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Professional/Personal Activities

In addition to regular job responsibilities, many ASET staff members participate in both professionally- and personally- oriented activities by serving on University and/or national committees, attending and presenting at University-based and national conferences, teaching seminars and/or by serving as community volunteers. Please note that the information below is based on the annual report submissions. Some participants/activities as well as dates, places, and other information, may not be reflected on this list.

New Hires and Retirements

This year, ASET welcomed new staff members Todd Shamory (AIT), Danny Coughlin (AIT), Robyn Wang (AIT), Gretta Armstrong (AIT), and Jake Akers (AIT), and Denise Geissinger (Directors' Office). In addition, former South Hills Business School (SHBS) intern Corey Riddle became a full-time employee in ET. ASET also welcomed Claudia Caracci, who serves as a technical writing intern.

ASET said farewell to Jerry Boone, who retired in June 2005.

Of Special Note

During 2004 - 2005, all ASET staff participated in ITS-wide, diversity-related seminars organized by ITS OHR staff. Courses to date include Sexual Harassment Awareness and Prevention and Wisdom of the Ages. The courses were provided in response to the Office of Human Resource's Faculty/Staff survey results made available to the University community. For details, please visit the Diversity section of the Inside ITS Web site.

Presentations/Papers

• The InCommon Federation, D. Wasley, A. Beesing, R. Shuey, and T. Mitrano, Institute for Computer Policy and Law Tenth Annual Seminar, June 29, 2005.
• When the Web Talks Back, M. Earnest, C. Riddle, M. Berube, and J. Leous, Web 2005, June 14, 2005.
• What Are Digital Identities?, S. Aungst and J. Hill, Web 2005, June 14, 2005.
• Writing PHP for ITS/ASET Web services - Pre-Conference Tutorial for Web 2005, Jeff D'Angelo, June 13, 2005.
• Taxonomies and Searching, M. Pelikan, J. Leous, M. Smith, R. Pearce, and R. Vaught, Web 2005 Poster Session, June 13, 2005.
• Authentication and Authorization - Pre-Conference Tutorial for Web 2005, Phil Pishioneri and Jim Vuccolo, June 13, 2005.
• Network of People (NWOFP) - Using Personal Certificates, Jeremy Hill and Jeff D'Angelo, May 2005.
• Shibboleth & Digital Library Technologies, M. Earnest, ET/DLT Retreat, May 2005.
• The Impact of Managing Digital Identities in the Increasingly Connected Worlds of Higher Education, K. Morooney and R. Shuey, Spring Internet2 Member Meeting, May 2, 2005.
• LDAP and Directories, J. Leous, AIS Open Forum (POPCORN), April 21, 2005.
• LionShare: Federated Security in a Peer-to-Peer Environment, D. Morr, AIS Open Forum (POPCORN), March 24, 2005.
• Shibboleth: Molecules, Music, and Middleware, K. Morooney and R. Shuey, Mid-Atlantic Regional Educause Conference, January 14, 2005; ITS Forums, April 21, 2005.
• What's new in Solaris 10?", D. Morr, Penn State Linux Users Group(LUG), February 16, 2005.
• VOIP and the Demise of the Land Line: Is It a Disruption Technology? S. Aungst, keynote speaker, Chadwick College, spring 2005.
• The End, J. Wagner article in Academic Computing Newsletter, spring 2005.
• Bringing Windows XP Back Under Your Control, A. Williams article in Academic Computing Newsletter, spring 2005.
• E-mail with a "Plus", J. Leous, article in Academic Computing Newsletter, spring 2005.
• A Primer for Navigating the Shoals of Applying Wireless Technology to Marketing Problems, S. Aungst and D. Wilson, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, Vol. 20, No. 2, 2005.
• Large Scale Computing in Welding. Application: Modeling Welding Distortion of the Maglev Beam, Jun Sun, Pan Michaleris, Prasad Marugabandhu, Jeff Nucciarone, submitted to Modelling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering Journal, 2005.
• Large Scale Computing in Welding. Application: Modeling Welding Distortion of the Maglev Beam, Jun Sun, Pan Michaleris, Prasad Marugabandhu, Jeff Nucciarone, submitted as a PhD Thesis and successful defense for Dr. Jun Sun, Mechanical Engineering, 2005.
• Expanding the Boundaries of Virtual Reality for Building Design and Construction. G. H. Otto, J. Messner, L. Kalisperis. ASCE, International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering, Cancun, Mexico, 2005.
