September 2008 Archives

My advisor is Dr. John Yen, who is associate dean for research and graduate programs. To be honest, I don't know much about his personal life, because he is really busy and I just came here and don't have a lot of chances to meet him. But I get to know some about him during the barbeque we had several weeks ago.

Dr. John Yen is from Taiwan, so is his wife, Michelle. He has two children, a son and a daughter. His son went to the business school of Penn State for undergraduate study, and now he is in the law School of Harvard for graduate while his daughter is currently in California for undergraduate.

As his hobbies, I have heard several times that he likes to sing and he has a set of wonderful Kara OK equipment in his home. He himself even mentioned that when I first met him.

During the barbeque, when we ask him why he came to Penn State from Texas A&M University, he told us once he went to Europe to participate in a conference, and there he met Dr. Lee Giles. When Dr. Lee Giles gave him a description of the potential future of IST, he made a hard choice to move to Penn State.

What surprised me is that he is really considerate of his students. Once when I was having a class, I suddenly received his call, It turned out that he went to the lab to make sure that we new graduate students were all set. He even arranged our tables by himself! Also, he introduced me to other professors he worked with and other students in the lab. I am so moved by what he does, especially that he is so busy. Moreover, he is always so nice and always smiles, and he never pushes us to do something. He gives us enough research space and allowes us to do research work that we like. I feel so so lucky to be his student! 

The College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) in Penn State University is built in response to the rapidly growing of information. The goal of IST is to be the best at the conversion of theory into practice. IST's flavor can be seen in various aspects. Job placement of IST students can reach 95% with the average salary of $56,250. Jobs in business analysis, IT security, risk services and consulting are popular among IST students. Also, IST provides inter and multi-discipline research like health informatics, medical informatics, emergency response, enterprise informatics and globalization. IST has diverse kinds of faculty and students. The diversity of faculty can be seen from that faculty come from a lot of different countries and different backgrounds such as psychology, physics and astronomy. The diversity of students is similar.

The structure of IST is different from other colleges since it has no departments. But IST has various centers and labs with different research tracks. For example, IST has center for information assurance, center for the information society, enterprise informatics and integration center and so on, while it also has applied cognitive science laboratory, cyber security laboratory, information science and learning laboratory and intelligence information systems laboratory and so on. Also, IST provides 17 research areas like artificial intelligence and informatics, human computer interaction, community informatics.

This kind of structure, though may cause some problems in the management, can encourage intersection collaboration for faculties and students, facilitate diversity in research and can provide more flexibility for students. For me, my research interest focuses on social network analysis, which also employs the knowledge of artificial intelligence, community informatics, learning and innovation, search and information retrieval. Also, some applications that integrate social network analysis and human computer interaction have shown up. So I think I could be a member of several research tracks and I could benefit a lot from this kind of inter-discipline research. 

I-schools or Schools of Information are emergent academic programs that focus on information, information technology and the relationships between information, information technology and people. They try to understand the role of information from human aspect.

Nowadays, we have entered the age of information. In the information-driven world, we have to face a lot of challenges caused by ubiquitous information. With the fast development of digital technology, we have the easy access to Internet and we have increasing mount of data. How can we benefit from these data instead of being swamped by it? I-schools will teach us how to solve the problems. That is the most important reason that I-schools emerged.

What makes I-schools different from those traditional colleges or fields is their interdisciplinary nature. I-schools employ all forms of information in science, business, education and culture, and allow people in all other fields to create, store, operate and share information. Another nature that makes I-schools special is that they treat and solve real world problems from various perspectives. Specialists from different areas get together and provide their viewpoints from their own academic aspects. This kind of collaboration can inspire new ideas and thus can make I-schools active colleges.

I-schools share a lot in common. First and foremost, of course, they conduct interdisciplinary research on information, technology, people, and the relationships between them. Second, they study the opportunities and challenges of information management like universal access and user-centered organization of information. Last but not least,  there are several popular research topics in I-schools such as human-computer interaction, information retrieval and management, medical informatics and social and organizational informatics.

