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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The Penn State Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence recently announced the recipients of its inaugural round of seed funding. The center awarded more than $93,000 to five interdisciplinary research projects.
Researchers whose work addresses natural and cultural resource management topics can learn about partnering opportunities with federal agencies at the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units Program Workshop on March 30.
Corey and Leteace Lee have established an educational equity scholarship in the College of Information Sciences and Technology to support students with financial need who are first-generation or from underrepresented backgrounds.
Penn State faculty pursuing research, education and outreach related to socially responsible AI are encouraged to apply for affiliate status with the Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence.
“Be intentional.” “Remember your why.” “Be clear on who you are.” “You’re not alone.” Those were a few of the main takeaways shared by panelists with students during the first IST Alumni Identity Talks event, hosted virtually by the College of Information Sciences and Technology last month.
Did you ever wonder how social networking applications like Facebook and LinkedIn make recommendations on the people you should friend or pages you should follow? Researchers in the College of IST have developed a novel framework to lessen the bias in connection recommendations made by machine learning models in social networking applications.
Wash your hands. Stay six feet apart. Wear a mask. These are the messages that have been conveyed by public health officials for the past year to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. The directions are simple enough to understand, but would they be easier to follow if the reasons behind them were clearer? A special-topics IST course this spring is exploring this question.
Noah Snavely, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University and Cornell Tech, and a researcher at Google Research, will be the second speaker this spring in the College of IST's Distinguished Lecture Series, presenting “Capturing and Rendering the World from Photos,” on March 25.
The top six Penn State student startup teams have been selected for the 2021 Inc.U Competition and will compete on WPSU’s Shark Tank-style TV show “The Investment” for a chance at a share of up to $30,000 in funding for their startup.
Ten years ago, the IST Diplomats student organization was founded to serve as ambassadors for the College of Information Sciences and Technology, to represent its academic programs, career solutions and student engagement opportunities. Several former and current IST Diplomats weigh in on their experience and how it has shaped their academic and professional careers.
For nearly two decades, computer scientists have been exploring how a limited number of nodes in a social network can be used to maximize information dissemination. Now, a team that includes a Penn State researcher has developed an AI system that can identify the people within a social network who can most effectively promote information about HIV prevention to their peers.
Twenty Penn State teams with students from seven different colleges and six campuses, including Penn State World Campus, will each be awarded $500 to compete in the Prototype Phase of the 2021 Nittany AI Challenge. Teams were selected based on their potential for positive impact on the world, all using AI for Good to develop solutions that address real-world challenges in education, environment, health and humanitarianism.
Bringing academic and research expertise in human-computer interaction design from Indiana University Bloomington, Jeffrey Bardzell joined the College of Information Sciences and Technology as associate dean for undergraduate and graduate studies last fall.
Eight information technology professionals representing various domains at Penn State recently came together to educate College of Information Sciences and Technology students about their professions during the college’s IT Career Panel.
John M. “Jack” Carroll, distinguished professor of information sciences and technology, is one of six recipients of the 2020/2021 Pioneer in Human-Computer Interaction Award of the International Federation for Information Processing Technical Committee on Human-Computer Interaction.
THON 2021 will be held primarily virtually for the first-time in its nearly 50-year history — making the committee that plans and manages technology for THON more essential than ever.
The Penn State Data Science Community will host a slate of speakers during the spring 2021 semester, each of whom will discuss the use of data science techniques to investigate a particular subject. Topics for the spring include social media use, additive manufacturing, the exploration of genetics, the role of big data in COVID-19 decision-making and more.
As a lifelong consumer of Apple products, College of Information Sciences and Technology student Logan Pratt also developed a dream of one day working for the company. Now, after completing a summer internship at Apple, he has been offered a full-time job as a software engineer upon graduation in May.
Undergraduate students interested in research surrounding the topic of machine learning in cybersecurity are invited to apply for the 2021 NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates Site Program, funded by the National Science Foundation.
Raymond J. Mooney, professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin, will kick off the College of Information Sciences and Technology's Distinguished Lecture Series at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 25, on Zoom. He will present a talk on "Deep Learning for Automating Software Documentation Maintenance." The lecture is open to the Penn State community.
In an effort to combat malicious use of artificial intelligence text generators—for example, an adversary generating fake news to share on social media—researchers at the College of Information Sciences and Technology analyzed eight different state-of-the-art natural language generators to identify whether each had a distinct writing style that could be discovered by machine classifiers.
Attacks on vulnerable computer networks and cyber-infrastructure — often called zero-day attacks — can quickly overwhelm traditional defenses. A Penn State-led team of researchers has used a machine learning approach, based on a technique known as reinforcement learning, to create an adaptive cyber-defense against these attacks.
Asia Grant and Alejandro Cuevas began their friendship when they were members of Penn State’s Presidential Leadership Academy. After graduation, the two founded Redoux, a thriving scent and skincare company.
Helping users interact with information technology in a way that could potentially impact the world was the objective of a semester-long fall project in HCI: The User and Technology, a graduate level course in the College of Information Sciences and Technology.
