Michael McNeese, Ph.D. Associate Dean for Research, Graduate Programs, and Academic Affairs

Michael McNeese, Ph.D.Associate Dean for Research, Graduate Programs, and Academic Affairs

College of Information Sciences and Technology

The Pennsylvania State UniversityUniversity Park, PAResearch Overview

College of Information Sciences & Technologyist.psu.edu

FocusCurrent Research ProgressSample of 4 different research areas / typesCyber Situation AwarenessDOW ChemSeerSocial Deliberation TechnologiesCancer InformaticsLooking Forward Hot topics to pursueResearch Laboratories


*College of Information Sciences & Technologyist.psu.edu

*Current Research Perspectives:

State of the Art Perspectives


Areas of Academic Excellence

Social Policy, Economics and Informatics - Information policy - Social informatics - Technologies for Social Inclusion - Impact of Information Technology on Everyday Life - Medical Informatics Security, Privacy and Informatics - Cyber security - System survivability - Privacy and trust - Intrusion detection - Network and system security - Risk analysis and uncertainty modeling - Human information behavior Information Systems / Enterprise Architecture - Information systems design & development - Design rationale and capture - Enterprise architecture and integration - IT project management - Operational analysis and planning - Technology forecasting - Globally distributed teams - Management of complex techno-organizational systems

Human Computer Interaction - Human computer interaction - Community informatics - Cognitive studies - Emergency crisis management

Computing Informatics - Computing technologies - Computational methods - Cloud based computing - Search engines - Machine learning and pattern recognition - Semantic labeling of images and signals - Mathematical foundations of information technology

Cognition and Networked Intelligence Systems - Artificial intelligence - Information fusion - Market-based resource allocation - Intelligent agents - Hard and soft information fusion - Participatory sensing


Funding GrowthResearch Awards Credited to IST


Chart1

5791654

6963621

7618339

5475374

8749819

8069197

7678954

Sheet1

YearsDollars

2000/01$1,790,014

2001/02$2,567,121

2002/03$3,162,739

2003/04$3,715,084

2004/05$5,417,880

2005/06$5,791,654

2006/07$6,963,621

2007/08$7,618,339

2008/09$5,475,374

2009/10$8,749,819

2010/11$8,069,197

2011/12$7,678,954

$66,999,796

Sheet1

Sheet2

Sheet3

Current IST SponsorsGrant Awards in 2011/2012 = $6,678,954


Chart1

1228139

1436376

308364

917016

1734364

167396

Research Sponsors - Fiscal Year 2011/2012$6,678,954

Sheet1

Industry1,212,655

NSF2,919,411

Commonwealth of PA346,364

Other Federal176,506

DOD737,953

University25,000

5,417,889

Sheet1

Research Sponsors - Fiscal Year 2004$5,417,889

Sheet2

Industry1,228,139

NSF1,436,376

Commonwealth of PA308,364

Other Federal917,016

DOD1,734,364

University167,396

Sheet2

Research Sponsors - Fiscal Year 2005$5,791,654

Sheet3

Research GrowthFunding Growth in Research Grants

11-1212-132345Time Period: Jul1-Feb1+ 49% growth increaseGrant Production(Millions $$$)


Select Current Research GrantsMURI Cyber SA Grant (Liu, McNeese, Hall, Yen, & others)

NSF Social-Deliberation Grant (Carroll & Cai)

Dow Chemical (Lee Giles)

SSRI Cancer Informatics / Social Networks (John Yen)

* Different Types of Grants via different venues of funding


Cyber SA MURI - $1.25milObjectives:Understand cognitive/contextual elements of situation awareness in cyber-security domainsImplement a systems perspective to research linking real-world analysts with theory and human- in-the-loop experiments Utilize Multi-Modal research methodology Focus on the human / teamwork elements within real context applications

Accomplishments Developed framework /process for studying SA in cyber security via a Living Laboratory frameworkCollected interview/survey data from practicing analystsImplemented a simulation toolset for cyber SA to support human in loop experimentsConducted experiments in transactive memory, dynamic task prioritization and visualization aidsDeveloped new SA evaluation metrics framework Challenges Rapid evolution of cyber threats and threat environments Access to domain experts and state of the art practice

Scientific/Technical ApproachLiving laboratory framework involving:Ethnographic studiesKnowledge elicitation of domain expertsDevelopment of cognitive and process frameworks and theoriesImplementation of a scaled world prototypeConduct of human-in-the-loop experimentsAnalysis and transition to real-world environments


MotivationImprovement in Cyber SA requires focus on the ultimate limited resource: the human cyber analyst. This requires understanding of the cognitive processes, limitations and issues associated with perception, cognition and decision making for cyber SA.

