Fall 2014 Volume 1 Number 1explore.ist.psu.edu

College of Information Sciences and Technology

Explore IST

IST students test Google Glass

Wearable technology is infiltrat-ing today’s tech industry—first with wrist-based devices, and most recently with Google Glass—and Penn State students are getting the chance to test those technologies first-hand.

Students in the College of Informa-

tion Sciences and Technology are try-ing out the technology while it’s still in experimental stages.

Students in Dr. Irene Petrick’s class,

Innovation and Design in a Digital World, have been playing with the devices to understand how they work

and change their interactions with other people.

“That’s why we had them at the 2014 Dance Marathon,” Petrick said, adding that she had three rules for her students. “No bathrooms, no bedrooms, no bars. Go beyond that and experience what it’s like to interact with the world.”

One of her students, Meeten Doshi (senior-information sciences and tech-nology), said the idea of handing out technology like this to students was for them to obtain user feedback and find ways to improve the device.

He chose to take the device, which is worn just like a pair of glasses, with him to THON weekend, capturing the Pep Rally and a recap of the past five years of line dances. Not only did Doshi record a video of the events, but he also captured it from the same perspective he was witnessing it in real time, with a simple command: “Okay, Glass. Take a picture.”

“That was really something neat,” he said.

Hermes Frangoudis, also a student of Petrick’s involved in the project, said the focus of getting to test out the

glasses was to “get into the mindset of why this thing was built.”

Understanding what people are thinking and trying to accomplish with the device is crucial, Petrick said. As a designer or programmer, she stressed the importance of asking why the user is even bothering with the device and figuring out what challenges the device itself presents.

“Be designers but also users,” Petrick tells her students.

“I think it’s really cool. There’s no way I would have had the opportunity to spend the time with this technology … to play with it and the technology that is going to be emerging,” Doshi said.

“The thing I try to impress on my students is a deep understanding of the users and device before you can design successful applications that would be running on that device,” Petrick said. “Hands on interaction in a real world setting is essential. You can’t sit in a classroom and learn design.”

IST students rank among top teams in the world in Google Online Marketing Challenge

Students in Jim Jansen’s IST 402: Emerging Issues and Technologies class this spring semester placed highly among international teams in the Google Online Marketing Challenge and created successful online marketing campaigns for real-world organizations. Among the teams formed from the nearly 100 students that took part in the class—48 students on 16 resident teams, and 10 World Campus teams—three teams placed in the Final Global 15 (the top 15 teams in the world), and one was a finalist and an award winner in the social media competition. Four additional teams placed as semi-finalists.

Their accomplishments included driving traffic to business’ websites and energizing online marketing for a company founded by an IST alumnus, in addition to a strong showing by the course’s World Campus teams in their debut. Almost all of the businesses for which the students designed campaigns were from Pennsylvania, Jansen said, and several of those businesses are part of Penn State’s Pennsylvania Technical Assistance Program (PennTAP), which

engages and empowers Pennsylvania organizations through technical assis-tance and Penn State expertise and re-sources.

“(The Google Online Marketing Challenge) is a great way of giving students online experience with small businesses, primarily from Pennsylva-nia,” said Jansen, a professor of IST. “It is a multi-disciplinary blend of market-ing, technology, and advertising.”

The GOMC class, offered in the spring semester and open to students of all majors, focuses on online mar-keting of small- to medium-sized busi-nesses. In the challenge, student teams work with their professors to identify a business or nonprofit organization that has a website but has not used Google AdWords in the last six months. With a $250 AdWords advertising budget pro-vided by Google, students develop and run an online advertising campaign for a business or non-profit organization over a three-week period. The teams that develop and communicate the most successful campaigns win prizes, including trips to Google offices. Stu-

dents also have the opportunity to par-ticipate in the Google+ Social Media Marketing category by creating and managing a Google +page for their cli-ents over a five-week period.

