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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Penn State students, families, faculty and alumni are all familiar with the parade, weeklong spirit events, and spectacular football game that exemplify Penn State pride during Homecoming Week. But few pull back the curtain to see the evolving technology that makes the annual celebration engaging and entertaining.
Researchers at the College of Information Sciences and Technology have developed a theory-based game that enables a player to test their own awareness of content that could result in an echo chamber and to observe how echo chambers are accelerated by the spread of misinformation.
Researchers say a search engine, which uses an artificial intelligence called natural language processing, could be an important tool for researchers trying to find ways to design a safer internet.
A compilation of recent news, highlights and achievements from the College of Information Sciences and Technology community.
To graduate, students in the College of Information Sciences and Technology are required to complete an internship within their field. However, many students, including Nick Alico, take advantage of the opportunity to go beyond the minimum requirement and explore multiple professional opportunities before earning their degrees.
Driven by an entrepreneurial spirit, College of Information Sciences and Technology senior Hayden Long wants to inspire other Penn State students to learn from like-minded self-starters and receive support for their innovative ideas. So, through his role in the student entrepreneurship organization Innoblue, Long co-created the inaugural blueStart festival, happening this week.
Before developing his famed “drip technique,” abstract artist Jackson Pollock dabbled in drawing, print making and surrealist paintings of humans, animals and nature. According to a new study involving researchers at the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, this period of exploration followed by exploitation of his new drip technique set up Pollock for a “hot streak,” or a burst of high-impact works clustered together in close succession.
Vasant Honavar, professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, has been named the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair in Biomedical Data Sciences and Artificial Intelligence by the University’s Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences.
Individuals who suspect they have sleep apnea — and the doctors who diagnose them — could soon have more effective way to automatically detect the condition at home, thanks to a new method developed by researchers at the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology.
A nearly $4 million grant awarded to the College of Agricultural Sciences will support an interdisciplinary, multi-university team of researchers as they investigate technologies designed to address labor shortages on mushroom farms.
The Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology recently announced six projects that will receive funding from the college’s seed grant program. The program provides preliminary funding for IST researchers and collaborators to initiate new projects.
S. Shyam Sundar, James P. Jimirro Professor of Media Effects in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, has been named director of the Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence, which advances the thoughtful development and application of AI and studies its impact on human endeavor.
People are becoming increasingly dependent on human technologies such as smart voice assistants and computer-based tutoring for access to governmental, community, health, and educational services. However, the technology is largely based on standard American English. A nearly $3 million NSF grant will fund a graduate training program to address these key challenges.
Not many college students have the opportunity to directly impact national security. But this past summer, Army ROTC and College of Information Sciences and Technology junior Hayden Maxwell traveled to Omaha, Nebraska, to take on a job that works to ensure the United States’ safety and preparedness against increasingly sophisticated threats.
Nearly a quarter of emergency dispatch personnel experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and the national turnover rate of 911 dispatchers is more than 17%. Penn State College of IST alumna Sara Weston is committed to serving those individuals through a new nonprofit to provide mental health resources, training, outreach and other programming to emergency dispatchers.
The Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS), in partnership with four academic colleges will sponsor four co-funded faculty positions focused on the development of novel methods or advanced applications in data science.
The talks, which are open to the Penn State community, will cover topics including art history, big data and the U.S. Constitution, architectural knitted textiles, cryosphere studies, imaging genomics, radio telescope images, and more.
Members of the Penn State community are invited to join alumni of the College of Information Sciences and Technology for IST Alumni Identity Talks — Celebrating Hispanic Heritage, to be held virtually from noon to 1 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 15.
Growing up in Philadelphia, Noel Claudio never thought that it was possible to work for a big social media tech company unless he lived in California or New York. But thanks to his experiences at the College of Information Sciences and Technology and remote work opportunities that arose during the pandemic, he landed his dream job working virtually in Strategy and Operations for Twitter’s Platform Engineering Team.
On his 18th birthday, Joel Seidel became emancipated from his parents and, in turn, homeless. He said Penn State equipped him with the tools and resources he needed to succeed, including support from scholarships. “I’m so thankful to scholarship donors for giving me the opportunity not only to be able to be here and survive, but to be able to thrive. I showed up at Penn State with nothing, and I’ve gotten to do so many things because of their generosity.”
Researchers from the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology recently studied a new form of crisis information exchange that has emerged between geographically dispersed areas to facilitate local crisis responses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Given the security around many military and government organizations, students and graduates of the College of Information Sciences and Technology's security and risk analysis program often can't share much about the work they do. But for senior Alexia Calnon, informing the public about the work of her organization is literally her job.
A compilation of recent news, highlights and achievements from the College of Information Sciences and Technology community.
Many alumni can say that the Penn State legacy runs in their family, but few can say that they graduated from the same college as their sibling. Sisters Diana Lopez Long and Maria Umana Cody graduated from the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology with future careers in mind.
Imagine you are asked to rank the counties in Pennsylvania in terms of number of COVID-19 infections. Or you may be asked to rank cities in Pennsylvania based on their populations. An algorithm developed by a team of researchers led by Hadi Hosseini, assistant professor at the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, can reach the true answer to this and similar questions by combining a respondent’s own vote or opinion with their prediction about how others will answer.
Andrea Tapia, professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), has been named IST’s associate dean for research, effective Sept. 1.
