Research Centers and Labs

The College of IST's research centers, labs, and groups include national and international scholars which cover a broad spectrum of research areas. The diversity of research we cover is driven by our spirit for interdisciplinary collaborations that advance discovery at the intersection of information, technology, and society. In addition to our own facilities, we have relationships with related centers and labs across Penn State.

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Accessibility (A11y) Lab

A11y stands for Accessibility – there are 11 letters between the “A” and the “y." We believe accessibility is a human right; we also believe making things accessible for people with disabilities is a hard problem. Often, this problem is layered, multi-dimensinoal, and difficult to describe and theorize. At A11y Lab, we aim to address how to make non-visual interaction as efficient as visual interaction; how to make Assistive Technologies easy-to-learn, frictionless, and ubiquitous; how to build new assistive technology to augment or empower human capability; and how to design robust, efficient, and extensible accessibility APIs in modern Operating Systems.

Learn more: Accessibility (A11y) Lab
AI for Cyber Security through Big Data

Harvesting big data related to cyber security using AI requires the identification of (1) use-inspired problems that can be addressed using AI, and (2) cyber security challenges that require the advancement of fundamental topics in AI. This research lab aims to achieve both goals by leveraging related real-world big data.

Learn more: AI for Cyber Security through Big Data
Algorithmic Learning, Privacy and Security (ALPS) Laboratory

The ALPS Laboratory is a group of multidisciplinary researchers that conducts cutting-edge research at the intersection of machine learning, computational privacy, and cybersecurity. Our mission is to fully unleash the potential of data-driven algorithmic systems to support groundbreaking discoveries and critical decision-making. We look to the real world for practical and important problems. Then, we aim to develop effective, scalable analytical tools to empower such systems and mitigate their negative impact on individuals and society.

Learn more: Algorithmic Learning, Privacy and Security Laboratory
Applied Cognitive Science Laboratory

The Applied Cognitive Science Laboratory aims to understand how the mind works by modeling its output and process through precise, computational, predictive descriptions. Our projects focus on models that explain human behavior for testing human-computer interfaces, expand our understanding of network formation, and explore how moderators such as caffeine and stress influence behavior. Our simulations show how the mind interacts with networked teams and communities and how these properties give rise to emergent group cognition.

Learn more: Applied Cognitive Science Laboratory
Artificial Intelligence Research Laboratory

The Artificial Intelligence Research Laboratory conducts research in artificial intelligence, machine learning, data mining, information integration, and semantic web. Its projects explore applications in bioinformatics, engineering informatics, cheminformatics, materials informatics, social informatics, and related areas.

Learn more: Artificial Intelligence Research Laboratory
Center for Artificial Intelligence Foundations and Scientific Applications (CENSAI)
The Center for Artificial Intelligence Foundations and Scientific Applications (CENSAI) aims to foster collaborative, interdisciplinary research across Penn State and beyond aimed at addressing the AI grand challenge of accelerating scientific progress through synergistic advances across multiple areas of AI, including literature-based discovery, scientific knowledge representation, experiment planning and optimization, machine learning and causal inference, and human-AI collaboration.
Learn more: Center for Artificial Intelligence Foundations and Scientific Applications (CEN…
Center for Big Data and Discovery Informatics

The Center for Big Data Analytics and Discovery Informatics aims to accelerate advances in a number of fields by addressing the challenges in data management, data integration, data analytics, and predictive modeling and simulation to realize the full potential of big data. Our researchers seek to understand how scientists, decision makers, and the public at large can use this wealth of information to drive not only scientific discovery but also decisions and policies.

Learn more: Center for Big Data and Discovery Informatics
Center for Cyber-Security, Information Privacy, and Trust

The Center for Cyber-Security, Information Privacy, and Trust—also known as the LIONS Center—conducts interdisciplinary research in cybersecurity and privacy. We pursue projects that detect and remove threats of information misuse to the human society, mitigate risk, reduce uncertainty, and enhance predictability and trust. Our goal is to play a leading role in helping Penn State pursue security and risk research and development opportunities for the Department of Homeland Security, National Security Agency, and Department of Defense.

Learn more: Center for Cyber-Security, Information Privacy, and Trust
Center for Human-Computer Interaction

The Center for Human-Computer Interaction is an interdisciplinary organizational unit for human-computer interaction research, instruction, and outreach within Penn State and beyond. The center seeks to leverage and integrate diverse HCI activities throughout the University to facilitate interdisciplinary faculty interaction relating to HCI issues, problems, and opportunities. Our work currently focuses on software and information design, end-user programming and design, collaborative learning, online communities, training and instructional design, community health applications, and many other areas.

