UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Six new faculty members have joined the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) since January 2024. They represent three of the college’s research areas: data sciences and artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction and privacy and security.
“As IST celebrates its 25th anniversary, we are thrilled to welcome these talented new faculty members,” said Andrea Tapia, dean of the College of IST. “The research and teaching expertise they bring will enable us to train a new generation of information technology leaders for the next 25 years and beyond.”
Tenure-line faculty are:
Dana Calacci, assistant professor, studies the social, technical and legal impacts of datafication and artificial intelligence (AI) on communities, especially worker groups. She designs and deploys technologies with communities that aim to answer their most pressing questions about the impact of AI, new platforms and surveillance on their lives. Calacci holds a doctoral degree in media arts and sciences from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Minhao Cheng, assistant professor, works at the intersection of security and machine learning, with a particular focus on automated, efficient and trustworthy machine learning systems. Before joining Penn State in January, he was an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Cheng holds a doctoral degree in computer science from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Tanusree Sharma, assistant professor, studies emerging privacy and security issues — with a particular emphasis on understanding the needs, expectations and concerns of marginalized and underserved communities — and developing solutions grounded in empirical evidence. Sharma holds a doctoral degree in information sciences from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Non-tenure-line faculty are:
Kathleen Moore, associate teaching professor, will serve as co-coordinator of the college’s undergraduate program in security and risk analysis. Before coming to IST, she served as professor of data science at the U.S. Army War College, where she was an instructor of data and AI decision making, strategic personal cyber defense and strategic futures analysis. Moore holds a doctoral degree in information sciences and technology from Penn State.
Dhananjay Singh, teaching professor, studies human-computer interaction, AI, data sciences and intelligent Internet-of-Things technologies. Before coming to Penn State, he was a professor in the School of Professional Studies at Saint Louis University. Singh holds a doctoral degree in ubiquitous information technology from Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea.
Dongyan Zhang, lecturer, brings experience in cybersecurity and software engineering to the college. Before coming to IST, she held roles as a software engineer at Hundsun Technologies, a research assistant in the cybersecurity research lab at the National University of Singapore and a tech lead at Sea Limited, where she led backend system development for mobile games. Zhang has a master’s degree in computer science from the National University of Singapore and a master’s degree in computer science and engineering from Penn State.