UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Guoray Cai, professor in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), has been appointed to the Dewey Walker Professorship in Information Sciences and Technology, efficient July 1.
The Dewey Walker Endowed Professorship was established to help an excellent college member in the College of IST whose work advances interdisciplinary contributions in data techniques options. The three-year appointment gives supplemental help to additional the holder’s instructing, analysis and public service. The earlier holder was Dinghao Wu, a school member in IST’s Department of Privacy and Cybersecurity Informatics and a school affiliate in the Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence at Penn State.
“I am deeply honored to receive this appointment to the Dewey Walker Professorship,” Cai mentioned. “This is both a recognition of my past research and an encouragement for continued leadership and excellence in the evolution of human-centered information technologies.”
Cai was not too long ago promoted to full professor and named the inaugural head of the College of IST’s Department of Human-Centered Computing and Social Informatics. Since becoming a member of the school as an assistant professor in 1999, he has served many management positions, together with as chair of the college council, chair of the promotion and tenure committee and interim division head in the human-computer interplay college space.
Cai’s analysis is centered round bettering human use of geospatial data in numerous decision-making contexts, akin to disaster responses, civic engagement, city planning and visible analytics. He acquired a number of analysis funding awards on tasks that help geocollaboration, geocollaborative disaster administration and multi-modal interfaces for collaborative techniques. He is the founding director of the Spatial Information and Intelligence Laboratory, which is housed in the College of IST. Cai holds a doctoral diploma in data science from the University of Pittsburgh.
“Guoray is well-deserving of this prestigious honor,” mentioned Andrea Tapia, dean of the College of IST. “This professorship, along with his role as department head, will support his leadership efforts to create a positive impact on the evolution of technologies that increasingly impact society.”
Cai was not too long ago chosen to take part in the 2026 Big Ten Academic Alliance Department Executive Officers Program. This management improvement initiative affords in-depth coaching, case-based studying and alternatives to collaborate with division heads, chairs and college administrators throughout the Big Ten on the challenges and duties of educational management.