Learn more: Center for Human-Computer Interaction
Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence

The Penn State Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence is a multi-unit initiative that promotes the thoughtful development and application of AI and studies its impact on all areas of human endeavor. In addition to supporting research focused explicitly on AI for social good and mitigating threats from its misuse, through this center, Penn State encourages that all AI research and development activities consider social and ethical implications as well as intended and possible unintended consequences. 

Learn more: Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence
Collaboration and Innovation Laboratory

The Collaboration and Innovation Laboratory works in concert with the Center for Human-Computer Interaction. Our research addresses a wide range of challenge areas in which people collectively and individually use information technology to learn and solve problems. Our work currently focuses on software and information design, end-user programming and design, collaborative learning, online communities, training and instructional design, community health applications, and many other areas.

Learn more: Collaboration and Innovation Laboratory
Crisis Informatics Lab

The Crisis Informatics Lab is a confederation of faculty, graduate students and community organizations all aimed at studying and developing strategies for how technologies could improve and empower physical communities, their leaders and their organizations. We are concerned with the ways in which social, cultural, political, economic, and organizational structures impact and are impacted by information technologies. We are highly interdisciplinary team drawing from several academic fields, such as information science, information systems, computer science, software engineering, social sciences, planning, development studies, and sociology to answer our questions.

Learn more: Crisis Informatics Lab
Crowd-AI Laboratory

The Crowd-AI Laboratory focuses on combining artificial intelligence with crowdsourcing to create systems that are more usable, robust, and intelligent. Our researchers work on real-time crowdsourcing, conversational agents, technical human-computer interaction, and natural language processing to understand how people can use automated technologies in context and how automated technologies serve people’s practical needs.

Learn more: Crowd-AI Laboratory
Cyber Security Laboratory

The Cyber Security Laboratory aims to advance leading cybersecurity knowledge and discovery across a variety of domains. Current and past projects have explored attack-resilient automated control of unmanned aerial vehicles, privacy protection in social networks, software plagiarism detection, classification and attribution of malware analysis, security issues related to Internet of Things devices, computer-aided human centric cyber situation awareness, and proactive worm containment, among many others.

Learn more: Cyber Security Laboratory
Data Science and Machine Learning Lab

The Data Science and Machine Learning Lab was founded by Dr. Suhang Wang in 2018. We conduct cutting-edge research on data mining, machine learning and graph mining with applications to social media mining, recommender systems and healthcare. Some ongoing projects include effective labeled data generation via GAN, trustworthy graph neural networks (interpretable, robust, fair and privacy-preserving), and causal recommender systems.

Learn more: Data Science and Machine Learning Lab
Data Studies Group

The Data Studies Group is an interdisciplinary hub for Penn State faculty members and graduate students interested in exploring data, datafication, and digital life through critical, humanistic, and social scientific lenses. Relevant research themes include (for example): privacy and surveillance; AI and automated decision-making; data ethics, law, and policy; political economy of data; internet governance; data and the environment; and gig economies/futures of work. Beyond conducting research, DSG hosts a bi-weekly reading group, informal research colloquia, and speakers from inside and outside Penn State. The group is run by Daniel Susser in Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology and Rock Ethics Institute.

Learn more: Data Studies Group
FAIR Lab

The FAIR Lab @ Penn State conducts foundational research at the intersection of artificial intelligence, economics, and computation. Our goal is to design novel principled solutions for robust and fair decision-making in the presence of multiple intelligent entities (e.g., humans, robots, or autonomous agents). These AI solutions have profound impact on several real-world applications ranging from healthcare resource allocation and refugee placement to recommendation systems and gig economies.

Learn more: FAIR Lab
Health and Play Lab

The Health and Play Lab conducts human-computer interaction (HCI) research and focuses on health and play as two important human values. Fundamentally, we explore how technologies could support people and communities to be healthier and more playful.

Learn more: Health and Play Lab
Human Language Technologies Laboratory

The Human Language Technologies Laboratory aims to solve problems to enable computers to do meaningful work with large volumes of text. Natural language is crucial to how humans communicate, synthesize, and store information. Our researchers develop methods for natural language processing and apply them to a variety of domains, including privacy, online social networks, web science, and digital libraries.

