Faculty

CENSAI faculty represent a large swath of Penn State’s diversity of researchers, coming from nine colleges, twenty-one departments, and two campuses.

Faculty Affiliates

Assmann

Sarah Assmann

  • Waller Professor of Biology

Department: Department of Biology

Email: sma3@psu.edu

Research Focuses: Cell signaling, RNA structure-function relationships, natural variation in plant abiotic stress responses, CRISPR approaches to crop improvement, plant biology

Website: Visit Sarah's Website

 

Bevilacqua

Philip Bevilacqua

  • Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Email: pcb5@psu.edu

Research Focuses: Biological, Physical, and Biophysical Sciences; Bio Structure/Function; Chemical Biology; Enzymology

Website: Visit Philip's Website

 

Brunner

Gerd Brunner

  • Associate Professor of Medicine

Email: gerdbrunner@psu.edu

Website: Visit Gerd's Website

 

Orfeu Buxton

Buxton

Orfeu Buxton

  • Professor of Biobehavioral Health
  • ICDS Associate

Department: Biobehavioral Health

Office: 206 Biobehavioral Health Building, University Park

Email: omb104@psu.edu

Phone: 814-867-5707

Research Focuses: Causes of sleep deficiency, health consequences of sleep deficiency, biomarkers

Website: Visit Orfeu's Website

 

Long Qing Chen

Chen

Long-Qing Chen

  • Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
  • ICDS Affiliate

Department: Materials Science and Engineering

Office: 102 Steidle Building, University Park

Email: lqc3@psu.edu

Phone: 814-863-8101

Research Focuses: Computational materials science at the mesoscale; phase-field method for materials microstructure evolution and materials design; thermodynamics and kinetics of phase transitions, domain structures and electrical/mechanical/magnetic couplings in nanoferroelectrics and multiferroics; alloy phase transformations, including order-disorder, phase separation, and martensitic transformations; grain growth in thin films and bulk systems; precipitate morphologies; Ostwald ripening; interactions between defect and phase microstructures; multiscale modeling; computational materials design

Website: Visit Long-Qing's Website

 

Cheng

Keith Cheng

  • Distinguished Professor of Pathology, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and Pharmacology
  • ICDS Co-Hire

Department: Pathology

Office: Room C7866A, Penn State Hershey College of Medicine

Email: kcheng@psu.edu

Phone: 717-531-5635

Research Focuses: Cancer genetics, genomic instability, cell differentiation, genetics of human pigmentation, web-based zebrafish atlas, image informatics, SNP database analysis

Website: Visit Keith's Website

 

Guangqing Chi

Chi

Guangqing Chi

  • Professor of Rural Sociology and Demography and Public Health Sciences
  • ICDS Associate

Department: Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education

Office: 112E Armsby Building, University Park

Email: gchi@psu.edu

Phone: 814-63-8245

Research Focuses: Climate change, land use, and community resilience; critical infrastructure/transportation, population change, and population health within the smart cities framework; computational and spatial analysis; spatial demography

Website: Visit Guangqing's Website

 

Chinchilli

Vernon Chinchilli

  • Distinguished Professor and Chair, Department of Public Health Sciences

Email: vchinchi@psu.edu

Website: Visit Vernon's Website

 

Diaz

Michele Diaz

  • Director of Human Imaging at the Social, Life, and Engineering Sciences, Imaging Center
  • Professor of Psychology, Linguistics, & Neuroscience

Email: mtd143@psu.edu

Research Focuses: relations between the brain and behavior, semantic and phonological aspects of language comprehension and production, age-related differences in language

Website: Visit Michele's Website

 

Fang

Ethan Fang

  • Assistant Professor of Statistics

Email: xxf13@psu.edu

Research Focuses: Machine learning

Website: Visit Ethan's Website

 

Giles Lee Web

Giles

C. Lee Giles

  • Professor of Computer Science and Engineering
  • Professor of Supply Chain and Information Systems
  • Professor of Information Sciences and Technology
  • ICDS Associate

Department: College of Information Sciences and Technology

Office: 311A IST Building, University Park

Email: giles@ist.psu.edu

Phone: 814-865-7884

Research Focuses: Information retrieval, knowledge extraction and management, and data mining, both for large and small data and information resources

Website: Visit C. Lee's Website

 

Girirajan

Santhosh Girirajan

  • Associate Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
  • Associate Professor of Anthropology

Email: sxg47@psu.edu

Research Focuses: Neurobiology, genetics of neurodevelopmental disorders

Website: Visit Santhosh's Website

 

Graif

Corina Graif

  • Associate Professor of Sociology and Criminology
  • Research Associate, Population Research Institute

Email: corina.graif@psu.edu

Research Focuses: Communities and Crime, Neighborhood Effects on Health, Spatial Stratification and Mobility

Website: Visit Corina's Website

 

Hall

Molly Hall

  • Assistant Professor of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences
  • ICDS Associate

Department: Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences

Office: 512A Wartik Lab

Email: mah546@psu.edu

Phone: 814-865-0794

Research Focuses: Genomics, Human Genetics, Exposome, Genetic Interactions (Epistasis), Gene-Environment Interactions, Complex Disease, Precision Medicine, Biomedical Informatics, Metabolomics

Website: Visit Molly's Website

 

Hillary

Frank Hillary

  • Associate Head, Department of Psychology
  • Professor of Psychology

Email: fgh3@psu.edu

Research Focuses: In my lab we use behavioral, brain imaging, and genetic measurements to understand patient outcome in severe neurotrauma. We incorporate network neuroscience approaches including structural and functional connectomics to understand the affects of injury and aging on neural system plasticity over the life span. Also, as part of an international consortium for data sharing and team science (see ENIGMA) our work focuses on large scale data sharing and harmonization and open science.

