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.
If you have a story idea or questions about IST news, contact the Office of Marketing and Communications.
A group of Penn State students is working to support a global initiative to redefine Black motherhood. Blending interdisciplinary expertise from across the University, the students are building a mobile health application designed to support the mental and physical health of Black moms. They’ve partnered with Chicago-based MOMLogics to conduct market research and lead focus groups to understand the unique challenges that Black mothers face.
The Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology will honor Schreyer Honors Scholar Kaitlyn Bridge as student marshal and Charles Hickey as the ROTC student marshal at spring 2022 commencement, which will be held at 9 a.m. Saturday, May 7, in the Pegula Ice Arena.
Nikita Page’s decision to attend Penn State was literally left to chance. The now alumnus of the College of Information Sciences and Technology was intent on attending a different university in the region. But his mom suggested that he at least visit Penn State before making his decision. So, he made the trip to State College from his home in New Jersey, and immediately fell in love with the campus, the people and the community.
As the University celebrates the success of its current fundraising campaign, “A Greater Penn State for 21st Century Excellence,” the College of Information Sciences and Technology is thanking the 769 donors who have supported its students and programs since the effort began in 2016.
A team of four Penn State Smeal College of Business students and another team member from the College of Information Sciences and Technology partnered to win the 2022 KPMG Ideation Challenge.
A digital solution to problems faced by both tenants and property owners was the winning idea in the 2022 Bardusch Family IdeaMakers Challenge, held April 6 during Penn State Startup Week and hosted by the College of Information Sciences and Technology.
The Institutes of Energy and the Environment awarded seed grants to 21 groups of interdisciplinary researchers for the 2021–22 cycle.
A group of eight students in the College of Information Sciences and Technology recently set out to narrow this gender gap on the world’s fifth most popular website by hosting a Wiki edit-a-thon to increase visibility for one of the college’s most prominent female faculty members.
Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology graduate Noel Claudio was one of 11 prominent young Penn State alumni recognized at the Alumni Achievement Awards Ceremony on March 18. A strategy and operations analyst at Twitter and strong advocate for Latinx workers in technology, Claudio spent time networking with IST students last month when he traveled to State College from San Francisco for the ceremony.
Remote sighted assistance technology — which connects visually impaired individuals with human agents through a live video call on their smartphones — helps people with low or no vision navigate tasks that require sight. But what happens when existing computer vision technology doesn’t fully support an agent in fulfilling certain requests?
CiteSeerX, one of the world’s earliest open source academic search engines and co-created by C. Lee Giles, David Reese Professor of Information Sciences and Technology, has been recognized by the Information Retrieval Specialist Group of the British Computer Society as the Best Open Source Project, as part of its 2021 Search Industry Awards.
SAP, one of the world’s leading producers of software for the management of business processes, recently joined the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology’s Corporate Associates Program.
Each year, Penn State recognizes outstanding faculty and staff with annual awards in teaching and excellence. These awards highlight many of the faculty and staff who go above and beyond.
Linhai Song, assistant professor in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, is the recipient of a 2022 Faculty Early Career Development award from the National Science Foundation. The CAREER award is the most prestigious award given by the NSF in support of junior faculty members who exemplify the role of teacher-scholar through outstanding research, excellent teaching, and the integration of education and research.
Frank Ritter, professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology and director of the Applied Cognitive Science Lab, has received the 2022 Graduate Faculty Teaching Award.
Six University faculty members have received 2022 Faculty Scholar Medals for Outstanding Achievement.
Jeffrey Bardzell, associate dean of undergraduate and graduate studies in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, has earned the 2022 McKay Donkin Award.
Fred Fonseca, associate professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology; Marinda Harrell-Levy, associate professor of human development and family studies at Penn State Brandywine and Jessica Schocker, associate professor in social studies education and women's studies at Penn State Berks; have received the Alumni/Student Award for Excellence in Teaching and have been named 2022 Penn State Teaching Fellows.
Sharon Huang, associate professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, is the recipient of Penn State's 2022 Undergraduate Program Leadership Award.
The sentiments and emotions expressed in tweets on Twitter can be used in real time to assess where supply chain disruptions due to a pandemic, war or natural disaster may lead to food shortages, according to researchers at Penn State and the Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar.
Umang Bhatt, a doctoral candidate in the Machine Learning Group at the University of Cambridge, will present a free public lecture titled “Challenges and Frontiers in Deploying Transparent Machine Learning” at 4 p.m. Tuesday, April 12.
Sixty-eight Penn State graduate students received awards for their research and creative scholarship in the 37th annual Graduate Exhibition. A complete list of winners is available below.
A special shoutout to College of Information Sciences and Technology alumni who returned to Penn State for IST ConnectX and a Happy Valley Networking Social on Friday, March 25. During the day, alumni speakers presented in two different IST classrooms to share their professional experiences with students.
Dongwon Lee, professor of information sciences and technology, is the recipient of a 2022 Fulbright Cyber Security Scholar Award. Lee will complete his Fulbright fellowship in the psychology department at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom as part of his sabbatical leave during the 2022-23 academic year.
Fourth-year cybersecurity analytics and operations student Eugene Ryoo is drawing on the technical and soft skills he's gained in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology to make a positive change in a niche domain: the professional ballet industry. Ryoo is working with a team of Penn State students to lead The Ballet Scout, a centralized system where dancers can locate auditions, training programs, jobs and housing needs.