• Penn State Web Developers Luncheon - (reprisal) Using the Penn State Search Engine, December 2004. Jim Leous and Jeff D'Angelo.
• Enabling Applications to Use Identity Management Systems, M. Earnest, Internet2 Identity Management Workshop, November, 2004.
• Leveraging Authentication and Authorization Systems to Support Interinstitutional Access, M. Earnest, Internet2 Enterprise Authentication Workshop, November 2004.
• Finding a Needle in a Haystack: Taxonomies, Tags, and Search Engines, M. Pelikan, J. Leous, M. Smith, R. Vaught, and R. Pearce, SIGUCCS, October 12, 2004.
• ITS Training session - Using the Penn State Search Engine, October 2004. Jim Leous and Jeff D'Angelo.
• Applications of Multidimensional Mapping Techniques to Quality Function Deployment, Harvard Business School, Dr. Stanley Aungst, fall 2004.
• Secure Communication Methods for DCE/DFS Alternatives, M. Burns, AIS Hydra Working Group, fall 2004.
• Render Unto Caesar, J. Wagner article in Academic Computing Newsletter, fall 2004.
• Computers in Today's Visual Arts, J. Wagner presentation to digital arts group meeting, fall 2004.
• Network of People (NWOFP) - ASET Update - Announcement and details of Phase II of the Dynamic Content Application Engines - PHP Upgrade, Jeff D'Angelo, August 2004.
• Why Open Source, A. Williams presentation at SHARE Summer Conference, August 2004.
• ET Senior Director Review, ET Team Leaders presentation to Senior Director Retreat, July 2004.
• Digital Identity Management at Penn State, K. Morooney and R. Shuey, Finance and Business - eBusiness Key Initiative Meeting, July 7, 2004.
• Moving Pictures, J. Wagner article in Academic Computing Newsletter, summer 2004.
• Journal cover illustration: Functional Plant Biology: Continuing Australian Journal of Plant Physiology, Volume 31, Number 10. Image resulting from VTK support provided to Dr. Tom Walk, Penn State-Horticulture, in support of his research. The image illustrates a geometric simulation of a maize root after 336 hours of growth and shows zones of phosphorus depletion, 2004.
• Adam Focht along with partner Jorge Sofo gave a presentation on Web User Interfaces in collaboration with Lyle Long's ICS seminar series.
• Slobounov, S., Newell, K., Slobounov, E., Shibasaki, H., Hallett, M. (in press). Postural adjustments and brain responses to optical flow induced by virtual reality graphics. Motor Control.
• Slobounov, S., Slobounova, E., Sebastianelli, W. (in review). Alteration of posture in mild traumatic brain injury induced by virtual reality graphics. Neuroscience Letters.
• Visualization group facility support and staff consultation supported the following published research:
  • Slobounov, S., Hallett, M., Stanhope, S., Shibasaki, H. (2005). Role of cerebral cortex in human postural control: EEG study. Clinical Neurophysiology, 116(2), 215-223.
  • Thompson, J., Sebastianelli, W., Slobounov, S. (2005). EEG and postural correlates of mild traumatic brain injury in athletes. Neuroscience Letters, 377, 158-163.
  • Slobounov, S., Sebastianelli, W., Moss, R. (in press). Alteration of posture-related cortical potentials in mild traumatic brain injury. Neuroscience Letters.
• Proposal Support:
  • Joint submission to NSF Course Curriculum and Lab Improvement (CCLI) program (in review with faculty from Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Communications and Architectural Engineering for improvements to virtual reality systems and related curriculum development for the Immersive Environments Laboratory.
  • Joint submission with Dr. Arthur Lesk, Professor of Biochemistry/Molecular Biology) and InfoSciTex Corporation to US Army STTR program for proposing and architecture for scalable data visualization tools for very large datasets.
  • Visualization group support is proposed under the following proposals in collaboration with faculty in Kinesiology and Sports Medicine:
    • Fall-related traumatic brain injury in the elderly. RO3, NIH, NIA. 2006-2008. (Pending)
    • Traumatic Brain injury in Collegiate Athletes. RO1, NIH NINDS, 2005-2011. (Pending)
    • Identification of older adults at risk for fall-related brain injuries. NIH, NIA, 2006-2011. (in preparation)

