Research

ICS researcher to speak on data privacy within scientific research

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Tim Brick, a Penn State professor of human development and family studies, will discuss “The MID/DLE Way: Privacy by Design for Science in Real Time” from 1:30 to 3 p.m. on March 1. The event will be held in 233A HUB-Robeson Center.

This talk is hosted by the Institute for CyberScience (ICS) as part of the institute’s CyberScience Seminars. These free, public events showcase how computational research addresses real-world scientific and social problems.

Brick will discuss the Maintained Individual Data / Distributed Likelihood Evaluation (MID/DLE), an approach to data privacy that reconciles the needs of researchers with the desire of subjects to control their own personal data. Researchers using personal data often want the data to be openly available so that their analyses can be peer-reviewed and replicated by other scientists. But this desire is in tension with privacy ethics, which suggests that personal data should be kept under tight controls.

“Personal data can be a powerful resource for researchers in the social and health sciences, but we also need to reckon with the privacy implications of intensive personal data collection,” said ICS Director Jenni Evans. “Tim's project could have a major impact on how data is collected and controlled across a wide range of fields.”

Brick, an ICS co-hire, researches how people interact with their environment and with each other. His interests encompass various topics such as the dynamics of facial expression, non-verbal communication, wearable technology, data mining, simulation, adaptive education with robots, and data privacy and protection. 

Space is limited, so please reserve a seat at the seminar by Feb. 23. The event includes Brick’s talk, a question and answer session, and time to socialize over refreshments. Register or learn more here.

This ICS CyberScience Seminar can also be viewed through Zoom: https://psu.zoom.us/j/825885288. 

The Institute for CyberScience is one of the five interdisciplinary research institutes under the Office of the Vice President for Research, and is dedicated to supporting cyber-enabled research across the disciplines. ICS builds an active community of researchers using computational methods in a wide range of fields through co-hiring of tenure-track faculty, providing seed funding for ambitious computational research projects, and offering access to high-performance computing resources through its Advanced CyberInfrastructure. With the support of ICS, Penn State researchers harness the power of big data, big simulation, and big computing to solve the world’s problems. For more information, visit https://ics.psu.edu or email ics@psu.edu.

Tim Brick, assistant professor of human development and family studies, strives to find a way for scientists to use subjects' personal data in their research while protecting the privacy of the subjects. Credit: Penn StateCreative Commons

Last Updated February 15, 2018