UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) has welcomed nine new faculty members in 2023. The two tenure-line members and seven non-tenure-line members represent the college’s four research areas: data sciences and artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, privacy and security, and social and organizational informatics.
“These are exciting times for IST,” said Andrea Tapia, interim dean of the College of IST. “Our talented new faculty members bring research and teaching expertise that will enhance our training of the next generation of IST professionals. We are so pleased to welcome them to our growing team.”
Betsy Campbell, associate teaching professor, studies the practices of teams at the forefront of scientific discovery, technological innovation and new venture creation. She is a Fulbright specialist, a UNESCO expert and the recipient of two Academy of Management Awards. Most recently, Campbell was a fellow at the Edgelands Institute, where she worked on interventions to support social justice in artificial intelligence. Campbell holds a doctoral degree in management from the University of Exeter.
Mathias Fonkam, associate teaching professor, brings more than 20 years of teaching and leadership experience to IST. Most recently, he served as dean and associate professor at American University of Nigeria’s School of Information Technology and Computing. Fonkam’s research interests include data science, big data and machine learning and function/type theories, among others. He holds a doctoral degree in computer science from Cardiff University.
Andy Hunsucker, assistant teaching professor, comes to Penn State with higher education and industry experience. He was a visiting lecturer in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering at Indiana University Bloomington, where he earned a doctoral degree in human-computer interaction. Hunsucker also worked as a user experience researcher at Elsevier and Best Buy, where he developed and performed research on employee-focused software.
Jinyuan Jia, assistant professor, is a recent graduate of Duke University’s doctoral program in electrical and computer engineering. Jia’s research focuses on the intersections of cybersecurity, data privacy and machine learning. He has a bachelor of engineering degree from the University of Science and Technology in China and a master of engineering degree from Iowa State University and served as a postdoc at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Gregory Kruczek, assistant teaching professor, returns to Penn State after serving as a lecturer at Virginia Tech University. Prior to that, he was a faculty member in the Penn State College of the Liberal Arts Department of Political Science. Kruczek’s research interests Middle East politics and security, second-order minorities and ethnic conflict stateless nations and homeland claims. He retains mid-level proficiency in Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Colloquial Arabic and has experience conducting field wok in conflict zones. Kruczek holds a doctoral degree in government and international affairs from Virginia Tech University and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Penn State.
Miki Matsumuro, researcher, was an assistant professor in the College of information Science and Engineering at Ritsumeikan University in Japan. Prior, she was a postdoctoral researcher in the Graduate School of Information Science at Nagoya University and a visiting researcher in the College of IST at Penn State. Her research focuses on cognitive modeling and human-computer interaction. Matsumuro earned doctoral and master’s degrees from Nagoya University and a bachelor of arts degree in humanities from Ochanomizu University.
Romit Maulik, assistant professor, comes to Penn State from the Mathematics and Computer Science division at Argonne National Laboratory, where he was an assistant computational scientist. He was jointly appointed as a research assistant professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Maulik’s research will center on leveraging applied mathematics, physics and computer and data science to design computational strategies for multidisciplinary engineering applications. He holds a doctoral degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Oklahoma State University.
Serhii Serdiuk, associate research professor, was a long-time associate professor in the software department at Zaporizhzhia National Technical University in Ukraine. Chairman of AI at University dept. He is a researcher in the fields of human-computer interaction, human factors and artificial intelligence. Serdiuk earned a doctoral degree in human factors from Electrotechnical University in Russia. Intelligent tutoring systems and gamified education technologies at Penn State.
Shane Tomblin, associate teaching professor, comes to Penn State from Harrisburg University of Science Technology, where he was an associate professor enterprise engineering. Prior to that, he was a faculty member and interim department chair of Marketing, Entrepreneurship and MIS in the Lewis College of Business at Marshall University. His research interests include organizational learning, knowledge engineering, neuro-cognitive and knowledge-based systems and health care informatics, among others. Tomblin earned a doctoral degree in business administration from the University of Kentucky, with a concentration on decisions science and information systems.