Conferences (attended)

• In addition to the individual listings noted here, several ASET employees attended/participated in the Web 2005 conference: Jerry Boone, Danny Coughlin, Jeff D'Angelo, Mark Earnest, Karen Hackett, Jeremy Hill, Jim Leous, Jerry Mihaly, Phil Pishioneri, Jim Vuccolo, Robyn Wang, and Hannah Williams. June 2005.
• Steve Kellogg and Bob Walters attended the NMI-EDIT CAMP/Identity and Access Management Integration Workshop, Denver, CO, June 2005.
• Jim Leous attended the Sakai Summer Meeting, Baltimore MD, June 2005.
• Derek Morr attended the AFS and Kerberos Best Practices Workshop, June 2005.
• Renee Shuey attended the Institute for Computer Policy and Law Tenth Annual Seminar, June 2005.
• Al Williams attended the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, San Francisco, CA, June 2005.
• Abdul Aziz, Adam Focht, Jeff Nucciarone, and George Otto attended the Cornell Theory Center's 20th Anniversary HPC Symposium in Ithaca, NY, May 2005.
• Several ASET employees participated in both the closed and open meetings for the spring Common Solutions Group (CSG) meeting, hosted by Penn State, in May 2005.
• Chris Hubing and John Kalbach attended the CSG E-mail Workshop, May 2005.
• Rich Cropp, Phil Devan, Mark Earnest, John Kalbach, Mark Miller, Derek Morr and Renee Shuey attended the Internet2 Members Meeting, May 2005.
• Craig Anthony attended the Chandler Technical Update, San Francisco, CA, April 2005.
• Gavin Burris attended the Access Grid 5th Annual Retreat, April 26-29, 2005, San Francisco.
• Jim Leous attended the EDUCAUSE Policy Conference, Washington, D.C., April 2005.
• Mark Earnest attended the 4th Annual PKI Research & Development Workshop, April 2005.
• Jeff D'Angelo attended the Center PA Linux Users Group Security conference, March 2005.
• Al Williams attended theSHARE Spring Conference, Anaheim, CA, February 2005
• Vijay Agarwala, Adam Focht, Jason Holmes, Jeff Nucciarone, George Otto, Phil Sorber, and Hannah Williams attended SC2005 in Pittsburgh, PA, November 2004.
• Jeff D'Angelo attended the annual Large Installment of System Administrators (LISA) conference, November 2004.
• Mark Earnest attended the Internet2 Identity Management Workshop, November 2004.
• Mark Earnest attended the Internet2 Enterprise Authentication Workshop, November 2004.
• Educause Fall Conference, Denver, CO, November 2004.
• ACM SIGUCCS 2004 Fall Conference, Baltimore, MD, October 2004.
• Craig Anthony, Chris Hubing, John Kalbach, Steve Kellogg Brett Rodgers, and Jonathan Siegle attended IBM Share/UserBlue, New York City, September, 2004.
• Derek Morr and Renee Shuey attended the Fall 2004 Internet2 Member Meeting, September 2004.
• Gavin Burris attended ACM SIGGRAPH 2004 in Los Angeles, CA, August 2004.
• Jack Gundrum attended ACM SIGGRAPH 2004 in Los Angeles, CA, August 2004.
• Al Williams attended the SHARE Summer Conference New York City, NY - August 2004
• Abdul Aziz served as a judge in the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science.
• Abdul Aziz attended an ANSYS professional one-day seminar in Cannonsburg.
• George Otto completed Penn State HRDC Mastering Supervision and Management Institute programs.
• George Otto attended the DOD Cluster Symposium in Vienna, VA.
• Brett Rodgers attended the IBM Deep Dive on AIX 5L conference.
• Jonathan Siegle attended the E-mail SPAM Conference.
• Jonathan Siegle attended the IBM ThinkPad update.
• Chris Hubing and John Kalbach attended the IBM LPAR Briefing.
• Jonathan Siegle attended the CPLUG Security Conference.

