Huang, professor in the College of IST, is the new holder of the David Reese Professorship of Information Sciences and Technology.
Lisa Lenze has been named associate dean for undergraduate studies in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, effective Aug. 1. She has served as the college’s director of Teaching, Learning and Assessment since 2019.
A new study by Penn State researchers suggests that giving users control over the interface feature of autoplay can help them realize that they are going down a rabbit hole of extreme content. The work — which the researchers said has implications for responsibly designing online content viewing platforms and algorithms, as well as helping users better recognize extreme content — is available online and will be published in the October issue of the International Journal of Human-Computer Stu
Penn State has once again been designated as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense for the College of Information Sciences and Technology's security and risk analysis major, information and cyber security option, program.
Cindy Brewer has been named associate dean for faculty affairs in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, effective Aug. 1. She has served as a faculty member in the Department of Geography in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences since 1994, earning the rank of professor in 2007.
Human technology, such as smart voice assistants or computer-based intelligent tutoring systems, is largely based on standard American English and the misconception that there is a single, idealized variety of American English. This conflicts with the linguistic diversity of language users.
A $100,000 gift from Penn State Altoona alumnus Stephen Pace and his wife, Rita Pace, has endowed a new scholarship for students in the College of IST. The Pace Family Scholarship will support full-time IST undergraduate students who have demonstrated a financial need and are transitioning from a Penn State campus to University Park.
In early June, a delegation led by Penn State Global traveled to Kazakhstan to meet with five partner institutions in Almaty, Astana and Kokshetau.
Combining artificial intelligence (AI) and online search engines may make AI more trustworthy and search results easier to use, according to Penn State researchers.
The work of Vasant Honavar, associate director of the Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences, is driven by answering fundamental questions using machine learning. He has helped expand the institute's focus beyond high-performance computing into data sciences and artificial intelligence. As part of this expansion, Honavar launched the Penn State Center for Artificial Intelligence Foundations and Scientific Applications, which he currently leads.
The ability of a model to duplicate its performance is how machine learning (ML) scientists traditionally justify the validity of their research claims. But according to one graduate student in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), this model performance replicability may not be enough to align ML with the goal of machine learning for social good.
C. Lee Giles, the David Reese Professor of Information Sciences and Technology, will retire from the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, effective June 30. Giles will end his teaching career but continue to pursue his research and advise graduate students.
On May 19, U.S. soldiers and airmen with the Pennsylvania National Guard represented their units at the 28th Infantry Division Memorial Service at Boalsburg, Pennsylvania. Gold Star families, retired veterans and local residents attended the service, which is held each year to honor those who gave their lives to protect the nation.
The College of Information Sciences and Technology recently announced four new additions to its Dean’s Advisory Board: David Brannon, Greg Dracon, Karen Presley and Greg Roszyk. They join the 12-member board of Penn State alumni, friends and corporate leaders in providing strategic guidance and counsel to shape the future of the college. Each will serve a three-year term.