An interesting twist to the 2014 Goo-gle Online Marketing Challenge, Jan-sen said, is that it provided a boost to a company founded by an IST alum, in addition to providing a job opportunity for one of the team members follow-ing the competition. Sole Protector, which was founded by Jason Streeter, a 2007 graduate of the College of IST, achieved remarkable gains through one of the IST teams’ campaigns. Sole Pro-tector, an online company, produces one of the latest sneaker products on the market – a clear film that uses ad-hesive technology to protect sneakers’ soles. Nick Keesey, an IST student at the time of the competition and the team leader for the Sole Protector cam-paign, continued to work with the com-pany throughout the summer and was hired on a contractual basis to manage and further develop Sole Protector’s AdWord campaigns.

The 2014 GOMC also marked the premier of the World Campus pres-ence in the competition. Matt Sholly, of Souderton, Pa., who graduated from Penn State with a B.S. in IST through World Campus in August 2014 and was on a GOMC team that placed as a finalist in the Social Media Challenge, can attest to both the challenges and benefits of participating in the com-petition through the online course. Sholly, a technician at Apple, said that his team’s project for GOMC involved doing advertising and online marketing for a custom car shop in Tennessee. Sholly said it was encouraging to the team members to see tangible results of their campaign, such as the number of pending sales and people who directly referenced their work. The key to their success, he said, was the consistent communication among the team mem-bers.

“Every single one of our team mem-bers communicated constantly with each other,” Sholly said. “This class, in particular, pushed me to be the best I could.”

Undergraduate research experiences abound at IST

The IST Office of Undergraduate Studies hosted the first annual Un-dergraduate Research Symposium in Fall 2013 to celebrate the accomplish-ments of eight IST Undergraduate Stu-dent Research Fellowship recipients who worked with a faculty supervisor during the previous summer.

Charlise Harris, IST ‘14, presented the research project “Understanding User Adaptation Strategies for the Launching of the Facebook Timeline” that she worked on with Dr. Heng Xu, an associate professor of IST, currently serving as program director for the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace Program with the National Science Foundation (NSF); Pam Wisniewski, a post-doctoral scholar at the College of IST; and Yunan Chen, a professor in the Donald Bren School of Infor-mation and Computer Sciences at the

University of California Irvine. Harris said that she learned about the proj-ect, which examined how Facebook users reacted to the introduction of the Timeline and interface changes, while enrolled in Xu’s SRA 472 Integration of Privacy and Security class. During the semester after Harris completed the class, she approached Xu about assist-ing her on the project. Xu agreed and nominated her for a Summer Under-graduate Research Fellowship (SURF).

Harris, who is considering joining the U.S. Foreign Service after completing graduate studies, said that one of the major benefits she gained from work-ing on the project was “being able to not only look at data, but draw conclu-sions from it and being able to collect and synthesize data.”

“The challenge for me, in the begin-ning, was kind of finding my voice,” she said. “(Eventually), I realized my opinion was valuable.”

William Murphy, a senior at the College of IST who is also pursuing a master’s degree in IST through the in-tegrated program, has been proactive about seeking out research opportuni-ties.

At the Undergraduate Research Sym-posium, he presented his work on a project with IST professors Dr. John Yen and Dr. Prasenjit Mitra, along with Dr. Michelle Newman, a professor in Penn State’s Department of Psychol-ogy. The goal of the project is to use machine learning to classify the online journal entries of cancer survivors into different emotional categories. The machine learning system that the re-searchers developed predicts the mood or sentiment of the entries without ac-tually reading them. Murphy’s role in the project was to write up the results of the machine learning experiments.

A paper describing the researchers’ work, “Supervised Machine Learning Classification of Journal Entries about Emotional Personal Experiences,” was presented at the American Medical In-formatics Association (AMIA) 2013 Annual Symposium that was held in November in Washington, D.C.

“Bill has done very interesting work on analyzing tweets related to cancer as well as on classifying journal entries about personal experiences, collected by a study conducted by Professor Michelle Newman and her team, into emotion states (e.g., fear, happy, and sad),” Yen said. “He combined two approaches developed in two commu-nities (one from psychology, the other from information retrieval) to demon-strate the synergy in combining them.”

Murphy, who aspires to enter the ma-chine learning/data mining field after graduation, said he would advise un-dergraduate IST students who are in-terested in gaining research experience to reach out to their professors and “ask them what their research is about.”

According to Interin Dean Mary Beth Rosson, gaining research experience as an undergraduate offers many benefits, whether the student chooses to con-tinue on to graduate school or enter the private sector.