Seminars and Course Support

• Jim Leous and Renee Shuey presented "ET, Shibboleth, and Napster" at the ITS New Employee Orientation sessions. November 2004, February 2005, April 2005.
• Visualization Group staff provided software consulting and lab support for New Jersey Institute of Technology's I2 Day for a demonstration of remote architectural design collaboration using Access Grid. April 2005.
• Visualization Group provided visualization and tele-collaborative tools demonstrations for participants in the ASET's program for the "Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day" program. April 2005.
• GEaRS provided organizational assistance and HPC/Visualization demonstration displays for the Institute for Computational Science's first annual Computational Sciences Day at University Park. February 2005.
• Skip Knoble replied to 112 Help Desk-related e-mail inquiries and over 94 e-mail inquiries from faculty and graduate student. January - June 2005.
• Using the Penn State Search Engine, J. D'Angelo and J. Leous, October 2004.
• Skip Knoble taught a section of Fortran 77/90/95: Windows, Linux and Unix. October 2004.
• Ray Masters conducted a day-long workshop in scientific visualization at the Penn State Erie/The Behrend College. Topics included hands-on instruction in Tcl/Tk/VTK and OpenDX. October 2004.
• Ray Masters implemented a 64-bit steering library and client for use in Chemistry 560 (Molecular Dynamics). October 2004 - March 2005.
• Abdul Aziz taught three sections with extremely high attendance of Scientific Computing with Maple, MATLAB, and Mathematica (a comparison of the three packages) in the Linux Lab of 316 Hammond Building.
• Abdul Aziz taught seminars focusing on Matlab and Distributed Matlab.
• Abdul Aziz taught seminars focusing on Mathematica and gridMathematica.
• Abdul Aziz taught seminars focusing on Maple.
• Abdul Aziz taught Computational Engineering with ANSYS, ABAQUS, and NASTRAN in the Linux Lab of 316 Hammond Building.
• Vijay Agarwala taught an introduction to High Performance computing in national lab environments in collaboration with Lyle Long's ICS seminar series.
• Jeff Nucciarone taught a seminar on Software Libraries such as IMSL, GNU, LAPACK, and SCALAPACK in collaboration with Lyle Long's ICS seminar series.
• Abdul Aziz has taught and provided support for the following courses:
• ABE 513: Applied Finite Element, Finite Difference, and Boundary Element Methods
• CE 541 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS IN CIVIL ENGINEERING
• ME/EMCH 461 Applied Finite Element Analysis
• ME 563 Nonlinear Finite Elements
• Ray Masters taught rapid prototyping design considerations and CNC technology for Art 297C: Introduction to Metalworking (fall 2004) and Architecture 497J: Digital Design and Fabrication (spring 2005).
• Ray Masters provided a lecture on "Stereographics, VTK and Tcl/Tk;" George Otto provided a lecture on Virtual Reality and visualization/VR facilities demonstrations; and the Immersive Environments Lab was used for Access Grid delivery of a lecture by Mark Greene or University of Buffalo in support of Aersp/Cmpsci/Math/Bus 597: Introduction to Computational Science Tools.
• Visualization group staff provided teaching, consulting and immersive lab support for:
  • AE 124: Architectural Engineering Orientation
  • AE 444: Micro CADD Applications for Buildings
  • AE 473: Building construction Management and Control
  • AE 497D: Building Information Modeling
  • AE 497E: Virtual Design for the Built Environment
  • AE 597: Virtual Facility Prototyping
  • ARCH 231/232: Basic Design and Research III/IV (Second year design studio)
  • ARCH 481: Digital Design Media
  • ARCH 482: MICROCAD
  • ARCH 497: Multiple Topics
  • ARCH 543: Topics in Digital Design
  • ART 211: Introduction to New Media/Digital Art Criticism