Though there are a lot of common attributes between I-schools, they do have different flavors. Some I-schools focus on library science which most I-schools come from, like Michigan, Illinois, North Carolina; some focus on computing like Georgia Tech, UC Irvine; some like study business, such as UC Berkeley, Singapore Management University; Also, some I-schools focus on policy like Carnegie Mellon some focus on education like UCLA.

The reason why I choose my graduate study in an I-school is because I like the research work of my advisor. Before I came here, I thought I-school conduct research on information technology which was similar to computer science, and it matched my background. Though I didn't know what an I-school mean before, but when I see the attractive integration of I-T-P and the interdisciplinary nature, I can see the bright future of I-schools. So I think I can adjust to it and I may like I-schools later.   

What drives me? That's hard, right? It's difficult for people to inspect themselves.

What drives me keep moving? I guess that's because I am energic, I want to see more and learn more. I don't want to stay the same all the time, and I want to challege myself. Also, I am still young, I would like to do my best to lay a solid foundation, or maybe I will regret later.

What drives my research work? As the scale of Internet and the applications of Web 2.0 have significantly increased over the last years, social networks based intelligent systems like MySpace and Facebook that integrate users' social behaviors and preferences have gained huge popularity, and thus activate my intense research interests in Social Network Analysis and related fields like Web Search and Data Mining. These topics are really hot today, people from everywhere keep talking about them, these areas provide a promising future. But the most important is, I like them!

I just got my B.S. degee in Software Engineering from Beihang University, China. During my third undergraduate year, I started my research work in Social Network Analysis (SNA) in National Key Lab of Software Development Environment of Beihang University, there I participated in the research work in evaluating nodes importance and finding community structure in the network based on data field theory, both of which greatly improved the results. Also, I am interested in data mining (DM), which leads me to join in another research project - name duplication detection in citation network, which combined both the knowledge of SNA and DM, These research experiences active my interests, and therefore I decide to pursue my Ph.D. degree  in these fields.

Now I am a new graduate student in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), Pennsylvania State University. I am currently working with Dr. John Yen in the Laboratory for Intelligent Agents. I just started my research work, but I hope I can enjoy my work there! 

 Hello, there!

My name is Qi Fang. I just came to America from China. It is very unfamiliar to me at the very first beginnig, the food, the language, the classes and I feel lonely. But I am getting used to it, and I am making more and more friends. That is me, I like to try different things and challenge myself!

Well, I come from maybe the most northeast town of China which is close to Russia. So you will know it's very cold in winter, but you can enjoy the beautiful snow scene. And there is a large forest near the town, I spent a lot of my childhood time picking mushrooms and wild fruits, and playing with my friends there. That's really a happy time!

When I was nine, I went to Weihai, Shandong province with my parents. I have to say it's really beautiful there, and the weather is so nice. I guess it's because three sides of it are surrounded by sea. I often take a walk along the beach and look at the beautiful sea and sky, it can help me relax. I went to junior and high school there, which is really a bad memory, for the reason that Shandong province is the most strict area with students' study and score. But I believe in if you pay more, you gain more. I think I gained a solid foundation for my future study there.

Then, I go to Beijing for my college at Beihang University (formerly Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronuatics) where most of Chinese space aircraft engineers graduate from. From the name, I think you can guess this university mainly focuses on science and technology. It's good for me because it provides a great environment for engineering, but sometimes it can be very boring and there are few activities. During the college years, I am not as that hard-working as before and this makes me feel guilty very often. In the past four years, I gave up a lot and I learned a lot, I felt both happy and pain. Maybe that's college, a forever precious unforgettable memory!

It seems I have talked too much about my history. Actually, I am a very active person. What do I like most? Of course eating! I have a good appetite, and I like almost every kind of food, and of course I eat a lot. Maybe I should be on diet for the health reason. And I like to do some exercises, I like jogging either in the gym or outdoors, right now I am thinking of trying yoga or Pilates. Also, I often travel when I am free, and I get used to take photos of those amazing views, Last, I am a big fun of movies and fictions, I think that's the reason that cause I wear glasses. What a pity! But I just cannot help with it!

OK, that's too much about me, that's me, that's all!