Steering Committee
The Steering Committee is a group of Penn State faculty and staff that advises CSRAI leadership on programs and initiatives that support the growth and success of the Center.
CSRAI leadership develops, implements, and evaluates strategic decisions to advance our mission and vision. With a focus on sustainable growth and interdisciplinary collaboration, the leadership group is advised by Penn State faculty and staff on the Steering Committee.
S. Shyam Sundar
- James P. Jimirro Professor of Media Effects
- CSRAI Director
Department/Unit: Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications
Email: sss12@psu.edu
Research Interests: S. Shyam Sundar is James P. Jimirro Professor of Media Effects and founder of the Media Effects Research Laboratory in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications. His research investigates social and psychological effects of interactive media, including mobile phones, social media, chatbots, robots, smart speakers and algorithms. His experiments investigate the role played by technological affordances in shaping user experience of mediated communications in a variety of interfaces. Current research pertains to fake news, chatbots and smart speakers, AI algorithms, online privacy, social media uses and effects, persuasive aspects of human-computer interaction (HCI), and the strategic use of communication technologies for motivating healthy and prosocial human behaviors.
Amulya Yadav
- PNC Career Development Assistant Professor
- CSRAI Associate Director (Programs)
Department/Unit: College of Information Sciences and Technology
Email: auy212@psu.edu
Research Interests: Amulya Yadav is an Assistant Professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State University. He also has an affiliate faculty appointment with the USC Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society. His research interests include Artificial Intelligence, Multi-Agent Systems, Computational Game-Theory and Applied Machine Learning. His work in the field of Artificial Intelligence for Social Good focuses on developing theoretically grounded approaches to real-world problems that can have an impact in the field. His algorithms have been deployed in the real-world, particularly in the field of public health and wildlife protection. Amulya is a recipient of the AAMAS 2016 Best Student Paper Award, the AAAI 2017 Best Video and Best Student Video Award, the IDEAS 2016 Most Visionary Paper Award, and the AAMAS 2017 Best Paper Award nomination. His work has also been highlighted by Mashable.com as one of 26 incredible innovations that improved the world in 2015. Amulya holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California, and a B. Tech. in Computer Science & Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Patna.
Rick Brazier
- Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research
- CSRAI Steering Committee
Department/Unit: Senior Vice President for Commonwealth Campuses
Email: rab27@psu.edu
Research Interests: Rick Brazier is senior associate dean for faculty and research for the 14 campuses that comprise the University College. He oversees all aspects of faculty development from hiring through promotions and sabbaticals, including grant proposals. Dr. Brazier is a professor of mathematics and geology. He began his Penn State career in 1996 as a research associate in EMS and then as an instructor and subsequently tenure line faculty member at Penn State DuBois.
Daren Coudriet
- Executive Director of Innovation
- CSRAI Steering Committee
Department/Unit: Penn State Outreach
Email: dlc122@psu.edu
Research Interests:
Max Crowley
- Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, and Public Policy
- CSRAI Steering Committee
Department/Unit: College of Health and Human Development
Email: dmc397@psu.edu
Research Interests: Max Crowley is a prevention scientist investigating how to optimize investments in healthy development and wellbeing. This work sits at the intersection of social policy, prevention science and public finance. His program of research is motivated by a desire to increase the use of cost-effective, evidence-based preventive strategies to improve the lives of children and families. To accomplish this, his work aims to (1) strengthen methods for benefit-cost analyses of preventive interventions, (2) optimize prevention strategies’ impact and (3) develop best practices for how to translate these investments into evidence-based policy. In this manner, Dr. Crowley seeks to not only understand the costs and benefits of prevention, but aim to develop better interventions and encourage them to be disseminated widely. Dr. Crowley's research is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute of Nursing Research, National Institute of Child Health & Human Development and National Institute on Aging as well as the Robert Wood Johnson, Laura & John Arnold, Annie E. Casey, Michael and Susan Dell and Doris Duke Charitable Foundations.