Summary of AccomplishmentsWe conducted three experiments on: i) transactive memory, ii) task prioritization and iii) visual analytics in cyber-security using the NETS scaled-world simulator developed during the prior year.We collected and analyzed additional empirical data through the ethnographic study of eight corporate security experts and completed a survey of 60 cyber/IT professionals. We completed two Ph.D. dissertations and one Masters thesis, one proposal defense.We disseminated our findings via peer-review journal articles, conference papers, edited book chapters, and presentations.Professor Cooke / Professor McNeese overseeing final production of ICST Special Issue on Cognition and Cyber-Security.Conducted joint online survey with Professor Cookes group of another 66 cyber/IT professionals.

Cyber SA MURI


Cyber SA MURIStudents supported:Four graduates/undergraduate students: Nicklaus Giacobe (100%), Vincent Mancuso (50%), Dev Minotra (15 %), Eric McMillan (50%)Three faculty (D. Hall, M. McNeese, M. Ballora) Note: funding for all faculty provided by Penn State Degrees awarded: (MS, Ph.D.) : E. McMillan (M.S.), V. Mancuso (Ph.D.), D. Minotra (Ph.D.)Degrees in progress: N. Giacobe (Ph.D.)Publications:Refereed journal papers - 1Conference papers 6Book and book chapters - 3Dissertations and Theses - 3Technology Transitions:Interactions with industryEthnographic studies/knowledge elicitation with network analysts working in education, military, government, and industry domains.Briefings provided to several companies including: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Corporation, MITRE, Computer Sciences Corporation, Lincoln Laboratory, Penn State IT Security group, USAF and IST Advisory Board.Interactions with other government agenciesBriefings presented to representatives from the National Security Agency (NSA), Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), Office of Naval Research (ONR), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Department of Defense Intelligence Information Systems (DoDIIS)Communication with Dr. Vic Fennimore, USAF AFRL research scientist, to explore collaboration and use of the simulation for USAF. Dr. Vincent Mancuso now working as an AFRL (Wright-Patterson AFB, OH) as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Cyber SA.

Awards: VAST 2011 Mini Challenge 2 Award: Innovative Tool Adaption


- Democratic civic engagement is a critical component of social life in local communities.

- Geodeliberation is concerned with the use of advanced geospatial information and online deliberation technologies for expanding and deepening the engagement of local communities in addressing geographically complex problems.

- Geodeliberation is one of the most sophisticated types of democratic deliberation that occurs in real world, such as community planning for sustainability, environmental management, and disaster response.

GeoDeliberation

Enabling Democratic Civil Engagement with Local Communities For Spatial Decision-Making(NSF IIS-1211059. PIs: Guoray Cai and Jack Carroll. Duration: 2012-2015)


Developing Theories of GeoDeliberationState College Downtown Master Plan

We are working with State College Borough to conduct field work for: better understanding of community deliberation practice, and Generating impact of our research to local communities.


Developing Advanced Technologies: GeoDeliberator


DOW - The Evolution of Big Data ObservationalGathers data by direct observationAnalyzes dataAnalytical Builds analytical modelMakes predictions.Computational Simulate analytical modelValidate model and makes predictions Data ExplorationData captured by instruments from web, sensors, environment; generated by simulation and digitization of everything.Information extractionPlaced in data structuresAnalyze/mine/search dataAccess crucialBusinesses, governments, scientists, Similar problemsJim Grays paradigmSolution: Large scale Information Extraction and Search


DOW -Chemistry (and Pharma)

Chemistry is an old but still important discipline with publications and company documents going back 100 years; companies are large and profitable. e.g. Dow Chemical has a large ongoing research collaboration with Penn State

Most companies have several millions of valuable, proprietary documents and data plus open source information such as patents.

Chemical informatics a growing field with many opportunities: Need specialized automatic data extraction and ranking and search for: Chemical formulae and name search Table search Figure search Expert search Integration with other data and information sources

ChemxSeer system built on commercial grade open source tools such as Solr/ Lucene from funding from NSF Chemistry Grant PIs: Lee Giles and Prasenjit Mitra, advisor: Karl Mueller Does much of the above Enterprise tools inadequate, expensive, cannot be programmed


DOW -Automated Figure Data Extraction and SearchLarge amount of results in digital documents are recorded in figures, time series, experimental results (eg., NMR spectra, income growth) and this is the only record of the dataExtraction for purposes of:Further modeling using presented dataIndexing, meta-data creation for storage & search on figures for data reuseCurrent extraction done manually; doesnt scale!