“Even for students going into indus-try, being able to talk about research projects demonstrates a whole new set of problem-solving talents and skills,” she said.

For more information on our majors, go to explore.ist.psu.edu/majors

In response to a recent security attack by a Russian crime ring, which resulted in 1.2 billion stolen Inter-net credentials worldwide, Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology is taking ac-tion to help students prepare for these types of threats.

Gerry Santoro, senior lecturer in information sci-

ences and technology, teaches students about the type of hack that the Russians used in his IST 456 Security and Risk Management course.

“Unfortunately, many businesses do not take the

extra measures to make sure that their sites and infor-mation are secure. To upper management in business, security is a waste of effort—it doesn’t add anything to the revenue,” Santoro said.

The College of IST helps students prepare for se-curity breaches such as the recent Russian crime ring attack by building awareness of the vulnerabilities within systems. In addition, students are taught how

to identify what type of attack occurred and how to mitigate the consequences of the attack.

“The College of IST teaches students to understand what the consequences are of a breach like this so you recognize what you really have to protect, and we also teach them about mitigation strategies and protection to make sure things like this don’t happen to them,” said Peter Forster, associate dean of online and professional ed-ucation and information technology.

Penn State’s IST students gain expertise not only on system protection, but the personnel side of things too, Forster said.

“We want to make sure that our graduates are very much not only aware of the security issues, but also have the technical skills to apply toward safeguarding programs and systems,” Santoro said.

IST professors weigh in on how to prevent cyber security breaches

Read more at: news.psu.edu/college/information-sciences-and-technology

Through the generosity of Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) alumnus David Rusenko ('07) two innovative IST students—junior John Dori and sophomore Jules Dupont—now have the opportunity to take their projects to the next level. Their ambitions, respectively, are optimizing artesian beverages and developing mobile apps for public libraries.

Dori, as recipient of the David Rusenko Entrepreneur-in-Residence Scholarship, will receive the support of a faculty mentor, the opportunity to earn six credits while working on his start-up, and $10,000 per year. Dupont was awarded the David Rusenko Emerging Entrepreneur Scholarship to support his work.

“My goal [in supporting the scholarships] is to inspire and help students with big ideas and ambitions to focus on starting something and changing the world,” said Rusenko, CEO and co-founder of Weebly, a San Francisco-based start-up that was named one of the 50 best websites by TIME magazine in 2007. Today, more than 175 million people monthly visit a website that was built using Weebly.

Launched in 2006, Weebly developed out of an IST class project by Rusenko, fellow IST alumnus Chris Fanini, and Dan Veltri, a graduate of Penn State’s Smeal College of Business. In 2012, Rusenko donated $400,000—the largest gift to the College of IST from a graduate in its 13-year history—to establish scholarships for entrepreneurial-minded students.

“I am a natural troubleshooter and problem-solver, so after discovering the Internet as a student in elementary school, I realized that technology is the best way to help lots of people with their problems,” Dori said.

Dupont said the idea for his startup, Mobile Library Apps, came from a desire to help public libraries remain relevant in the 21st century. While still in high school, Dupont and his former classmate, Daniel Dudt, who now attends Bucknell University, developed an Android app for the Chester County Library System (CCLS), in Pennsylvania. Based on the success of that app, Dupont and Dudt realized that there was a strong need for a product like theirs and decided to start a company to address this market demand.

“By offering convenient mobile access to catalogs, e-books and more, libraries can stem the flow of consumers to for-profit companies such as Amazon,” Dupont said. “Even so, most libraries are sorely lacking in the mobile area. The reasons are simple: building and maintaining an in-house app requires expertise that most libraries do not have, and no company has stepped in to meet market demand at a palatable cost for smaller library systems.”

Dupont and Dudt have been working towards completing Android and iOS versions of the app so that they can be in a position to start selling mobile apps to libraries.

“Dan and I have built up a full head of steam,” Dupont said. “We have proven that a market exists, and we have a clear way to monetize our product, by selling the app and associated installation to library systems.”

In order to protect the participants in THON 2014 at the Bryce Jordan Center, THON partnered with Penn State’s Red Cell Analytics Lab in the College of Information Science and Technology to ensure maximum security throughout the weekend.