Website: Visit Frank's Website

 

Vasant Honavar

Honavar

Vasant Honavar

  • Professor and Edward Frymoyer Chair of Information Sciences and Technology
  • Associate Director, Institute for Computational and Data Sciences
  • ICDS Co-Hire

Department: Information Sciences and Technology

Office: 301A Westgate Building, University Park

Email: vuh14@psu.edu

Phone: 814-865-3141

Research Focuses: Artificial intelligence, machine learning, data mining, big data analytics, bioinformatics and computational molecular and systems biology, discovery informatics, knowledge representation and semantic web, applied information integration and informatics

Website: Visit Vasant's Website

 

Huang

Daning Huang

  • Assistant Professor

Department: Aerospace Engineering

Email: daning@psu.edu

Research Focuses: Computational and Experimental Fluid Dynamics; Structural Dynamics and Adaptive Structures; Vehicle Systems Engineering

Website: Visit Daning's Website

 

Huang

Sharon Huang

  • Associate Professor of Information Sciences and Technology
  • ICDS Associate

Office: E317 Westgate Building

Email: suh972@ist.psu.edu

Phone: (814) 863-7235

Research Focuses: Her research interests are in the areas of biomedical image analysis, computer vision, and machine learning, focusing on methods for object recognition, image segmentation, image synthesis, registration/matching, tracking, skeletonization, computer-assisted diagnosis and intervention. Her broader interests include computer graphics, artificial intelligence, data mining, biomedical informatics, HCI, and visualization.

Website: Visit Sharon's Website

 

Kandermir Mahmut

Kandemir

Mahmut Kandemir

  • Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Engineering
  • Director of Graduate Affairs
  • Associate Director, Institute for Computational and Data Sciences
  • ICDS Co-Hire

Department: Computer Science and Engineering

Office: 354C Information Science and Technology Building, University Park

Email: kandemir@cse.psu.edu

Phone: 814-863-4888

Research Focuses: Embedded systems, programming languages, compilers, power-aware computing, dependable computing, input/output systems

Website: Visit Mahmut's Website

 

Soundar Kumara

Kumara

Soundar Kumara

Department: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering

Office: 222 Leonard Building, University Park

Email: skumara@psu.edu

Phone: 814-863-2359

Research Focuses: Intelligent systems, sensor data representation and fusion, process data monitoring and diagnostics; smart manufacturing; graph analytics; big data analytics

Website: Visit Soundar's Website

 

Lennon

Robert Lennon

  • Associate Professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine
  • Affiliate Faculty, Penn State Law

Email: rkl5319@psu.edu

Research Focuses: Messaging efficacy during pandemics, osteopathic manipulative therapies for the treatment of chronic migraine, using folate derivatives to reduce oxidative stress in living tissue, therapies to reduce opioid use in persons with chronic pain and bioethics

Website: Visit Robert's Website

 

Runze Li

Li

Runze Li

  • Verne M. Willaman Professor of Statistics
  • Professor of Public Health
  • ICDS Associate

Department: Statistics

Office: 413 Thomas Building, University Park

Email: ril4@psu.edu

Phone: 814-865-1555

Research Focuses: High dimensional statistical modeling and algorithms for high dimensional/volume data

Website: Visit Runze's Website

 

Mahdavi

Mehrdad Mahdavi

  • Assistant Professor
  • Dorothy Quiggle Career Development Assistant Professor of Computer Science & Engineering
  • ICDS Affiliate

Department: Computer Science and Education

Email: mahdavi@cse.psu.edu

Research Focuses: Computational and statistical machine learning, and design and analysis of randomized algorithms with a focus on Large-scale machine learning, Statistical learning theory, adversarial learning theory, convex and non-convex optimization and computational learning theory, distributed optimization and applications of machine learning.