*Social Science Research Institute Grant Penn State UniversityDr. John Yen and others

Cancer Informatics / Social Networks



*Looking Ahead:

State of Possibilities


Future TrajectoryImmediate Goals:Strongly activate Research Centers and Laboratories

Increase research revenue through getting more IST faculty involvement Grantsmanship workshops - trips to NSF and other funding program managersAdditional faculty support to buyout courses (certain grants will not allow that anymore)Scholarships to obtain top Ph.D. student applicants

IST job search - hire in research areas where there is the most impactSome areas we are very strong in currently other areas have some gaps


Increased Revenue Desired2012-13 2014-15


Chart1

5791654

6963621

7618339

5475374

8749819

8069197

7678954

Sheet1

YearsDollars

2000/01$1,790,014

2001/02$2,567,121

2002/03$3,162,739

2003/04$3,715,084

2004/05$5,417,880

2005/06$5,791,654

2006/07$6,963,621

2007/08$7,618,339

2008/09$5,475,374

2009/10$8,749,819

2010/11$8,069,197

2011/12$7,678,954

$66,999,796

Sheet1

Sheet2

Sheet3

Looking Ahead Future IST Investments Hot Topical Areas for Funding

1. Cyber-Social Informatics

2. Big Data Cloud Computing

3. Human-Centered Design

4. Medical and Bio-Informatics

Very Strong Currently in # 1 and # 3 / Developing Strength in # 2

Some Critical Gaps in # 4


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Specific Areas*College of Information Sciences & Technologyist.psu.edu

*1. Cyber-Social Informatics Adversarial simulations (Red-Blue Team Interactions)Distributed Decision Making using Collaborative TechnologiesEmergency Crisis Management and Intelligence2. Big Data - Cloud Computing Machine learning advancementsIGERT (big data in social science) will continue3. Human - Centered DesignHCI + cognitive science + human factorsGeo-collaborative systems, uninhabited air vehicles4. Medical and Bio-InformaticsPersonal medical information, computational models,Computer-supported cooperative work, health systems


What we needStrong growth - research expenditures 2013-16

Additional faculty support for researchEndowed or Named Faculty Chairs Buyouts of courses to focus more on researchBusiness-Industry Endowed Scholarships to become more competitive with top schools for new Ph.D. applicants

Not to be devastated by sequestration!Government in hunker-down mode / wait and see


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*Selected IST Research Laboratories


The Intelligent Information Systems Research Laboratory - Dr. Giles, DirectorVision-GoalsWith the increased digitization of life, we attempt to explore and understand how intelligent methodologies can create new or improved intelligent systems and investigate how such methods effectively utilize big data and advanced computingDescription of ResearchThe Intelligent Information Systems Research Laboratory explores and supports all levels of research to improve the ability to generate, manage, retrieve, mine, and communicate information and knowledge using advanced intelligent technologies. Research covers internet database design and analysis, mobile, Web mining and search, Web agents, novel and intelligent Web tools, multimedia information retrieval, Web and internet models, automatic content analysis, information extraction, social networks, and specialty search engines.Key FacultyDr. C. Lee Giles, (David Reese Professor)Dr. James Z. Wang, co-Director (Professor)Dr. Prasenjit Mitra (Associate Professor)Dr. Jessie Li (Assistant Professor)Dr. Zihan Zhou (Lecturer)


Cyber-Security Lab Dr. Liu, DirectorMission The Cyber Security Lab will be synonymous with seminal works in cyber-security research.Vision Detect and remove threats of information misuse to the human society. Produce leading scholars in cyber-security research.Goals The lab will be the best at performing inter-disciplinary research in cyber- security and privacy. The lab will play a leading role in helping Penn State pursue cybersecurity research opportunities that revolve around NSF, DoD, NSA, and DHS.Description of Research Current research focuses on four thrusts: (a) cyber situational awareness; (b) self-protecting (cloud) data centers; (c) system-wide security protection of mobile devices; (d) online privacy. We develop situation knowledge reference models. We build human-in-loop tools to track and analyze security analysts reasoning processes. We build self-monitoring, self-intrusion-detecting, self-diagnosing and self-recovering data centers. We do whole system vulnerability analysis and backdoor removal of mobile devices. We apply social sciences to do privacy-by-design.


Cyber-Security LabcontinuedKey Faculty Personnel

Dr. Anna Squicciarini (Assistant Professor)Dr. Dinghao Wu (Assistant Professor) Dr. Heng Xu (Associate Professor)Dr. Sencun Zhu (Associate Professor)


Spatial Information and Intelligence Lab Dr. Cai, DirectorVision and goalsSpatial 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, geocollabrative applications in digital government contexts. The lab has well positioned the College of IST as one of the prominent places in the field of geospatial information science (an important subarea of IST).