In one of the largest mass migration flows in recent history, approximately 3.4 million people have fled their homes in Ukraine since late February. While it is too soon to know the full impact of the war in Ukraine, Penn State social science researchers have been looking at other displaced populations to anticipate Ukrainian refugees’ short-term needs and long-term challenges.
In the movie “Moneyball,” a young economics graduate and a cash-strapped Major League Baseball general manager introduce a new way to evaluate baseball players’ value. Their innovative idea to compute players’ statistical data and salaries enabled the Oakland A’s to recruit quality talent overlooked by other teams — completely revitalizing the team without exceeding budget.
The Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology has named Jocelyn Bennett Garraway assistant dean of diversity, equity and inclusion. Holding three degrees from the University, Bennett Garraway has more than 30 years of experience as a counselor, educator and administrator. She began her new position March 1.
On March 16, approximately 45 Penn State students gathered in the Westgate Building to compete in a three-hour Cyber Wi-Fighter Hacking Challenge hosted by the Pennsylvania National Guard’s Army cyber team in collaboration with the College of Information Sciences and Technology.
David Rusenko, founder of Weebly and a 2007 Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology graduate, appears on the latest episode of the "Dare to Disrupt" podcast.
Kathryn Frankenberg’s exemplary dedication and interest in the world of data privacy is highlighted throughout her experiences both inside and outside of the classroom at the College of Information Sciences and Technology. She recently was selected as a Westin Scholar.
Members of the Penn State community are invited to join the College of Information Sciences and Technology for “IST Identity Talks – Strength in Diversity,” to be held virtually from 6 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 5.
Su Lin Blodgett, a postdoctoral researcher in the Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics group at Microsoft Research Montréal, will present a free public lecture titled “Towards Equitable Language Technologies” at 4 p.m. Tuesday, April 5. The lecture will be held live via Zoom View Webinar. No registration is required.
A compilation of recent news, highlights and achievements from the College of Information Sciences and Technology community.
Six Penn State student startups with representation across three different campuses plus the Graduate School at Penn State have been selected into the 2022 Invent Penn State Summer Founders program. Each student team will receive a $15,000 grant to work full time on its startup, social good or nonprofit over the summer at Happy Valley LaunchBox powered by PNC Bank.
Timnit Gebru, a widely respected leader in artificial intelligence ethics research who said she lost her job at Google for raising issues about their AI practices and discrimination in the workplace, will present a free public lecture titled “The Quest for Ethical Artificial Intelligence” at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, March 29, via Zoom. No registration is required.
The Penn State Alumni Association will honor 11 prominent young alumni at the Alumni Achievement Awards Ceremony on Friday, March 18. The ceremony will be livestreamed at 6:30 p.m.
For Elizabeth King, the opportunity to attend Penn State was made possible thanks to her parents as well as through scholarship support she received. As an alumna and longtime donor, King is honoring her parents by establishing a scholarship in their name at the College of Information Sciences and Technology to help students with financial need to secure essential technology, including computers that will be used as they complete an IST degree.
Scientists are increasingly concerned about that the lack of reproducibility in research may lead to, among other things, slower scientific output and less public trust in science. Now, a team of researchers report that creating a prediction market where artificially intelligent — AI — agents bet on hypothetical replication studies could lead to an explainable, scalable approach to estimate confidence in published scholarly work.
Peter Pomerantsev, a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, will visit Penn State's University Park campus March 31 and April 1 to present two lectures on his work. The first lecture at 4 p.m. on March 31 in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium will be based on his book “This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality.” The second lecture at 3:30 p.m.
The Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) recently announced eight projects that will receive funding from the college’s seed grant program. The program provides early-stage funding to support research activities and generate preliminary results that will eventually lead to bigger projects involving external funding.
Ryan Shi, a doctoral candidate in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, will present a free, public webinar titled “From a Bag of Bagels to Bandit Data-Driven Optimization” at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, March 15.
Penn State students are invited to attend the inaugural 2022 Be You in Tech Summit: Bringing Your Authentic Self to the Information Age, to be held 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday, April 14, at Hyatt Place in downtown State College.
As an increasing number of children use digital technologies to play, communicate, create, socialize and learn, the number of opportunities for their privacy to be exploited continues to grow. With many parents unaware of looming threats, and few formal school-based curricula on the topic, how can young users learn how to stay safe online?
Many people use facial recognition technology on their personal devices, to quickly and securely enter a password or complete an online transaction. But when that same technology is deployed in public settings — such as to screen airport passengers or to grant access to a secure location — how do individuals whose images are captured feel?
Srijan Kumar, assistant professor at the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology, will present a free public lecture titled “Advances in AI for Cyber-Safety” at 11 a.m. on Friday, March 4.
The College of Information Sciences and Technology recently welcomed three new additions to its Dean’s Advisory Board: Doug Balog, founder and president of DB Group Consulting LLC and recently a senior executive at IBM; Angela Govila, executive director, product lead for embedded banking at J.P. Morgan Payments; and Chandra McMahon, senior vice president and chief information security officer at CVS Health.
For Maggie Sapovchak, one of the members of the first class of graduates of the then-School of Information Sciences and Technology who earned their degrees in 2003, the impact of being a part of a tight-knit group of students who worked together to grow a program has been life-changing.
Praneeth Vepakomma, a doctoral student at MIT, will present a free public lecture titled “Differential Privacy for Measuring Nonlinear Correlations between Sensitive Data at Multiple Parties,” at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, March 1.
Johnna Blair, IST doctoral candidate at Penn State, is investigating how essential workers used Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic to connect with others about shared experiences, from coping with mental health conditions to voicing workplace concerns.