Min Ding
- Bard Professor in Marketing
- CSRAI Steering Committee
Department/Unit: Smeal College of Business
Email: minding@psu.edu
Research Interests: Min Ding is Bard Professor of Marketing at Smeal College of Business and Affiliate Professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at the Pennsylvania State University, and has held past visiting positions at Australian National University, China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), Fudan University, and MIT. Min received his Ph.D. in Marketing (with a 2nd concentration in Health Care System) from Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from the Ohio State University, and B.S. in Genetics and Genetic Engineering from Fudan University. His current scholarly interest are in three domains: Artificial Intelligence and its Application in Commerce (Deep Learning Methods; Artificial Empathy; Intraperson Game Theory; Artificial Decision; Prescriptive Recommenders; Matching Systems), Innovation (Logical Creative Thinking [LCT]; Incentive Alignment [IA]; Innovation in Medicine; Adoption of Near-Term Disruptive Technologies), and Human and Societal Development (The Bubble Theory [Fair Development, Fair Wealth, Enlightened Needs]; Hualish Culture [originated from the greater China region]).
Andrea Matwyshyn
- Associate Dean for Innovation and Technology
- CSRAI Steering Committee
Department/Unit: Penn State Law
Email: andreamm@psu.edu
Research Interests: Andrea Matwyshyn is founding director of the Penn State PILOT Lab (Policy Innovation Lab of Tomorrow), an interdisciplinary technology policy lab, and a professor with Penn State Law and the College of Engineering. She is an academic and author whose work focuses on technology and information policy and law, particularly information security/”cybersecurity,” artificial intelligence, consumer privacy, intellectual property, health technology, and technology workforce pipeline policy. Previously, she was professor of law/professor of computer science (by courtesy) at Northeastern University, where she served as co-director of the Center for Law, Innovation, and Creativity (CLIC). She is a faculty affiliate of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School and as a senior fellow of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcraft Center on International Security.
Wesley Reinhart
- Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
- CSRAI Steering Committee
Department/Unit: College of Earth and Mineral Sciences
Email: reinhart@psu.edu
Research Interests: Wesley Reinhart received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. He attended Princeton University on a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, where he worked on strategies for predicting, understanding, and controlling colloidal crystallization using large-scale computer simulations and machine learning methods. After completing his Ph.D. in Chemical and Biological Engineering, he worked as a Research Scientist at Siemens Corporate Technology. His research initiatives there focused on computational geometry, knowledge representation, and exploiting the structure-function relationship in manufacturing contexts. He joined Penn State’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering in 2020 and holds an appointment as an Institute for Computational and Data Sciences Co-hire.
Ted Toadvine
- Nancy Tuana Director
- CSRAI Steering Committee
Department/Unit: Rock Ethics Institute
Email: tat30@psu.edu
Research Interests: Toadvine’s research over the last two decades has focused on the themes of aesthetics, animality, embodiment, environment, intersubjectivity, nature, ontology, philosophical method, and temporality. He draws inspiration from the phenomenological tradition (especially Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas) as well as deconstruction and post-structuralism (especially Derrida, Nancy, and Deleuze). In 2003, he coined the term “ecophenomenology” to designate an approach to environmental theory that draws on the phenomenological tradition while critically reorienting its relationship with ecology and naturalism. Ecophenomenology is now a recognized field of study across the environmental humanities with proponents in ecocriticism, the arts, architecture, and animal studies, as well as philosophy. His research over the last decade develops a post-naturalistic approach to nature inspired by classic and contemporary sources in the continental tradition, including Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger, Scheler, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Derrida, Deleuze, Nancy, and Agamben. His first monograph, Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature (Northwestern, 2009), contributes to the theoretical foundations of this new philosophy of nature by showing that Merleau-Ponty's conception of nature, as it develops across his major theoretical works, provides an alternative to naturalistic and constructivist accounts that dominate current environmental theory. Here Toadvine examines the contributions and limitations of Merleau-Ponty’s early Gestalt ontology, his account of radical reflection as a method for disclosing the anonymous level of sensibility and the immemorial past of nature, the radicalization of phenomenology’s investigations of non-human animals, and the significance of his later ontology for environmental concerns. This study lays the philosophical foundations for Toadvine’s original investigations in the philosophy of nature on topics that include nature’s resistance to reflection, the human-animal relation, the temporality of the elements, and biodiacritics.
Shomir Wilson
- Assistant Professor
- CSRAI Steering Committee
Department/Unit: College of Information Sciences and Technology
Email: suw724@psu.edu
Research Interests: Shomir Wilson's research interests span natural language processing, artificial intelligence, digital privacy, and computational social science. He is particularly interested in breaking down technology's "walls of text", situations where a human user or decisionmaker is expected to consume a large quantity of text to take action while lacking time or expertise to properly understand it. Prior to joining Penn State he held postdoctoral positions in Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science and the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, and his B.S. in Computer Science, B.S. in Mathematics, and B.A. in Philosophy from Virginia Tech.