Current membersDr. Guoray Cai, Associate Professor of ISTBo Yu, Ph.D. student, ISTDong Chen, Ph.D. student, ISTLu Tan, visiting Ph.D. student, Chinese University of HongKongBenjamin Dodge, schreyer Honor student, Penn State


Spatial Information and Intelligence Lab - continuedRecent research newsThe lab has recently been renovated to a multimodal, multimedia research facility, with a new home in 102A IST building. Figure 1 shows the current configuration of the Lab. It covers 180 ft2 of usable area. This is functionally divided into Experimental Area (highlighted) and development Area. The experimental area hosts the DAVE-G and GCCM systems as well as conducting research experiment on geocollaborative crisis management.


MINDS Group Lab - Dr. McNeese, DirectorVisionThe laboratory is designed to a) understand complexity in real world contextualization utilizing a cognitive science/decision making purview b) utilize the living lab philosophy (ethnography of practice, knowledge elicitation, simulation, design), and c) engage a problem-based learning approach in the designs underlying cognitive technologies (decision aids, intelligent systems, HCI tools).

Description of ResearchCurrent research focuses on the role of team cognition (e.g., team mental models, situation awareness, and information sharing) as it impacts problem solving, memory and learning, and naturalistic decision making capabilities of teamwork. We design simulations that are based on literature reviews, the cognitive fieldwork of a given domain, and the perspective of workers with the domain. We have studied complexity in various domains inclusive of fighter pilot work, intelligent and image analyst work, police cognition, 911 operators in crisis management, command, control, communications, and intelligence work, cyber-security, hurricane crisis management, information fusion work.


MINDS Group Lab continued

Key Faculty

Dr. Michael McNeese (Associate Dean)Dr. David Hall (Dean of IST)Dr. Pete Forester (Senior Lecturer)Dr. Ed Glantz (Senior Lecturer)Mr. Marc Friedenberg, Esq. (Lecturer)Dr. Katherine Hamilton (Lecturer)


Extreme Events Lab/Red Cell Analytics Lab- Jake Graham, Director

Vision-Goals The vision of the EEL/RCA Lab is to unite participation across a wide span of academic and research disciplines within the College of IST and across Penn State University to address research projects that span the entire information chain from energy detection to knowledge creation. In keeping with its student-centric focus, the EEL/RCA Lab seeks to promote strengths and talents of our students in their endeavor to advance the study and development of the information sciences. Description of Research EEL/RCA Lab research explores the information chain from energy detection via sensors and human observation to physical modeling, signal and image processing, pattern recognition, knowledge creation, information infrastructure, and human decision-makingall in the context of organizations and the nation. Our research focuses on the gap between the collection of reports and data in computer systems and the knowledge and decisions in the minds of computer users.


Extreme Events Lab/Red Cell Analytics Lab- Jake Graham, Director

Key Faculty Personnel

Dr. Dave HallCol Jake GrahamDr. Rick TutwilerDr. Pete ForsterDr. Nick GiacobeDr. Steve Shaffer


Other important labsCollaboratory for Socio-Technical Scientists Dr. Tapia

Applied Cognition Lab Dr. Ritter

Computer Supported Collaboration and Learning- Dr. Rosson and Dr. Carroll

Knowledge Visualization Lab Dr. Luke Zhang

Smart Sensing Lab Dr. Chu

Health Information Technologies Lab Dr. Reddy

Information Searching and Learning Lab Dr. Jansen


**Macro perspective to current purview (12-13)****We are working with State College Borough to conduct field work for: better understanding of community deliberation practice, and Generating impact of our research to local communities.GeoDeliberator is a web-based application that can be configured to host one or more geodeliberative forums. It supports deliberative dialogue threads, provids a rich and interactive depiction of the geospatial issues and baseline geographical information, and visual-computational enablers for sense-making of large public discourses

For more details, see: Cai, G. and Yu, B., 2009, Spatial annotation technology for public deliberation. Transactions in GIS, 13 (s1). 123-146*This is where we have mapped out where future IST research investments need to focus these are areas that are hot and where we can position ourselves to make a difference in funding.

But we need to fill some gaps. We are very strong in # 1 and # 3 (one of the top around USA), #2 we are beginning to develop to be strong in, however #4 we are weaker in and need to buildup significantly. Note that if our Frymoyer chair comes thru with Vasant this is a great start for # 4 to focus on.

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Documents

Michael McNeese, Ph.D. Associate Dean for Research, Graduate Programs, and Academic Affairs