Authors experiencing writer’s block could soon have a new way to help develop the next section of their story. Researchers at the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology recently introduced a new technology that forecasts the future development of an ongoing written story.
The College of Information Sciences and Technology, in collaboration with IST student government, announced the launch of the IST Honor Code. Signing serves as a symbolic commitment that individuals will uphold the expectations of the IST community and affirms their commitment to the Penn State Values and the University’s emphasis on academic integrity.
Thanks to established capabilities with IT from personal experiences, previous internships, and things learned in the classroom at the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, rising senior Bailey Rumford landed a summer internship providing end-user IT support at the Agricultural Research Service, the chief scientific in-house research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The Penn State Berks Data Lions team recently took first place in the Anthem AI ‘Substance Use Disorder and Whole Health of the Person’ Hackathon, a competition to identify risk factors related to substance use, and conditions indicative of underlying substance abuse.
Digital badges used as emblems to indicate an accomplishment or skill is a concept familiar to online learners seeking advanced knowledge in their profession. For many learners, digital badges have been used as a motivation to continue along a prescribed path — often through workshop attendance or completion of required online learning modules. But what about independent or self-guided learners who may wish to study certain topics or complete learning at their own pace?
Eight new faculty members will join the College of Information Sciences and Technology this fall, strengthening the college’s research portfolio and enhancing IST’s growing number of academic programs — including a residential master’s degree in cybersecurity analytics and operations and bachelor’s degree in enterprise technology and integration, both launched in fall 2020.
Researchers received a $900,000 grant to create artificial intelligence that can plan for and solve future problems. They will test the new software on the video game Minecraft.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many significant changes to people's lives, but one of the most visible signals of this has been the proliferation of masks and other face-coverings in public spaces. In a recent study, researchers from the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology developed a new method for assessing public compliance with local mask mandates by analyzing publicly available video feeds.
After starting a company whose proceeds benefited Venezuelans living in poverty and working in a number of startups in various industries, College of Information Sciences and Technology student Izaak Lustgarten landed a summer position with Bank of America as a global quantitative analytics intern. In his role, he analyzes data to help the bank make informed decisions for its digital banking.
Like many interns over the past 16 months, Penn State senior Katie Byrd expected her internship with Universal Health Services Inc. to be entirely virtual. But after her first week, she gave up her quiet, virtual workspace in exchange for a fast-paced hospital environment when public health guidelines allowed for a switch to an in-person experience.
The College of Information Sciences and Technology will honor Alayna Spriggle as student marshal for its summer 2021 commencement, which will be held at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 14, at the Bryce Jordan Center.
As online fake news detectors and spam filters become more sophisticated, so do attackers’ methods to trick them — including attacks through the “universal trigger.” In this learning-based method, an attacker uses a phrase or set of words to fool an indefinite number of inputs, which could lead to more fake news appearing in your social media feed or spam reaching your email inbox.
Shubham Mishra, a rising sophomore studying data sciences in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, believed that if he was hardworking and willing to find an internship, he could be hired even though he had only just completed his first year at Penn State. As a summer data analyst intern in the information technology department at Intelligent Direct, Inc., he’s getting a fast start on building experience for his future career.
A compilation of recent news, highlights and achievements from the College of Information Sciences and Technology community.
The Graduate School announces the Penn State alumni who have been elected to serve a three-year term on the Graduate School Alumni Society Board of Directors beginning July 1.
Penn State students Bill Chen and Howard Hong are working with a team of fellow students to make sure that during a crisis no one else feels alone by developing an active listening application called PsySpace while competing in the Nittany AI Challenge.
At the College of Information Sciences and Technology, doctoral student Jeongwon Jo has benefited from having access to an interdisciplinary network of experts and scholars to help advance her research. And because of those collaborations and mentors, in part, Jo and her co-authors earned the Best Paper Award at the Communications and Technologies 2021 conference for the first paper she’s published since she began her doctoral program at Penn State.
How does modern digital technology shape our world and our perceptions? That is a question investigated by students in an emerging issues and technologies course this spring in the College of Information Sciences and Technology. Structured around a text by Martin Heidegger titled The Question Concerning Technology, students were given opportunities throughout the semester to post thought-provoking discussion questions and present their viewpoints.
The Penn State Center for Security Research and Education is announcing its Fall 2021 Grant Program to support security-related scholarship and educational programs at Penn State. University faculty and researchers are eligible to apply by Sept. 30.
Jacob Meissner never imagined he’d work in technology after obtaining his bachelor’s degree in English from Penn State. But a side job working for computer support at the University quickly opened his eyes to the countless opportunities available within the field — and led him to his current role as director of security engineering for Disney Streaming.
Erica Mi, a rising junior at Penn State, is working for IBM this summer as part of a project management internship — the latest endeavor she’s exploring during an ambitious college career.
When it comes to what users share on Twitter, women and users who never attended college voluntarily disclose more personal information than users from other socioeconomic and demographic backgrounds — potentially making these populations more susceptible to online privacy threats, according to a recent study led by the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology.
When Nia Anderson started thinking of career paths as she nears graduation, she saw herself as a business analyst. Through the support and knowledge of her virtual summer IT Innovation internship with PepsiCo, and a growing interest in artificial intelligence, she now wants to take a path within data science.
As a member of the College of Information Sciences and Technology’s first graduating class and a long-time alumni volunteer, Steve Pipino has established the Pipino Family Annually Funded Scholarship in the college to benefit first-generation students and students with demonstrated need.