michael mcneese, ph.d. associate dean for research, graduate programs, and academic affairs college...

Michael McNeese, Ph.D.Associate Dean for Research, Graduate

Programs, and Academic Affairs

College of Information Sciences and Technology

The Pennsylvania State UniversityUniversity Park, PA

Research Overview

Focus

• Current Research Progress– Sample of 4 different research areas / types

• Cyber Situation Awareness• DOW ChemSeer• Social Deliberation Technologies• Cancer Informatics

• Looking Forward – Hot topics to pursue

• Research Laboratories

04/21/23College of Information Sciences & Technology

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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 Growth

Research Awards Credited to IST

Current IST Sponsors

21%

25%5%16%

30%

3%

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

Industry

NSF

Commonwealth of PA

Other Federal

DOD

University

Grant Awards in 2011/2012 = $6,678,954

Research Growth

• Funding Growth in Research Grants

11-12 12-13

2

3

4

5

Time Period: Jul1-Feb1+ 49% growth increase

Grant Production

(Millions $$$)

Select Current Research Grants

• MURI 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:Objectives:• Understand cognitive/contextual elements of

situation awareness in cyber-security domains• Implement 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

AccomplishmentsAccomplishments• Developed framework /process for studying SA in

cyber security via a Living Laboratory framework• Collected interview/survey data from practicing

analysts• Implemented a simulation toolset for cyber SA to

support human in loop experiments• Conducted experiments in transactive memory,

dynamic task prioritization and visualization aids• Developed new SA evaluation metrics framework

ChallengesChallenges• Rapid evolution of cyber threats and threat

environments• Access to domain experts and state of the art

practice

Scientific/Technical ApproachScientific/Technical ApproachLiving laboratory framework involving:

• Ethnographic studies• Knowledge elicitation of domain experts• Development of cognitive and process

frameworks and theories• Implementation of a scaled world prototype• Conduct of human-in-the-loop experiments• Analysis and transition to real-world

environments

MotivationMotivation• Improvement 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 AccomplishmentsSummary of Accomplishments• We 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 Master’s 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 Cooke’s group of another 66 cyber/IT

professionals.

Cyber SA MURI

Cyber SA MURIStudents supported:Students 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:Publications:- Refereed journal papers - 1- Conference papers – 6- Book and book chapters - 3- Dissertations and Theses - 3

Technology TransitionsTechnology Transitions:• Interactions with industry

– Ethnographic 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 agencies– Briefings 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.

AwardsAwards: : 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 GeoDeliberation

State College Downtown Master Plan

We are working with State College Borough to conduct field work for: (1)better understanding of community deliberation practice, and (2)Generating impact of our research to local communities.

Developing Advanced Technologies: GeoDeliberator

DOW - The Evolution of Big Data

• Observational– Gathers data by direct observation– Analyzes data

• Analytical – Builds analytical model– Makes predictions.

• Computational – Simulate analytical model– Validate model and makes predictions

• Data Exploration– Data captured by instruments from web, sensors, environment;

generated by simulation and digitization of everything.– Information extraction– Placed in data structures– Analyze/mine/search data– Access crucial

• Businesses, governments, scientists, …– Similar problems

Jim Gray’s paradigm

Solution: 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 Search

• Large 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 data

• Extraction for purposes of:– Further modeling using presented data– Indexing, meta-data creation for storage & search on figures for data reuse

• Current extraction done manually; doesn’t scale!

Documents

Plot IndexDocument Index

Merged Index

Extracted Plot Extracted Info.

User

Digital Library


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Social Science Research Institute Grant – Penn State University

Dr. John Yen and others

Cancer Informatics / Social Networks


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Looking Ahead:

State of Possibilities

Future Trajectory

Immediate 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 managers– Additional 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 impact– Some areas we are very strong in currently – other areas have some gaps

Increased Revenue Desired

2012-13 2014-15

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


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1. Cyber-Social Informatics Adversarial simulations (Red-Blue Team Interactions)

Distributed Decision Making using Collaborative Technologies

Emergency Crisis Management and Intelligence

2. Big Data - Cloud Computing Machine learning advancements

IGERT (big data in social science) will continue

3. Human - Centered DesignHCI + cognitive science + human factors

Geo-collaborative systems, uninhabited air vehicles

4. Medical and Bio-InformaticsPersonal medical information, computational models,

Computer-supported cooperative work, health systems

What we need

• Strong growth - research expenditures 2013-16

• Additional faculty support for research– Endowed or Named Faculty Chairs – Buyouts of courses to focus more on research– Business-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 LaboratoriesSelected IST Research Laboratories

The Intelligent Information Systems Research Laboratory - Dr. Giles, Director

Vision-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 computing

Description 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 Faculty•Dr. 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, Director

Mission 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 Labcontinued

Key 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, Director

Vision 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 - continued

Recent research news

The 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, Director

VisionThe 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-GoalsThe 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-making—all 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