PhD in Informatics at Pennsylvania State University

The Ph.D. in Informatics offers advanced graduate education for students contemplating careers in academic teaching and research, or research in a non-academic setting. The program is interdisciplinary in nature and expects scholarship at the highest level exhibiting depth of competency in at least one of the core areas of informatics, and an understanding of the integration of the critical constructs that drive the field: people, information, and technology.

The Dual-Title Ph.D. in Informatics and Social Data Analytics degree program is administered by the Social Data Analytics Committee, which is responsible for the management of the program. The committee maintains program definition, identifies faculty and courses appropriate to the program, and recommends policy and procedures for its operation to the Dean of the Graduate School. The program enables students from diverse graduate programs to attain and be identified with an interdisciplinary array of tools, techniques, and methodologies for social data analytics, while maintaining a close association with a home discipline. Social data analytics is the integration of social scientific, computational, informational, statistical, and visual analytic approaches to the analysis of large or complex data that arise from human interaction.

The Master of Science in Informatics is an interdisciplinary degree program that focuses on the theoretical, application-oriented, and educational issues facing a digital, global economy. The program is designed to build an understanding of how information and technology fundamentally impact (and are impacted by) people, organizations, and the world community. Topical areas within the program span a broad range including: human computer interaction, computational techniques, applications (e.g., bio-informatics and geographical information systems), societal issues (such as digital divide issues), user issues (e.g., computer-aided cognition), and information systems design and development providing exposure and grounding in many of the aspects of the information sciences. The program is especially attractive to students interested in gaining state-of-the-art understanding of informatics and its use as a solution in multiple venues.

The Integrated Undergraduate Graduate (IUG) program is available for strong undergraduate students who wish to pursue a bachelor's and master's degree in a shorter period of time than would be necessary if the degrees were pursued separately. There are two approved IUG programs: an Integrated B.S. in Information Sciences and Technology and M.S. in Informatics, and an Integrated B.S. in Security and Risk Analysis and M.S. in Informatics.

1. KNOW: Demonstrate appropriate breadth and depth of interdisciplinary knowledge, and comprehension of the major issues in information sciences and technology (IST).
2. APPLY/ CREATE: Use interdisciplinary knowledge and methods of IST to plan and conduct a research thesis.
3. COMMUNICATE: Communicate the major issues of IST effectively, including publications in high quality journals and presentations at high value conferences.
4. THINK: Demonstrate analytical and critical thinking within IST, including across disciplines.
5. PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: Know and conduct themselves in accordance with the highest ethical standards, values, and, where these are defined, the best practices of IST (as expressed in SARI training modules).