Anna Squicciarini, assistant professor at Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) who works primarily in data security and privacy, was recently honored with the PNC Career Development Professorship in IST in recognition of her early career achievements in teaching, research and service. The appointment is for a three-year period.
“Anna has been a very active and productive part of the College of IST,” said Dean David Hall. “She is becoming a recognized scholar in the area of information trust and privacy.”
The College of IST offers two early career professorship positions: the PNC Early Career Professorship and the Don Haile Early Career Professorship, which is currently held by Jens Grossklags. Squicciarini is replacing Dr. Heng Xu, associate professor in the College of IST, who has held the PNC professorship for the past three years. The positions are intended to acknowledge the efforts of a young tenure-track faculty member (typically in the period of the second to fifth year of their tenure-track process).
“I am honored to receive this recognition," Squicciarini said. "It’s nice to know that the college is recognizing my efforts and that I’ve been able to do good work in my research, teaching and services."
The PNC Career Development Professorship provides some discretionary funding that the faculty member may use to support his or her research, instruction, educational activities and associated travel. Selection of a candidate for the early career professorship is done based on recommendations from the Dean’s Executive Committee to the dean. Final approval is obtained from the provost based on a letter of recommendation by the dean.
Squicciarini, who joined the College of IST in 2008, earned her doctorate in computer science from the University of Milan, Italy, in 2006. Her main research interests include trust negotiations, privacy, and access control for grid computing systems. Currently, she is exploring security issues in the context of social networks, and is developing security mechanisms for cloud computing systems. Her teaching activities cover topics in security and database systems.
Squicciarini has published 23 articles in refereed journals and 58 papers in refereed conference proceedings. She has co-authored a book, one book chapter and a technical report. In addition, she has received over $1.5 million in research awards from sponsors including the National Science Foundation, National Security Agency, Hewlett Packard Company and Google. She has taught several undergraduate courses in the College of IST’s Security and Risk Analysis (SRA) major and is mentoring three doctoral candidates and two master's students.
Squicciarini also is the main investigator of the NSF funded project “Scholarship for Service” program, which awards scholarships to graduate and undergraduate students interested in pursuing a career in CyberSecurity.
In addition, Hall said, Squicciarini has “assisted IST via course development committees and participated in gender diversity efforts such as our IST Tech Savvy Camp for Girls, and the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) program.”
Squicciarini said she plans to use the funds that have been granted to her through the PNC professorship by reaching out giving talks on her areas of expertise, particularly cloud computing and confidentiality issues related to social media sites.