Website: Visit Mehrdad's Website

 

Shaun Mahony

Mahony

Shaun Mahony

  • Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
  • ICDS Associate

Department: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Office: 404 South Frear Laboratory, University Park

Email: sam77@psu.edu

Phone: 814-865-3008

Research Focuses: Computational biology, machine learning approaches for understanding gene regulation

Website: Visit Shaun's Website

 

Edward O'Brien

O’Brien

Edward O’Brien

  • Associate Professor of Chemistry
  • ICDS Co-Hire

Department: Chemistry

Office: 402 Chemistry Building, University Park

Email: epo2@psu.edu

Phone: 814-867-5100

Research Focuses: Ribosome-associated protein folding, macromolecular self-assembly and chaperone interactions in living cells

Website: Visit Edward's Website

 

Priya

Shashank Priya

  • Associate Vice President for Research
  • Professor of Materials Science and Engineering

Email: sup103@psu.edu

Research Focuses: Bio-inspired Materials, Energy Harvesting, Multi-functional Materials, Wireless Power Transfer

Website: Visit Shashank's Website

 

Rajtmajer

Sarah Rajtmajer

  • Assistant Professor of Information Sciences and Technology
  • ICDS Associate

Department: Information Sciences and Technology

Office: E351 Westgate Building

Email: smr48@psu.edu

Phone: 814-863-2554

Research Focuses: Machine Learning, Network Science, Game Theory, Privacy and Security

Website: Visit Sarah's Website

 

Reimherr

Matthew Reimherr

  • Associate Professor of Statistics

Department: Department of Statistics

Email: mlr36@psu.edu

Research Focuses: Functional Data Analysis, Longitudinal Data Analysis, Statistical Genetics, Data Privacy

Website: Visit Matthew's Website

 

Reinhart

Wes Reinhart

  • Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
  • ICDS Co-Hire

Department: Materials Science and Engineering

Office: 303 Steidle Building

Email: reinhart@psu.edu

Research Focuses: Research interest includes engineered materials, statistical mechanics, and light-matter interactions, software prototyping and algorithm design for many computing architectures.

Website: Visit Wes's Website

 

Silverman

Justin Silverman

  • Assistant Professor of Information Sciences and Technology
  • ICDS Co-Hire

Email: Justin.Silverman@psu.edu

Research Focuses: Justin's work focuses on longitudinal modeling and experimental design of host-associated microbiota surveys.

Website: Visit Justin's Website

 

Aleksanda Slavkovic

Slavkovic

Aleksandra Slavkovic

  • Professor of Statistics
  • ICDS Associate

Department: Statistics

Office: 412 Thomas Building, University Park

Email: sesa@psu.edu

Phone: 814-863-4918

Research Focuses: Usability evaluation methods, human performance in virtual environments, statistical data mining, application of statistics to social sciences, algebraic statistics, and statistical approaches to confidentiality and data disclosure

Website: Visit Aleksandra's Website

 

Sliwinski

Martin Sliwinski

  • Director, Center for Healthy Aging
  • Professor of Human Development and Family Studies

Department: Human Development and Family Studies

Email: mjs56@psu.edu

Research Focuses: Aging and health, cognition, dementia risk, stress, and emotion regulation

Website: Visit Martin's Website

 

Song

Hyebin Song

  • Assistant Professor of Statistics

Department: Statistics

Email: hps5320@psu.edu

Research Focuses: Statistical Learning, High-dimensional Statistics, Statistical Computing

Website: Visit Hyebin's Website

 

Soto

José Soto

  • Associate Professor of Psychology

Email: jas95@psu.edu

Research Focuses: My research focuses on understanding the intersections of culture, health, and emotion, especially as it relates to the creation and maintenance of disparities in health, well-being, and other markers of social inequality. I am also interested in those factors that promote or inhibit engagement with social justice matters and the creation of diverse, equitable and inclusive spaces in academia and the community.

Website: Visit José's Website

 

Tuan

Wen-Jan Tuan

  • Assistant Professor of Family and Community Medicine
  • ICDS Affiliate

Department: College of Medicine

Email: wkt5075@psu.edu

Research Focuses: bioinformatics and health services research, evidence-based strategies and policy for supporting patient-centered care continuum and teamwork, value-driven decision making processes and health information technology, and telehealth adoption in ambulatory care settings

Website: Visit Wen-Jan's Website

 

Adri van Duin

van Duin

Adri van Duin

  • Distinguished Professor of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering
  • ICDS Associate

Department: Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering

Office: 240 Research East Building, University Park

Email: acv13@psu.edu

Phone: 814-863-6277

Research Focuses: Reactive force fields; computational methods in materials; hydrocarbons; all-carbon materials; nitramines; proteins; semiconductors; transition metals

Website: Visit Adri's Website

 

Wang

Suhang Wang

  • Assistant Professor of Information Sciences and Technology
  • ICDS Affiliate

Department: College of Information Sciences and Technology

Email: szw494@psu.edu

Research Focuses: Data Mining, Machine Learning, Graph Mining

Website: Visit Suhang's Website

 

Qingyun Wu

Wu

Qingyun Wu

  • Assistant Professor
  • ICDS Associate

Department: College of Information Sciences and Technology

Email: qxw5138@psu.edu

Research Focuses: Reinforcement Learning, Automated Machine Learning

Website: Visit Qingyun's Website

 

Zgierska

Aleksandra Zgierska

  • Jeanne L. and Thomas L. Leaman, MD, Endowed Professor and Vice Chair for Research, Department of Family and Community Medicine
  • Professor of Public Health Sciences
  • Professor of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine

Email: akz5194@psu.edu

Research Focuses: improving health outcomes in addiction, pain, and other impactful conditions

Website: Visit Aleksandra's Website