What a person posts on Facebook could predict their risk for substance use, according to new research led by the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology.
Last March, the sudden onset of the COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted university operations around the world. Students and instructors quickly transitioned to remote education, demonstrating reliance on new technologies that may have otherwise never been used.
A National Science Foundation grant will help lay the foundation for an interdisciplinary institute that encourages the use of artificial intelligence-enabled materials discovery, design and synthesis, according to a team of researchers.
For the second consecutive year, Penn State advanced to the international finals of the Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition, the world’s largest offensive-based collegiate cybersecurity competition.
Chao-Hsien Chu, professor of information sciences and technology and one of the College of Information Sciences and Technology’s original five faculty members, died Friday, Jan. 15. He was 69.
Mary Beth Rosson, professor of information sciences and technology, has been named a 2020 Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery for her contributions to human-computer interaction, including scenario-based design.
A new algorithm developed by researchers at the College of Information Sciences and Technology could help leaders of governments and organizations make better informed decisions on how many symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals to test for COVID-19 with a limited supply of daily tests, and at what stage of the pandemic.
A team led by Penn State faculty and students, along with expert collaborators, has co-authored a guide that teaches the essential knowledge and skills to help interrupt the transmission of COVID-19 and other infections.
A new multi-institution study shows a dearth of privacy opt-out choices and offers a solution to empower users to readily identify choices often buried deep in the text of privacy policies.
The NASA Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium is currently accepting applications to its graduate research fellowship program. The program offers funding to outstanding students in the STEM, education and humanities fields who are conducting research related to NASA’s science and outreach missions.
The NASA Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium is accepting applications for the 2021-22 Undergraduate Scholarship Program. The statewide program awards a limited number of one-year scholarships to rising juniors and seniors who are enrolled full-time at an accredited Pennsylvania college or university. Online applications, including all supporting materials, are due by midnight on March 1.
A series of webinars will bring alumni together to learn cooking skills and raise awareness of students experiencing food insecurity.
When Jacob Sisko first accepted his offer from Penn State to study forensic science, he never imagined that he’d one day work for the Department of the Army and its Command, Control, Computers, Communications, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C5ISR) Center. But, just before he started at University Park, Sisko learned about the security and risk analysis program at the College of Information Sciences and Technology and changed his major.
Despite the inherent challenges that voice-interaction may create, researchers recently found that deaf and hard-of-hearing users regularly use smart assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri in homes, workplaces and mobile devices — highlighting a clear need for more inclusive design.
A team made up of three students from the Penn State Smeal College of Business and another from the College of Information Sciences and Technology collaborated to win the top prize in the Kohl’s Busines with Integrity Case Competition. Sponsored by the Tarriff Center for Business Ethics and Social Responsibility at Penn State and Kohl’s, the competition drew 26 teams.
When the COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly turned College of Information Sciences and Technology student Trevor Baptiste’s summer internship into a virtual experience, he used his newly found time to achieve his dream: becoming a pilot.
Ryan DeGrendel, 45, first enrolled in college classes while he was still in high school and playing junior hockey in Detroit. Three decades, 17 surgeries and one near-death experience later, he is earning a degree in security and risk analysis through Penn State World Campus.
Mark Viglione, a 2015 graduate and founder of Enigma Networkz, has finalized a software licensing agreement with the University to make his company’s security information and event management platform, Enigma Glass, available to students at all Penn State campuses.
The College of Information Sciences and Technology will honor Kylie Dunmire as student marshal at fall 2020 commencement, which will be held virtually at 2 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 19.
Richard Canevez, a doctoral student in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State, has been named to the 2020 Class of Computing Innovation Fellows by the Computing Research Association (CRA) and its Computing Community Consortium (CCC).
Madison Reddie, an accomplished student graduating with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, has been named the fall 2020 student marshal for the Penn State College of Engineering.
Penn State Scranton Associate Professor of Information Sciences and Technology Debra Smarkusky, recently received high honor from her colleagues within the University’s College of IST -- the University's Statewide Faculty Member of the Year Award at the Fall IST Statewide Faculty Meeting.
Imagine changing the TV channel with a wave of your hand or turning on the car radio with a twist of your wrist. Freehand gesture-based interfaces in interactive systems are becoming more common, but what if your preferred way to gesture a command — say, changing the TV to channel 10 — significantly differed from that of a user from another culture? Would the system recognize your command?
In a recent survey at Penn State, nearly a quarter of students said that they have decreased the size of their meals, or have skipped meals altogether, because they didn’t have enough money to eat. Lion's Pantry student president Spencer Wallace is on the front lines to combat food insecurity on campus, overseeing the campus food bank and the student organization that operates it, with the mission of addressing and mitigating student hunger.
For many residential Penn State students, leaving campus and navigating the world of online education was a new concept, and an adjustment. For College of Information Sciences and Technology student Nathan Tack, it landed him in a familiar situation, and he’s poised and ready for classes to move back to a remote environment after Thanksgiving break.
Students across Penn State can now easily access information about on-campus dining options thanks, in part, to the work of members of the User Experience Professional Association (UXPA).