Information Sciences and Technology Department

Assistant professors Tariq Kamal and Alejandro Alvarez and Instructor Hussna Azamy started teaching for the Department of Information Sciences and Technology at George Mason University in fall 2024. 

The Virginia Cyber Navigator Internship Program (VA-CNIP) has equipped students with the skills to strengthen the cybersecurity posture of election infrastructures. As an intern last summer, information technology major Duong Thuy Nguyen helped secure a rural county’s technology for the upcoming presidential election alongside two George Mason peers. 

A team of graduate students in information sciences, psychology, and special education aims to create a more integrated understanding of how different populations, such as individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), are affected by cybercrimes and how they can be better protected.

Several faculty members in the Department of Information Sciences and Technology received a planning grant from the National Science Foundation to work on developing effective support mechanisms for low-income students. 

With data centers consuming about 2% of the world's electricity, their immense energy consumption and carbon footprint are a pressing concern in the technology sector. Doctoral student Sajad Kargar can help.

Information sciences and technology doctoral students Sajad Kargar, Ashish Hingle, and Julia Hsin-ping Hsu won first, second, and third place awards at George Mason University’s College of Engineering and Computing Innovation Week 2024 graduate poster contest in February.

IST’s Myeong Lee received a  $150,000 grant from the Virginia Board of People with Disabilities for the Mapping Information Ecology project. “We want to provide information systems strategies, [structural] recommendations, and related policy recommendations to the state. That's our goal," said Lee.  

IST Assistant Professor Nora McDonald makes it a priority to help her students learn how to ask the right empathetic questions while teaching Human Computer Interaction (HCI), one of IST’s newest concentrations.

Mason freshmen Pranay Yella and Pranav Reddippali were on the team that took second place at the Mason/Amazon 2022 Bring Down Counterfeiting Public Policy Hackathon.

Associate Professor Max Albanese collaborated with Palo Alto Research Center to launch the Mason Vulnerability Scoring Framework, a tool that publishes continuously updated rankings of the most-common global software weaknesses. The work has resulted in multiple pending patent applications and a Best Paper Award at the 19th International Conference on Security and Cryptography.