Nick Giacobe is an Assistant Teaching Professor at the Pennsylvania State University's College of Information Sciences and Technology. He studies situational awareness in the cyber security domain, focusing on the cognitive aspects of the human analyst. He has an interest in methods to increase the awareness of events happening on the network through multi-sensor data fusion and visual analytics. In particular, Nick is working on the measurement of situation awareness and identifying methods to compare the SA of different analysts. Nick is also interested in comparing different visual analytic and data fusion tools and measuring their effects on human cognition.
Nick is the Director of Undergraduate Programs in the College of IST. His duties are to manage the curriculum for the IST, SRA, CYBER and Data Sciences Majors in the College. He works closely with each of the Program Coordinators for each major.
My Research ...
Situation Awareness in Cyber Security
My dissertation was focused on the use of systems to develop situation awareness for cyber-security analysts. This work has three parts - (1) leveraging existing "sensors", (2) applying fusion algorithms and (3) representing the fusion system in an HCI/representation that reduces cognitive load and increases situational awareness. A final experiment measured situation awareness using four different measurement techniques across two different groups of participants and two different visualization techniques. more...
Other Related Research Interests...
- Cognitive Concerns in IT Security Policies more...
- Cyber Security visualization techniques more...
- Using social media (Twitter) as a soft-sensor in Extreme Events like hurricanes and riots more...
- Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in the Fire Departmentmore...
The History of My Professional Work
In one way, I could describe my early career as a 18 year-long ethnographic study in computer network design, operations and support. Is that a bit prentious? Sure. However, I do consider my roots in computer network support as being an important aspect of my current and future academic work. I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty and generally distrust those who isolate themselves in the ivory tower of academia. more...
What's in a Name?
Some are often very confused by the pronunciation of my last name. I prefer /ja KO bee/ similar to how one pronounces Jacoby, but also equally accept /JEE uh KO bee/. Please note that the "e" at the end is definitely not silent. more...