UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Ten new faculty members will join the College of Information Sciences and Technology for the 2020-21 academic year.
The new faculty will support the rapidly growing college and the addition of three new degree programs: a bachelor’s degree in enterprise technology integration, a master’s degree in cybersecurity analytics and operations, and an online bachelor’s degree in cybersecurity analytics and operations through Penn State World Campus.
The incoming faculty members include:
— Jeffrey Bardzell, professor, will serve as the associate dean for undergraduate and graduate studies. Most recently, as professor of informatics at Indiana University – Bloomington, he served as director of the Human Computer Interaction Design program in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering. His research interests are in human-computer interaction, specifically on design theory and emerging social computing practices. He holds master’s and doctoral degrees in comparative literature from Indiana University.
— Shaowen Bardzell, professor, previously served as a professor in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University – Bloomington, where she was also the director of the Center for Critical and Humanistic Computing, co-director of the Cultural Research in Technology lab, and a Faculty Fellow with the Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics. Her research focuses on feminist human-computer interaction (HCI), computational and sustainable food systems, women’s health, research through design and social justice-oriented HCI. She is vice president on the ACM SIGCHI executive committee, and is co-editor of “Critical Theory and Interaction Design (MIT Press, 2018) and co-author of “Humanistic HCI” (Morgan & Claypool, 2015). She holds a doctorate in comparative literature from Indiana University – Bloomington.
— Margaret "Peggy" Fisher, lecturer, returns to the College of IST as a full-time lecturer. For the last three years, she taught IST courses through Penn State World Campus while working as a content strategist at LinkedIn. During her previous term as lecturer, Fisher also served as the College of IST’s K-12 outreach program content manager, collaborating with the recruiting and marketing divisions to plan summer camps and other outreach opportunities. She also was awarded the college’s Junior Faculty Excellence in Teaching award in 2015. Fisher earned her master’s degree in math education from Arcadia University.
— Hadi Hosseini, assistant professor, brings research and teaching expertise in the field of artificial intelligence. Most recently, he was an assistant professor in the computer science department at Rochester Institute of Technology and a postdoctoral research fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. Previously, he served as an adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo where he was the recipient of the university-wide award in exceptional teaching. In addition to AI, his research interests include multiagent systems, algorithmic economics and game theory, and his work is supported by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation. He holds a doctoral degree in computer science from the University of Waterloo.
— Hong Hu, assistant professor, comes to Penn State from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he served as a research scientist and postdoctoral fellow. His research interests are in software security and system security. Hu received a doctorate in computer sciences from the National University of Singapore.
— Mohamed Meky, associate teaching professor, has more than 20 years of teaching and research experience in higher education, as well as two decades of industry experience in telecommunication companies including AT&T and Verizon. Most recently, he was an assistant professor of computer science at Lock Haven University, where he also led the networking and cyber security program. He holds a doctoral degree in electrical engineering from the Graduate Center, City University of New York.
— Henry Moeller, lecturer, has managed various aspects of information technology at Penn State for more than 20 years — most recently providing oversight for one of the teams maintaining the University’s Enterprise Infrastructure and previously overseeing IT project management for University Park’s Enterprise Data Center. Henry has also served more than 20 years in the military between his service in the United States Marine Corps and the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, where he has gained expertise in data classification, encryption, digital field artillery, and electronic warfare. He holds a bachelor of arts in crime, law, and justice, and a master of professional studies in cybersecurity and information assurance, both from Penn State.
— Kaamran Raahemifar, teaching professor, has more than 20 years of experience teaching at Ryerson University, the University of Windsor, and the Sharif University of Technology. He has led and advised in the development of curriculum in areas of data science, artificial intelligence, user experience, and smart-connected devices, among others, at several institutions. In his research, he received the largest discovery-based federal grant from NSERC in the application of blockchain in sustainable energy. An entrepreneur, he served as CEO of Tulutech Inc., and has mentored and advised more than 18 student-centered startup companies. He earned a doctoral degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Windsor.
— Justin Silverman, assistant professor, is a co-hire with both the Department of Medicine, where he will serve as assistant professor, and the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences at Penn State. Silverman recently earned both a medical degree and doctorate in computational biology and bioinformatics from Duke University. His research interests include Bayesian statistics, genomics, epidemiology and compositional data analysis. Through his doctoral work, he developed new transformations for working with microbiome data and for modeling longitudinal sequence count studies.
— Dan Welch, assistant teaching professor, recently earned a doctorate in computer science from Clemson University. His research interests include software verification, programming languages, and computer science education. His research, which focuses primarily on the design and usability of IDEs for writing high integrity software, has been published and won first place at the graduate student research competition at SIGCSE 2017.