First, the students reviewed the Interfraternity

Council/Panhellenic Dance Marathon’s evacuation procedures and its communications plan. Then during the 46-hour dance marathon, it monitored trends in social media activity to determine what was occurring in and around the Bryce Jordan Center.

“What we agreed to do was have students take a critical look at the security and go from there,” said Red Cell’s advisor, Col. Jake Graham, a professor

of practice in security and risk analysis. “The reason we did those things was to see if we could make recommendations for next year. The security procedures that were implemented were implemented by members of THON committees, not the Red Cell Lab.”

According to the club’s website, the Red Cell Lab uses military tactics to protect against any possible threat Penn State may face.

The club used various forms of software in its suite, including Arc-GIS, Analyst Notebook, 3-D visual analytics, Geo-Suite and Analysis of Competing Hypothesis to identify any flaws or gaps in the university’s security systems.

The Red Cell Lab was also involved with an evacuation rehearsal, which was conducted by THON captains and the Penn State Office of Emergency Management, he said.

The Red Cell Lab will review the data it collected to make improvements in THON’s security policies for 2015, Graham said.

For more information on IST Clubs, go toist.psu.edu/studentorgs

IST scholarships fund start-up innovations

THON teams up with IST to ensure maximum security

Scholarship MoneyFor more information about IST

scholarships go to,ist.psu.edu/scholarships

Next application process begins January 1, 2015

In recent years, individuals have in-creasingly turned to apps that can help them lose weight, track their blood pressure, quit smoking or otherwise assist them in their lifestyle goals. As costs go down and applications in-crease, wearable technology — which includes smartwatches, exercise track-ers and heart rate monitors — is be-coming increasingly popular among health-conscious consumers.

At Penn State, students from the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) and the Department of Biobehavioral Health (BBH) in the College of Health and Human Devel-opment (HHD) worked together to de-velop mobile solutions that addresses societal health issues in a cross-college idea pitch competition.

“Health-based mobile computing is a major growth area,” said Irene Petrick, a senior lecturer at the College of IST.

Students in Petrick’s class, IST 437 Digital Design and Innovation, along with the students enrolled in the Biobe-havioral Health classes Research Ap-plication and Immigrant Health, took part in the second Penn State mHealth Challenge in Spring 2014. The mHealth Challenge allows undergraduate stu-

dents to work in cross-disciplinary teams to prototype a mobile health application that addresses a societal health need associated with a specific targeted audience. In this particular challenge, students focused on how to leverage wearable technology to put real-time information in the hands of patients, health care professionals, and anyone trying to live a healthy lifestyle. The students created apps that used a Google Glass, wrist, or mobile phone platform.

As part of the mHealth Challenge, BBH students prepare a brief describ-ing a target population, health need, and behavioral objectives designed to address the need. IST students act as technology consultants working with BBH students to create a prototype of a mobile app that addresses the defined health need.

“Unlike typical classroom activi-ties, the mHealth Challenge has ex-tensive coaching and mentoring from a cross-College perspective,” Petrick said. “Further, students gain invaluable experience in moving an idea from concept to viable product prototype.”

Students to develop mobile health app in cross-college idea pitch competition

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Students spread coding interest, innovation at 36-hour HackPSU event

More than 300 students set sleep aside for innovation as part of the third annual Penn State hackathon, called HackPSU.

HackPSU 2014, hosted by the College of Information Sciences and Technology and student-run organization Innoblue, kicked off the college’s 2014 IST Start-Up Week.

Hackers from Penn State and other universities including the University of Michigan and Virginia Tech had 36 hours to build something amazing, such as a mobile app. Teams could choose to pitch their ideas to the HackPSU judges and compete for a $2,500 prize.

Unlike other hackathons, HackPSU is considered a “learning hackathon,” featuring seminars given by organizations and experienced coders who speak on coding, design, and entrepreneurial topics. Participating organizations include Treehouse, Videon Central, Fareportal, SendGrid, and Github.

“We use this weekend to teach students more about technology, to encourage them to continue learning on their own, and to build upon the coding community here at Penn State,” said Innoblue vice president and Penn State junior Mitch Robinson.