September 2008 Archives

My advisor is Prof. Chao-Hsien CHU. At present, he is the Professor of Information Sciences and Technology at the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), an Affiliate Professor of Management Sciences at the Smeal College of Business, and the founding Executive Director of the Center of Information Assurance, at The Pennsylvania State University.

He was originally from Taiwan. Before he came to the US, he was awarded an MBA from Tatung University (Taiwan), and a B.E. in Industrial Engineering from Chung Yuan University (Taiwan). In 1980, he came here for his Ph.d study. After 4 years , he received his Ph.D. in Business Administration (major in Operations Management and Information Systems) from The Pennsylvania State University.

He had a lot of working experience, both in academe and industry. He was on the business faculties at Iowa State University, Baruch College and the Tatung University, and was in 1991/1992 a Visiting Associate Professor of Management Sciences at the University of Tsukuba (Japan). He is Adjunct Professor of Management and Engineering at the Hebei University of Technology (China), where he is serving as the Chief Academic Advisor to the School of Management. His industrial experience includes serving as a project leader, section chief, and consultant at Tatung Company - a multinational company with headquarters in Taipei and also in providing consulting services to a number of companies in China, Taiwan, and North America.

Now, he and his families are living in State College. He and his wife have 2 children, one is girl who is studying computer science at MIT, the other is a boy who is studying piano at Johns Hopkins.

Although my advisor said he does not have any hobbies, I think he enjoys walking and reading. Besides, he is interested in traveling.

Frankly, I am surprised by my professor's rich experience. He worked at many different places and researched in many different areas. I believe I will learn a lot from him.  

The College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn Stat University started on 1999. The main purpose of this college is to fulfill the rapidly growing needs of information science and technology.

I think the flavor of our college is collaberation and interdisciplinary. IST offers many different interdisciplines programs to both graduate students and undergrduate students. There are two unique bachelor's degree programs: Information Sciences and Technology, and Security and Risk Analysis. For graduate students, there are more opportunities, they can choose their own advisor and program based their research interests. The research areas in IST nearly includs every aspect of people's lives, from education, work, entertainment, health, safety, to national security.

Although there are no departments within IST, it is structured mainly by different research Labs and research centers. We have five big research centers in IST, they are Certer for Infomation Assurance, Center for the Information society, Enterprise informatics and integration center, Network-centric congnition and information fusion, Penn state center for human-computer interaction. Beside these, there is one a affiliated research center, Institute for information policy. Under these research centers, IST has more than ten different Labs. Although they independent research centers and Labs, most of them collaborate with one or more other centers or Labs, as well as collaborate with outside colleges, departments, research institutes or companies. I think this is the most attractive feature of IST.

Now I am working at RFID Lab which is under the Center for Infomation Assurance. It also associates with college of communication, college of engineering and smeal college of business. The missions of the center are: conduct a broad-based research on various aspects (theoretical and applied; technical and managerial; wired and wireless, etc.) of information and cyber security; educate and train information security professionals through degree and continuing education programs, and to insure that information security awareness is instilled in all Penn. State Students; provide assistance and technical supports to industry, non-profit organizations, government, and individuals in the information and cyber security area.

Our Labs' goal and my work is research the broad security issues relate to RFID, especially in the healthcare and supply chain management areas.   

Be honesely, I never thougth about the essential differences between information science and computer science before I applied for my Ph.d study.

When I was applying for Ph.d study, I did some research. At the begining, I always looked for computer science department or computer engineering department. However, I found most of them are focusing on very technical and theoretical computer related areas that are not attracted me so much.  And in the meanwhile, I noticed there is another kind of college call information school. From that time, I gradually paied attentions to I-Schools.

I found the main difference is, I-School concentrates on interdiscipline research. The research of traditional departments or colleges generally restrict within their own areas, for example mathmatic, physics. computer science, most of them just collaborate with their own peers. But in I-Shool, I found there are many people have many different backgrounds, and I nearly can find any primary subjects here. They are willing to work with each other.

It is true, nowadays, the society has become more complex. Many issues can not be solved by only one discipline. People from different fields need to collaborate. So, I-Shool is a great place to integrate these expertise. But the research interests of I-Schools in different universities are not the same. E.g. I-School in University of Texas, they said "Our focus is on information in its social context, from a single user searching for a document, to a government determining the access of its citizenry to public records." And I-School in University of Washington said that, "We are interested in the relationship between information, technology, and people. Expertise in all areas of information is required for the advancement of science, business, education, and culture." And I-School in UC Berkely said "Our work takes us wherever information touches lives, often bringing us into participant with diverse disciplines, from law, sociology, and business to publishing, linguistics, and computer science."

The main reason that I choose join I-School eventually is because my advisor Prof. Chu, and his program. I contacted with Prof. Chu, he introduced his RFID program to me in detail. And explain the benefits and challenges to me that inspired my interests. Thus, I decided to join his very promising program, and I really believed that this is the best choice for me.

What drives me? I think it is my dreams and my hopes. I am eager to be successful, both personally and professionally.

My master study inspired my interests toward information security areas. So I followed this track, and wanted to further my study. I did some research, and finally I met my advisor Prof. Chu. He gave me many precious advices that helped me a lot. In the meawhile, he is leading a very promising program which matched my interests perfectlly. Thus, I choose to come here and commit my Ph.d study here.

Moreover, I really believe the RFID is very important for the future, and I can success in this area.

I got my bachelor degree from Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), Beijing, China, in 2006. And my master degree is from Royal Institute of Technology - KTH, Stockholm, Sweden, in 2008. I was majored in software engineering and information and communication systems security. My advisor was Prof. Sead Muftic.

Currently, my research interest is focusd information security area. Especially RFID security and supply chain risk management, my advisor is Prof. Chu.

Both RFID and supply chain management are the new waves for the future, and their security issues have not been paid enough attention. And the integration of RFID and supply chain management may cause more serious security problems. But I will not restrict myself within the above research fields.

Beijing 2008 olympic game was just closed. China government adopted a serial new technologies to ensure this game running smoothly. And the RFID is the most interesting one, it is disscussed broadly.

RFID technology is used in many different areas in Beijing, e.g. food security system, hotels, supply chain and hospitals, and so on. Among these, people are more interested in the hi-tech tickets of the game which combined RFID into it. And this related to all the audiences, it makes people can actually touch this new techonology.

Normally, there were more than fifty thousand people were entering the buliding like football field, or basket court, or gymnasium at the same time, so it was really hard to figure out this problem. Whereas, people found RFID tickets were actually very helpful. It soared the efficiency of this process. The RFID reader can identify the tickets as well as the tickets' holders within 0.1 second. Besides that, RFID ticket also enhanced the security of the game, people were asked to show their ID when they purchased the ticket, also in the meanwhile their personal information will be stored on a server. Later, when they entered the building, their ID and personal information will be checked. So this prevented the terrorist attacks effectively. 

Here is a picture of the RFID ticket.