Learn more: Human Language Technologies Laboratory
Institute for Information Policy

The Institute for Information Policy is a joint venture of the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications and the College of Information Sciences and Technology. The IIP conducts groundbreaking research and innovative programs on the social implications of information technology, with an emphasis on the potential of information technologies for improving democratic discourse, social responsibility, and quality of life. Its annual workshops unite experts to share research on issues of access and security.

Learn more: Institute for Information Policy
Intelligent Information Systems Laboratory

The Intelligent Information Systems Research Laboratory aims to explore and support all levels of research that will improve and enhance our ability to generate, manage, search, and mine information and knowledge. Current research covers internet database design and analysis, mobile web computing, web mining and navigation, web agents, novel and intelligent web tools, multimedia retrieval, web and internet models, web usage, automatic content analysis and digital libraries, web search, niche search engines, and information retrieval.

Learn more: Intelligent Information Systems Laboratory
Knowledge Visualization Laboratory

The Knowledge Visualization Laboratory seeks to understand the frontier issues in visual analytics, an area with a goal to augment data-driven decision-making by bridging computational capacities of computing systems and analytical skills of human beings. Our research focuses on the visualization-based tools that have become essential to human-data interaction by exploring the relevant cognitive theories, such as visual cognition, problem-solving theories, and learning theories, that impact human-computer interaction and decision-making.

Learn more: Knowledge Visualization Laboratory
Penn State Information, Knowledge, and wEb (PIKE) Laboratory

The Penn State Information, Knowledge, and Web Laboratory—also known as PIKE—researches issues involving the management of and mining in data in diverse forms, including structured records, text, multimedia, social media, and web. Current and past projects have focused on developing computational techniques to detect and prevent fake news, creating a fairness-aware recommendation engine between cybersecurity job postings and job seekers' skills, and advancing machine learning methods to model the psychological phenomenon known as memory illusion.

Learn more: Penn State Information, Knowledge, and wEb Laboratory
Red Cell Analytics Laboratory

The Red Cell Analytics Laboratory promotes the research, practice, and application of structured analytics, critical thinking, and visual analytics, and collaborates with University and external partners on security and risk-related problems. Our goal is to provide hands-on experience using structured analytics to examine real-world issues, including cyberthreats, natural disasters, and physical threats. We think like the adversary to identify blind spots and gaps in the systems that are in place today.

Learn more: Red Cell Analytics Laboratory
Software Systems Security Laboratory

The Software Systems Security Laboratory explores the broad area of software systems, including software security, protection, analysis, verification, software and information assurance, programming languages, and software engineering. Our research improves the practice of software design and implementation by creating high assurance secure computing and information platforms and systems, improving software and systems security, developing innovative software analysis and verification technologies, and promoting rigorous and secure software engineering practice.

Learn more: Software Systems Security Laboratory
Spatial Information and Intelligence Laboratory

The Spatial Information and Intelligence Laboratory supports research activities that integrate computer vision, natural language understanding, human-computer conversation interactions/HCI, geographical information systems/visualization, collaborative systems, and geospatial decision-support technologies to address the grand challenge of large-scale, geocollaborative applications in digital government, crisis management, and civic engagement.

Learn more: Spatial Information and Intelligence Laboratory
The RAISE Lab

The RAISE Lab @ Penn State is a group of artificial intelligence (AI) researchers that makes foundational contributions to the field of Responsible AI for Social Emancipation. Our goal is to advance the state-of-the-art in AI tools and algorithms to solve critical challenges faced by marginalized communities around the world, while ensuring that our algorithms do not exacerbate existing health, social, and economic inequities in society.

Learn more: The RAISE Lab
User Agency Lab

The User Agency Lab studies issues involving how information, user information, and systems structure influence user agency. Current and past projects have explored ride sharing, collaborative documents, crowdsourcing, and social media.

Learn more: User Agency Lab
Wellbeing & Health Innovation Laboratory

The Wellbeing & Health Innovation Laboratory aims to develop novel human-computer interaction and UbiComp technologies to improve health and wellbeing at scale. Our research leverages mobile phones, sensors, and online data to passively model health behaviors and contexts. We also design data-driven and just-in-time interventions with a focus on sustained engagement. Our interdisciplinary research includes passive sensing of sleep and circadian disruption, relapse detection in bipolar disorder, and using Amazon Alexa for effective PTSD interventions.

Learn more: Wellbeing & Health Innovation Laboratory