Professional Development (University-oriented)

• Karen Hackett served on the University's Commission for Women (CFW) as chair; she assumed past-chair duties for 2005 - 2006 on July 1, 2005. She also served on the History of Women at Penn State Book Project committees, the Joint Commissions Committee (JCC) (chairs, co-chairs and chair-elects of all three commissions for equity), and the Executive Committee.
• Karen Hackett served on the Web 2005 Steering and Program Committees.
• Karen Hackett has been re-appointed to serve as the Provost's representative on the University Child Care Advisory Committee. Meetings begin in September 2005.
• Karen Hackett has been selected to serve on the ITS The Event Planning and Publicity Committees on behalf of ASET.
• Tracy Leitzel completed the HRDC course, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People."
• Jim Leous served as an ASET representative on the SSN Project Working Group.
• Jim Leous served as an ASET representative on the Taxonomy of Meta Tags Group.
• Jim Leous is the advisor of the Penn State Linux Users' Group (LUG).
• Ray Masters served as a judge for the 2005 Graduate Research Fair and Exhibition.
• Derek Morr is a maintainer for the Blastwave project, which ports open source software to Solaris.
• George Otto completed Penn State HRDC Mastering Supervision and Management Institute programs.
• Elena Slobounov served on the Mentoring Committee for the Penn State Commission for Women.
• Elena Slobounov is a group moderator for the newly formed ITS Women Networking Group.
• Jim Vuccolo served as an ASET representative on the SSN Project Working Group.
• Robyn Wang completed a C++ Programming seminar.
• Al Williams was elected to the position of Director for the SHARE Board of Directors with the assigned portfolio of IT and eBusiness.
• Hannah Williams has been selected to serve on the ITS The Event Planning and Graphics Committees on behalf of ASET.
• Hannah Williams completed the HRDC course, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People."

Personal Activities

• Jeff D'Angelo, an avid drummer, attended several West-African drum workshops featuring drumming experts such as Jim Donovan (of Rusted Root fame), Eesa Grayson, and Mamady Keita. Jeff can be found drumming with other local drummers on Wednesday and Friday evenings on the College Avenue wall in front of Old Main.
• Mark Earnest served as the Commander of the Centre County Sheriff's Office Search and Rescue Team.
• Ray Masters trained to operate the new laser cutter/engraver for digital design fabrication in the Department of Architecture.
• Chris Hubing completed course work for IST 496.
• Ray Masters successfully passed the Biennial Flight Review examination mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration for continued exercise of his pilot privileges.
• Ray Masters served his second year as Centre County coordinator of the American Cancer Society's Man-to-Man Prostate Cancer Education, Support and Counseling program.
• Kevin Morooney served as the head coach of the State College High School Girls Soccer Team.
• Jim Leous continues to serve as the assistant coach of the State College Varsity Ice Hockey Team where he works with the goaltenders and special teams.
• Elena Slobounov received the Toastmasters International CTM Award after completing the Communications and Leadership program and now serves as the Vice President for Education for Club 1219.
• Elena Slobounov traveled as an interpreter to Russia and Spain with the United States Diving Team.
• Al Williams served as a hill captain on the Tussey Mountain Ski Patrol.